Berlin police: Data protection violations found among 83 police officers

83 policemen and policewomen of the Berlin police are alleged to have repeatedly violated data protection laws. During internal checks, it was discovered that some of the employees had even made multiple requests for personal information that they were not actually authorized to make.

Data protection violations at the Berlin police

During routine internal checks, the Berlin police became aware of several data protection violations. Here one had found violations for requests in the “Police state system for information, communication and case processing” (POLIKS), which are contrary to the police internal directives. This was communicated on July 22 in a message.

“The handling of personal data requires a high degree of data security and responsible handling,” writes the Berlin police. In the run-up to a data query must be named for this on the part of the policemen and policewomen a reason and a corresponding free-text supplement.

In addition, it must be ensured that the officers meet at all about access requirements for a corresponding query. According to the results of the internal control, a total of 83 of the approximately 20,000 persons authorized to access the data repeatedly failed to comply with the requirements for the free-text additions to the reason for the query of personal data.

In all cases, therefore, official and disciplinary investigations are now underway. In addition, it would have to be examined whether the employees of the Berlin police were at all authorized to carry out corresponding queries or whether data protection violations have occurred.

Data protection trouble at Berlin police

In January of this year, Berlin police had already reached their limits when it came to data analysis. Barbara Slowik, Berlin’s police chief, stated at the time that the department’s resources were insufficient in securing and analyzing data from an increasing number of seized data carriers and therefore called for additional resources.

With regard to data protection, the Berlin police had already come under criticism last year for very similar reasons. The former Berlin data protection commissioner Maja Smoltczyk complained in March 2021 that corresponding investigations by the police at the time were accompanied by unauthorized data queries.

At that time it was about the clarification of right-wing extremist death threats. “In our review, it has been shown that there were not comprehensible justifications for all queries of the police database,” said Smoltczyk. The officials would have invoked criminal procedural rights or based on insufficient evidence.

Corresponding accusations against the Berlin police have been persistent for years. As early as March 2019, Smoltczyk criticized the handling of data protection within the Berlin police, according to a report by Golem.de. Accordingly, officers “very often” even privately accessed internal police databases to obtain private information.

At least the authority is apparently much more reasonable in the case of the current violation and is taking disciplinary action against the data protection violations in the 83 cases. Meanwhile, colleagues in Lower Saxony are using new software against cybercrime.