20260401 Anhörung zum sächsischen Polizeigesetz

Partially unconstitutional and still not improved

We are talking about the Saxon Police Service Act (SächsPVDG). The Greens and The Left had the version passed in 2019 reviewed by the Saxon Constitutional Court. Last year, their doubts were partially confirmed. Now the state parliament is debating whether the Saxon government’s new draft bill still contains unconstitutional elements. As expected, the experts’ verdict was favorable to the CDU government. This was certainly also due to the fact that only two of the five legal scholars were nominated by the opposition. Points of contention include:

Hypothetical data collection – This refers to the practice of using data that has already been collected (for example, through a cell site query) for other purposes. This is also known as a violation of the principle of purpose limitation.

Remote biometric identification – Professor Harmut Aden, deputy director of the Research Institute for Public and Private Security (FÖPS Berlin), doubts whether the draft is compatible with the Basic Law and, in particular, the AI Regulation. “Biometric remote identification is a practice prohibited by the AI Regulation,” Aden clarified, according to Netzpolitik.org.

It remains unclear where the facial data for the comparison might come from. The statement “from the internet” opens the floodgates to abuse and enables the use of Palantir-like programs whose training data is unknown to anyone.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)