Britta Eder’s phone contact list is full of people the German government considers criminals. As an attorney in Hamburg, her client list includes anti-fascists, those campaigning against nuclear power, and members of the banned extremist Kurdish nationalist organization, the PKK.
For her clients, she’s used to being discreet on the phone. “I always think when I talk on the phone, maybe I’m not alone,” she says. Her sense of self extends to her phone calls with her mother.
But when Hamburg passed a new law in 2019 allowing police to use data analysis software built by the CIA-backed company Palantir, she could be drawn further into the big data web. I was afraid. Palantir’s Gotham platform capabilities allow police to map networks of phone contacts, effectively keeping people who are associated with criminals like Eder but who are not criminals under surveillance.
“I thought this was the next step for police to try to make people more likely to be observed without concrete evidence linking them to a crime,” says Eder. So she decided to become one of her 11 plaintiffs seeking to nullify the Hamburg Act. Yesterday they succeeded.
Germany’s Supreme Court has ruled that the Hamburg Law is unconstitutional, issuing strict guidelines for the first time on how police can use automated data analysis tools like Palantir, citing witnesses and Edder. warned against including data belonging to bystanders such as lawyers. The ruling states that the Hamburg Law and similar laws in the state of Hessen do not distinguish between criminal suspects and their associates, allowing “with one click, the police to create comprehensive profiles of individuals, groups and circles.” “I will do it.”
The decision did not ban Palantir’s Gotham tool, but it did limit the methods police could use. “The risk of Eder being flagged or having his data processed by Palantir is dramatically reduced,” said Bijan Moini, head of legal affairs at the Berlin-based Civil Rights Society (GFF). took the case to court.
Palantir was not subject to the ruling, but the decision is a blow to the police ambitions of the company, which has a 19-year history in Europe’s largest market. Co-founded by its chairman, billionaire Peter Thiel, Palantir helps police clients connect disparate databases and pull vast amounts of people’s data into accessible wells of information. . However, the guidance issued by the German courts could affect similar decisions across the European Union, said Sebastian Gola, assistant professor of criminology at the Ruhr University Bochum, who wrote the complaint against Hamburg’s Palantir law. says. “I think this will have a bigger impact than just Germany.”
