Germany’s outgoing authorities appear to be using a deadly Christmas market attack, perpetrated by a Saudi national in the town of Magdeburg, to push for more surveillance, including by introducing new systems based on biometrics.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, who has repeatedly found herself at the center of censorship and policy controversies, is the one behind the proposal to give law enforcement new powers.
However, this can be seen as a move to appease the critics of the country’s security and intelligence capabilities, overseen during the past three years by the ruling coalition of which Faeser’s party was a member, and which recently collapsed.
With federal elections scheduled for February, the move to quickly change security-related legislation can also be a useful campaign tool, and this might be the reason why some major parties now in competition with Faeser’s Social Democrats signaled they do not support the proposal.
One of the members of the coalition still technically in power, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), has come out against the idea and, in fact, according to reports, has “blocked” it.
Faeser’s campaign-time proposal comes in the context of her own accountability being questioned by the opposition in the wake of the attack since it has been confirmed that the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees during the past year received a warning about the suspected attacker, but apparently ignored it.
By proposing measures that run contrary to the three-party coalition’s own previous pledge not to deploy biometric surveillance, the debate about the state of the security system in Germany can be shifted from the government’s responsibility to strengthening the police state.
And, since this is not the first attempt to adopt measures that would create similar surveillance capabilities – another happened in October, after a stabbing attack – depending on who forms the next government, the proposal could prove to be useful in the future.
Other than partisan debates and political rhetoric ahead of the election, what stands in the way of such changes to the Federal Police Act are Germany’s own data protection rules, but the EU’s GDPR.
