Britta Eder's phone list is full of people the German state considers criminals. As a defense lawyer in Hamburg, her client list includes anti-fascists, anti-nuclear activists and members of the PKK, a banned Kurdish nationalist militant group organizations.
For the sake of her clients, she's used to being very careful on the phone. "When I talk on the phone I always think, I'm not alone," she says.
This self-awareness even extends to phone calls with her mother.
When Hamburg passed a new law in 2019 that allows the police to uses λογισμικό ανάλυσης δεδομένων που κατασκευάστηκε από την Palantir μια εταιρεία που υποστηρίζεται από τη CIA, υπήρχε πάντα ο φόβος ότι θα μπορούσε να χρησιμοποιηθεί υπερβολικά από τις αρχές. Ένα χαρακτηριστικό της πλατφόρμας Gotham του Palantir επιτρέπει στην αστυνομία να χαρτογραφεί δίκτυα τηλεφωνικών επαφών, θέτοντας ανθρώπους όπως η Eder -που συνδέονται με φερόμενους εγκληματίες αλλά δεν είναι οι ίδιοι εγκληματίες- ουσιαστικά υπό παρακολούθηση.
"I thought this was the next step in the police's effort to gain more ability to observe people without concrete evidence linking them to a crime," Eder said. So she decided to become one of the 11 claimants trying to overturn the Hamburg law.
Germany's highest court ruled Hamburg's law unconstitutional and for the first time issued strict guidelines on how to use the tools automaticς ανάλυσης δεδομένων όπως το Palantir από την αστυνομία. Προειδοποίησε μάλιστα για την συμπερίληψη δεδομένων που ανήκουν σε παρευρισκόμενους, όπως μάρτυρες ή δικηγconditions like Eder. The ruling said the Hamburg law and a similar law in Hesse "enable the police, with a single click, to create comprehensive profiles of individuals, groups and circles", without distinguishing between suspected criminals and people associated with them.
The ruling didn't ban Palantir's Gotham tool, but it limited how police can use it.
"Eder's risk of having her data flagged or processed by Palantir will now be dramatically reduced," said Bijan Moini, head of legal at the Berlin-based Civil Rights Foundation (GFF), which brought the case to court.
While Palantir was not the target of the ruling, the ruling deals a blow to the 19-year-old company's policing ambitions in Europe's biggest market. Billionaire Peter Thiel, the company's co-founder who remains Palantir's chairman, helps law enforcement clients connect disparate fundamentals data and pull massive amounts of people data into an accessible field of information. But the decision issued by the German court could affect similar situations across the rest of the European Union, says Sebastian Golla, assistant professor of criminology at Ruhr University Bochum, who wrote the complaint against Hamburg's Palantir law.
"I think this will have a bigger impact and not just in Germany."