The changes negotiated between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP to the traffic light “security package” put together after the terrorist attack in Solingen set strict limits for investigators when comparing biometric data on the Internet.
The amendments that have now been formulated stipulate, for example, that the search for faces and voices using an automated application is only permitted if the President of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) or his representative has this approved by a court.
Changes to the “security package”: A lot of effort for investigators
If there is imminent danger, the BKA boss or one of the three deputies can make the order themselves for a maximum period of three days. In the original draft, which the Bundestag discussed for the first time on September 12th, it was stipulated that this could also be requested or ordered at the level of the department heads.
In the planned provisions for asylum seekers, for whose requests for protection another European country is responsible under the so-called Dublin rules, it was also added that not everyone who has been ordered deported will be excluded from state benefits. Rather, the exclusion from benefits should be limited to people for whom the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees considers it to be “legally and actually possible” to leave the country.
The circle of people to whom the planned general ban on carrying weapons and knives at public events should not apply has also been expanded. This also includes “owners of catering establishments, their employees and representatives as well as their customers”.
The FDP previously found gun law rules too complicated and restrictive
The package has now “been significantly defused in terms of the problematic rules in the area of weapons law and in the area of digital investigative powers,” said the deputy chairman of the FDP parliamentary group, Konstantin Kuhle. This means that civil rights are better protected. The migration policy part of the “security package”, however, remained essentially unchanged. Foreigners who are legally obliged to leave the country and for whom another Dublin state is responsible, such as the alleged perpetrator in Solingen, will generally no longer receive any social benefits in the future.
In Solingen, three people were killed and eight others injured in a knife attack at a city festival in August. A suspected Syrian should actually have been deported to Bulgaria in 2023, but this failed.
