German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) plans to combine the data of police forces in the federal states and countries after the Magdeburg attack, in order to identify potential amok perpetrators and terrorists. To prevent the recurrence of such an attack, the data protection must be limited if necessary, Faeser told the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland” (Saturday editions). “We must draw the right conclusions from the terrible attack in Magdeburg” the SPD politician said. “This particularly concerns the timely bundling and analysis of data.”
Faeser was responding to the recent compilation of the Federal Criminal Police Office, which shows that the perpetrator, Taleb A., had been noted 110 times by the police and justice system before the attack. “The safety of our population must be the top priority” Faeser told RND. “Delete periods must be reviewed, so that data are still available when needed. And large data sets must also be able to be analyzed with AI.” For this, she has already submitted a proposal for the automated data analysis bill.
The minister added, “We also need new, more precise criteria and action concepts to assess the danger of people who do not fit into the existing grid. We are working intensively on this in the Interior Minister’s Conference and will continue to push this work.” If different authorities are dealing with a person, there should be case conferences in the states, too. There, all the information must be gathered to assess the danger of a person and possible intervention options as precisely as possible.
Faeser emphasized that the chronology of the BKA reveals “the image of a man who was psychically conspicuous and driven by erratic conspiracy theories. He showed massive Islamophobia and a closeness to the ideologies of right-wing extremists. His hatred was directed not only against the German state but also against individual people.