Federal Constitutional Court rules: BKA is partly unconstitutional

The Federal Constitutional Court considers that there is a need to make changes to the Federal Criminal Police Office Act. The court in Karlsruhe decided that the individual statutory powers of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) to collect and store data were unconstitutional. It is incompatible with the fundamental right to informational self-determination. Among other things, the court criticized the secret monitoring of suspects’ communications.

The BKA law has already been improved once after the BVG ruling

The Freedom Rights Association (GFF) had filed a constitutional complaint with the highest judges in Karlsruhe against several provisions of the BKA, which was reformed in 2017. The non-profit association had called for concrete constitutional standards for data collection and storage.

The Federal Constitutional Court had already ruled on the security authorities’ broad powers in 2016 – declaring some of them unconstitutional. Therefore the BKA law had to be improved. The new version has been in effect since May 2018.