BERLIN, March 30: German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Friday said the country had created a single databank from which its security agents can tap information about terrorism suspects.
“It is a useful, reasonable step which shows that Germany takes the fight against Islamic terrorism very seriously,” Schaeuble said.
The measure follows much political hard bargaining.
Opposition parties have protested that it might violate the constitution, as well as the deeply entrenched separation of powers that the Allies imposed on Germany after World War II.
Greens party MP Wolfgang Wieland summed up opposition to the integrated databank by saying: “This will result in too much information about too many individuals, compiled from too many sources, becoming available to too many people.” A compromise reached last year has resulted in the databank, which holds information compiled by Germany’s 38 security agencies, divided into two levels.
The first will be accessible to all of the agencies and hold the names, aliases and addresses of suspects as well as information about their appearance, such as birth marks.
The second will be used to store information about suspects' families, contacts, bank accounts and religious practices.
By law, security officials will only be able to consult the second tier after obtaining the permission of the agency which collected the data about the suspect in question.
An exception can however be made in cases where the authorities believe there is a threat of an imminent terrorist attack.
Opponents have also criticised this clause, saying that in the fight against terrorism, the authorities could almost always plead urgency, and that the exception therefore risked becoming the rule.
Germany has amended its laws to be better able to fight terrorism since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, which were in part plotted on German soil.
Political pressure to set up the integrated databank grew after failed bomb attacks on two passenger trains in western Germany in July 2006.
Earlier this month, a group linked to Al Qaeda warned Germany that the presence of its troops in Afghanistan made the country a potential target.—AFP