During the trial, the head of the Hessian state criminal police argued for the way they wanted to use Palantir by citing the successes of the software, known locally as “Hessendata.” In December, police managed to track down a suspect involved in Germany’s attempted coup (when a far-right group was arrested for plotting to overthrow the government through violence) because Hessendata was able to link a phone number reported via wiretaps with a number once submitted. in connection with a non-criminal traffic accident.
This example did not convince the court that people who are not suspected of being criminals should be exposed to this software. Almost all of these types of systems collect information about innocent people in their databases, says Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at Washington College of Law and author of the book. The rise of the Big Data police. “The links are broad and deep and create a network of associative suspicion. This is their power and their danger. Any country trying to implement data-driven surveillance systems will run into the problem of overcollection.
The German court ruling affects Hamburg, which was about to start using Palantir and now cannot use the company’s software until it rewrites its rules governing how police analyze big data . Hesse, which has used Palantir software since 2017, can continue to use the platform under strict conditions but must rewrite its local legislation by September.
In other states not directly involved in the decision, political pressure is growing to cut ties with the company. “The system should NOT be used in Bavaria,” said Social Democratic Party member Horst Arnold. said on Twitter. “We would like to emphasize once again that constitutional institutions should not blindly rely on error-prone technologies manufactured by dubious IT companies,” said Green MPs Misbah Khan and Konstantin von Notz.
Palantir, which achieved annual profitability for the first time this week, is struggling to reproduce American successes in Europe. “Some countries, particularly in continental Europe, including Germany, have fallen behind the United States in their willingness and ability to implement enterprise software systems that challenge habits and ways of doing business existing assets,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp said in a letter to shareholders. in November 2022.
Despite this, Palantir says it is satisfied with the court’s decision. “We welcome the efforts of the German Federal Constitutional Court to clarify the circumstances and ways in which law enforcement authorities can process legally collected data to help keep people safe,” says Paula Cipierre, Head of Privacy and Security. public policy at Palantir’s Berlin office. “Thanks to its high configurability, Palantir software can be flexibly adapted to new legal conditions.”
But this decision introduces barriers to the operation of Palantir. “The state must clearly indicate in advance which parts of the operating system or which functions it wants to use,” says Golla. It will also bring Palantir’s policing features into the open, as police forces will have to publish legislation detailing what they are before using them.
For Eder, this decision is a victory, not only for herself but also for the privacy of her clients. She has clients who have been linked to groups like the PKK, “but I also have a lot of normal people who have faced a criminal case once in their life,” she says.
