Germany: Highway toll data agains “terrorism”
Once you’ve got data collected, the temptation to use it for anything and everything is just too great to resist. For the German Police anyway. Since a highway toll system for lorries was recently introduced, I have been asking myself when the calls to use the data for “hunting down terrorists” will start.
They finally came this weekend. In an incident in southern Germany, a trucker had driven over a parking attendant, killed him and then fled via the autobahn. Contrary to their usual self-promotion, police claimed to be clueless as to how to locate that individual.
This time, Germany’s new government attended to their pleas. As heise.de reports, politicians are promising to review the highway toll legislation. Until now, this law explicitly forbids the collected data from being used for any purpose besides collecting road tolls.
Yet another piece of evidence in the case against ever-spreading data gathering. If the police is indeed allowed to use this data, it will not be long before it is used for much less serious crimes than this.