III.
The Federal Government, the Federal Commissioner for Data Privacy and Freedom
of Information, the Schleswig-Holstein Independent Land Centre for Data Privacy
(Unabhängiges Landeszentrum für Datenschutz Schleswig-Holstein), the Berlin
Commissioner for Data Privacy and Freedom of Information, and the BadenWürttemberg Commissioner for Data Privacy submitted statements on the constitutional complaint.
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1. The Federal Government holds the view that the constitutional complaint is inadmissible, or at least unfounded.
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a) […]
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b) […]
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aa) […]
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bb) […]
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cc) […]
58-63
dd) […]
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ee) […]
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ff) […]
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gg) With reference to the facts, the Federal Government states the following: storage primarily concerns persons living in other countries, the spelling of whose names
is not always unambiguous. In August 2012, 17,101 data records on persons were
stored in the counter-terrorism database, some 920 of which were duplicate mentions
or duplicate records, so that approximately 16,180 different persons were affected by
the stored records. Of these persons, 2,888 had their residence in Germany and
14,213 persons resided abroad. The large number of persons residing abroad is explained by the participation of the Federal Intelligence Service. Data on 2,833 persons had been stored covertly within the meaning of § 4 sec. 1 sentence 1 ATDG.
The participating authorities exercise great restraint in entering contact persons without known terrorist activities in the counter-terrorism database. In August 2012 the
database contained only 141 data records for contact persons without indications of
malicious intent, entered primarily by Land police officials.
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The existing data records, the Federal Government states, contain hardly any entries in the extended basic data. Only 44% of the data records include any extended
basic data at all. Hardly any data record includes an extended basic data record that
is even approximately complete. Over 94% of the entries contain nothing in the free
text field, in part because the source database of the Federal Intelligence Service
does not include a comparable field. The free text field is limited to a total of 2,000
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