mation, but are transmitted directly only as provided by the particular laws in this
area. […]
bb) The storage of the criteria under § 3 sec. 1 no. 1b gg, hh, ii, kk, nn ATDG is also
compatible with the Constitution. For these criteria, however, the legislature must ensure that the specific rules necessary for their application by the administration are
documented and published.
(1) The provisions comply with the principle of specificity.
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However, these provisions are particularly in need of practical specification, and do
not completely indicate to the citizen what information is actually included in the database. For example, the range of special skills for preparing and carrying out terrorist
acts, or of employment in official buildings, or of places or regions where persons affiliated with terrorism meet, is extraordinarily broad. Moreover, it would be difficult to assess on the basis of the law alone what should be recorded about ethnic origin or religious affiliation, in view of the differently nuanced options for practical specification.
Also according to the legislative intent, the detailed specification of the information to
be included in the database was not to be conclusively covered in the provisions of
the law itself, but only in further abstract and general practical specifications laid
down by the security agencies, who must define these, in a first phase, via an order
under § 12 no. 3 ATDG, and ultimately in a standardised computer program (cf. BTDrucks 16/2950, p. 17). Irrespective of setting up § 3 sec. 1 ATDG as a strict data
storage obligation, the legislature evidently did not wish to conclusively decide in
these provisions that all information that might fall under the characterising features
named here were in fact to be incorporated into the database. Rather, this is to be decided by the agencies.
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Despite this open-endedness and need for further specification, in the overall context of the database these provisions comply with the requirements for unambiguity of
legal provisions and the principle of specificity. The principle of specificity does not
automatically forbid the use of vague terms of law (BVerfGE 118, 168 <188>). However, the legislature must draft its laws as specifically as possible in view of the particular nature of the matters to be governed, giving consideration to the purpose of the
law (BVerfGE 78, 205 <212>; cf. also BVerfGE 110, 370 <396>; 117, 71 <111>). It
must be possible to adequately concretise vague terms of law by an interpretation of
the relevant provisions according to the rules of legal methodology, and any remaining uncertainties must not be so extensive as to jeopardise the predictability and judicial reviewability of the acts of the government agencies empowered by the provisions (cf. BVerfGE 21, 73 <79 and 80>; 118, 168 <188>; 120, 274 <316>; established
case-law).
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In the context of the counter-terrorism database, which primarily initiates the receipt
of information among diverse security agencies, and which aims at facilitating the use
of dispersed and even unverified findings by other agencies in order to render the
protection against terrorism more effective, a more precise legislative description of
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