According to the report, the Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) maintains a database on crime including drug-related crimes which includes almost half a million people and contains millions of pieces of data. Some of those citizens working as journalists were flagged after the police linked them to cannabis use.
Commenting on the report on Wednesday, the German Interior Ministry said only four out of the 32 journalists were wrongly blacklisted. However, none of these mistakes are based on the information provided by BKA, officials said. The authorities relied instead on information provided by state police departments and intelligence agencies.
There was need for improvement when it comes to “quality of data” the ministry said. They also denied a “specific pattern” of mistakes that were made even though it is obvious that cannabis use had been included. The process of “improvement” has already started but it is going to take very long, according to a report from Deutsche Welle.
The German Federation of Journalists (DJV) urged politicians to stand up against the “misuse of data” on cannabis use. “It’s a bottomless pit of data misuse,” DJV chairman Frank Überall said of the ARD report. “When journalists are being criminalised, intentionally or through negligence, politicians must not stay silent.”
Justice Minister Heiko Maas called for a “thorough” probe into Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) on Wednesday following the release of a report that made “serious allegations” against the agency over its data-storing practices. “Unnecessary data storage makes us less safe,” he said in Berlin.
According to experts cited by the ARD, the BKA illegally archived trivial, outdated and “evidently false” information, including on cannabis use of 32 reporters who were then blacklisted from the G20 summit in June.
ARD claimed the federal police used similarly questionable methods in surveying thousands of ordinary citizens. Many of the data entries allegedly violate German law.
The Bundestag, the German parliament, in January 2017 passed a law to officially legalize medical marijuana. But in North Rhine-Westphalia’s capital Düsseldorf, they are planning a pilot project to sell recreational cannabis to adults, and said it hoped to get permission to launch this in the summer of 2017.
When Green party members in 2015 presented legislation to allow adults to consume cannabis, they estimated a tax of €6-7 per gram of cannabis could bring in €1-2 billion per year for the government.
A poll by infratest dimap in 2014 on behalf of the German Hemp Association (DHV) showed that only 30 percent of people believed cannabis should be made completely legal, however.
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