Millions of German credit cards checked for child pornography razzia (01/12/07 7:04 pm)
German media now reported that in September 2006 millions of German credit cards were checked for operation "Mikado", a child pornography razzia which was conducted throughout Germany. During the razzia hundreds of homes were searched. To identify the 322 suspects before the operation, the state Office of Criminal Investigation (Ger. abbr.: "LKA") of the German federal state Saxony-Anhalt cooperated with credit card companies. These checked millions of credit card transactions for specific keywords or funds. The speaker of the LKA didn't want to confirm whether a total of 22 million credit cards were checked. The LKA received the successful hits only, the 22 millions equal the numbers of 2005 instead.
For successfully filtering the suspects the Office of Criminal Investigation asked credit card companies to check for specific funds that were transferred within a specific period of time to a suspected bank account located in a foreign country. Apparently most companies cooperated with the police. According to an experienced observer checking single credit cards is supposed to be normal when fighting the distribution of child pornography on the internet. However, checking all cards countrywide is a novelty.
While the data protection official of the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein Thilo Weichert says this investigation method is legal since banks are authorized to hand over credit card information of suspicious people to prosecution a lawyer located in Duesseldorf announced in his weblog he will conduct legal actions. He especially criticizes that there was no judicial approvement given which would have forced the companies to hand over the information to the police. Without this approvement companies cannot be forced to pass the requested information. According to the lawyer, prosecution falsely informed the companies, saying if they don't hand over the information they may incur a penalty although there was no judicial approvement. In case his complaint will be dismissed he's determined to file a complaint to the Federal Constitutional Court.
Comment:
Although everybody will agree fighting against child pornography is necessary and welcomed, checking all German credit cards countrywide is very disturbing in terms of data protection, however. While lawyers and courts will have to decide whether or not this was legal
Germans might have a bad feeling when paying by credit card and knowing that all of their transactions can easily be checked and analyzed, not only by the police in the near future.