What the Document Is
This is a news article published by netzpolitik.org in August 2026 and written by Denis Glismann. It reports on the decision by the Green (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and Left (Die Linke) parliamentary groups in the Berlin House of Representatives to have the tightened Berlin police law reviewed by a court.
The Legal Challenge
- The groups filed an abstract norm control application (Normenkontrollantrag) against the Allgemeines Sicherheits- und Ordnungsgesetz (ASOG).
- The application was presented by the interior policy spokespersons Vasili Franco (Greens) and Niklas Schrader (Left).
- Lawyer David Werdermann (law firm KM8) filed the 155-page application with the Constitutional Court of the State of Berlin.
- The court is asked to decide whether the rules adopted in December 2025 by CDU and SPD are compatible with the state constitution.
The Five Expanded Powers
The application targets five expanded powers:
- preventive state trojans (Staatstrojaner) used for online searches of phones and computers, even before a crime has occurred;
- AI-supported video surveillance with behaviour scanners, which would flag people who behave "atypically";
- biometric mass matching with data taken from the internet;
- training of AI systems with police data and its transfer to third parties;
- automated data analysis, which Werdermann describes as a "Superdatenbank". Werdermann says Berlin is, after Mannheim and Hamburg, the third major city to use AI-supported video surveillance, with first cameras already installed at Kottbusser Tor.
Claims Made by the Applicants
Werdermann states that the law was among the most liberal in Germany until a year ago and that this is now over. He argues that exploiting IT security gaps gives an incentive to keep them open, and that the cyber attack on the Berlin administration showed such gaps can be misused. He also says that services similar to PimEyes would breach the GDPR and the AI Regulation, while the law legalises police use of them. The article reports that the Senate says it does not intend to use the Palantir software, and quotes Schrader: "die Befugnis aber gibt es her".
Procedure and Political Context
No urgent application (Eilantrag) was filed, so the law remains in force for now. Werdermann expects a decision in one to two years at the earliest. Greens and Left together hold 53 of the 159 seats in the House of Representatives, and a quarter of the members were needed for the abstract norm control. Franco states that many measures were justified by reference to other federal states that have never been reviewed by a constitutional court.
Why It Matters for Berlin's Surveillance Policy
In the words of the article, the challenge is meant to show how far the legislature may go with AI technology and data analysis. Franco says the review could have a nationwide signal effect, and states that "Verfassungswidrige Polizeigesetze sind keine guten Polizeigesetze."