Mobile phone control of refugees: Many data, little Benefit News

How you can clarify on the identity of refugees? The Federal government wanted to make use of cell phone data. But that brings little, resulted in a request from the BR from the Federal office for Migration.

By Janina Lückoff, ARD-capital Studio

March, 2017: The design for a law to better improve the enforcement of the obligation to leave the country in the first reading in the Bundestag. There is also the question of whether the mobile phone may be read data of applicants for asylum or not.

The then Federal Minister of the interior Thomas de Maizière says: Yes! He justified the plenary: "In a state of law, we are not able to accept that asylum-seekers sank seemingly lot, and occasionally different names, and indicate the state of nationality, no useful information, and hope that the authorities in the countries of Origin for the procurement of documents. We are going to change."

refugees should not disguise their identity, - said de Maizière.

And it has been changed to: For almost one and a half years, the Federal office for Migration and refugees (BAMF) is permitted to read the cell phone or tablet data on applicants for asylum, in order to clarify their identity. This is only reasonable and fair. Because otherwise only a would come in, the disguise, - said the Minister of the interior.

The data in a vault

And this is how it goes: In the case of asylum seekers who carry no identity papers, which are not older than 14 years and to a data carrier, a mobile phone, a Tablet or a Laptop, to be read in the context of the registration automates the data. Are not evaluated them yet. The data obtained in a so-called data-safe.

you will be Evaluated only if, in the course of the asylum procedure, the BAMF employee shall make the request for it - and a fully qualified lawyer approved in the house evaluation. Only evaluated spatial data may be then, so: Which primaries have been selected, the location a photo was taken, from which countries was on the phone?

The BAMF read the data of 3300 applicants to evaluate, in two percent of cases, the identity of the applicant has been refuted.

Two percent false information

The aim of clarifying the identity of the person Concerned, is the purpose of the measure, however, only conditionally, as a request of the Bavarian radio at the BAMF. In the year 2018, there were nearly 11.400 disk of first-time applicants, which have been read out. Around 3300 of these were also evaluated.

In response, the Federal office stated: "It was confirmed in 33 percent of cases, the identity of the applicant, two percent."

The Numbers are so low: Only two percent of the evaluated data carrier, an asylum-seeker could be proven that he gave false information about his identity.

intervention in the personal rights

The refugee-political spokeswoman of the Greens, Luise Amtsberg, looks in the reading of phone data is a "serious intervention in the personal rights of Refugees": "First of all, one must say that the number shows that the identity deception is the big Problem."

the domestic policy spokeswoman for the Left party, Ulla Jelpke, agrees. She was, as she says, from the very beginning, against this measure, and looks through the Numbers confirmed. "Two percent of the cases, because you have to say clearly: it is minimal, and actually shows that it would be much more useful if the BAMF would conduct personal interviews and trying to leave the identity to confirm.

Ulla Jelpke holds personal interviews be more useful.

Against a General suspicion

in need of protection should not be under suspicion, say, the hill and the Jelpke. The Deputy AfD Chairman Peter Felser is of the view that the results have a different reason: "You have to realize that only the spatial data were evaluated. I'm sure we would have different results, if we would evaluate the data and the photos in a systematic way." Artificial intelligence could help to gain further insights from the data, Felser convinced.

In the Grand coalition, it is still of the decision: The Chairman of the Bundestag Committee on internal Affairs, Andrea Lindholz of the CSU, speaks of an "absolutely sensible test instrument", which should be used with Caution. And the inner political spokesman of the SPD, Burkhard Lischka, says that the means of the data-reading was created from the beginning only as an Ultima Ratio, to doubt as to the identity address.

And also in the BAMF itself to defend the measure: Aslyentscheidungen would put the additional information on a broader basis. At the end of the human decisions.

reading phone data: Only two per cent of the applicant to deceive your identity
Janina Lückoff, ARD Berlin
16.02.2019 13:15 PM

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BAMF takes mobile phones of refugees into the visor, 19.02.2017 reading of phone data: Only two per cent of the applicant to deceive your identity, Janina Lückoff, ARD Berlin |audio Atlas |Germany |Berlin