Planned new rules for informants criticized

The government wants to tighten the rules for the use of police informants. But this is met with rejection by criminologists and lawyers. They fear that they will no longer be able to use informants.

In the crime thriller it goes like this: A secret informant tells the investigators when a planned drug delivery is supposed to arrive. The police can then catch the drug gang in the act.

And in the real world, the police also rely on so-called informants: Some criminal environments are so insular that it is indispensable, explains Dirk Peglow from the Association of German Criminal Investigators. This is necessary in order to gain information from inside criminal groups that cannot be adequately obtained through conventional measures such as telephone surveillance.

Risk of exposure

Justice Minister Marco Buschmann recognizes the need. At the same time, the FDP politician wants to set legal limits on such operations. In the future, a judge will have to give his consent before the police recruit informants. However, Peglow fears that this risks exposing informants.

Since the corresponding files would have to be sent to judicial officials, a wider group of people would be aware of the conditions under which the informants were deployed. “So here again there is a great risk of being exposed by the judge.”

Protection of privacy

Buschmann sees it differently. He argues: When informants spy on those around them, they invade other people’s privacy. That’s why there is also a rule for other forms of surveillance that a judge must agree.

“We send a person to monitor other people. If we were to use a microphone to monitor a person in their home, we take it for granted that a judge should use such an instrument that is sensitive to fundamental rights,” says Buschmann . In addition, judges should not be told the real names of informants.

Detailed documentation required

The planned law also specifies who can be used as an undercover agent and for how long: minors are excluded. The activity as an informant must not be the main source of income. And the deployment should last a maximum of ten years.

In the future, the police officers who run informants would have to document their work in detail, for example by making verbatim minutes of conversations. Peglow says that this is also part of everyday working life: “We meet with people we trust, not in a police station and interrogate them there with a police computer. But of course these meetings with people we trust take place in public.” The German Association of Judges also explains that the draft law goes beyond the target.

Reaction to grievances

The federal government is also responding to cases in which abuses in the use of informants have become known, for example in the context of the right-wing extremist NSU. In the future, it should be possible to understand how much tax money informants are paid and how trustworthy their information actually is.

Before the new rules come into force, the Bundestag must give its approval. The German Association of Judges and the Association of German Criminal Investigators hope that the text of the law will be adjusted in this step.