It was the young Boris Becker who asked in a commercial: “Am I already in or what?” Back then, shortly before the turn of the millennium, it was all about bits and bytes, Becker and an Internet connection were a hot thing back then, and the police offices were slowly being connected. These days, many soccer fans in Bavaria will also ask themselves this question: “Am I already in or what?”
The Bavarian State Criminal Police Office has apparently kept an extensive database of football fans in secret since January 2020, a request from the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group in the state parliament, such as the one kicker reported. 1644 people were stored there as of June 15, 2021, how great the meticulousness of the officials was, how comprehensive the information is, that is difficult to estimate. And because such a complicated, hard-to-grasp thing always needs a handy abbreviation, the database is called: “EASy Violent Sport”.
The fact that the database now came into the public eye is due to the persistence of a single fan who obtained information from the police, checked it and then received the catchphrase “EASy”, explains the office of Green politician Max Deisenhofer.
The term “EASy” stands for “IT system that supports investigation and analysis”. According to the name, one could also get the idea that it might represent how easy it is to end up in the Bavarian database of violent sports offenders. Because critics consider this problematic: The inclusion in the file takes place “not on the basis of a single relevant fact, but on the basis of a so-called individual prognosis”, according to the answer of the Bavarian state government to the request of the Green politicians Deisenhofer and Katharina Schulze.
The data collected are used to create forecasts for the “preventive fight or prevention of criminal offenses and administrative offenses”, explains the state government. Critics see it as problematic if the inclusion in the file is also based on forecasts.
Critics fear that the scene will be surveyed on a large scale
Fan projects fear that data will be collected on suspicion, relationships will be mapped and photos will be collected. In short: the measurement of the scene on a grand scale. A particularly large number of stadium-goers were deposited with 1. FC Nürnberg, 556 in number. So far, the association has not wanted to comment on request.
1. FC Nuremberg 556
TSV Munich 1860 407
FC Bayern Munich 248
SSV Jahn Regensburg 160
FC Augsburg 117
SpVgg Greuther Fürth 76
SpVgg Unterhaching 54
National team 4th
unknown 42
It is the duty of the state to look carefully, especially in the curves of the stadiums. But the question is: how exactly? And for what reason? The accusation that comes from the fan scene: blanket criminalization. Jurists see the right to informational self-determination violated, writes the working group Fananwälte, the Munich lawyer Marc Noli sees a “considerable interference” with the constitutional rights, because the survey is systematic and without the knowledge of the people. Such interventions would have to have a high hurdle and strict requirements to justify them, says Noli. But clear rules for this are not known, which leaves the officials almost free, says Noli.
Perhaps it can be explained in such a way that the well-known nationwide “File for Violent Offenders Sport” (DGS) only records 500 people from Bavaria – and three times that number in the database of the Bavarian LKA.
“It’s easy to get in and difficult to get out again”: This is how Thomas Emmes from the AWO fan project in Munich, who looks after the fans of FC Bayern Munich, sees it. The prerequisite for deletion from the file before the deadline of ten years at the longest is complicated: The burden of proof is reversed, you have to clearly prove yourself innocent. And that is – without a criminal reason and without knowledge of the storage – difficult.
Since the databases are no longer in roll containers in offices, but have been networked through digitization, such entries may have effects beyond the stadium visit. There is “individual transmission” of the data to other bodies and authorities, the parliamentary question revealed. For example, such databases could be tapped when traveling abroad.
The fan help in Fürth speaks of “general suspicion”
The cause puts a strain on the often complex relationship between law enforcement officers and fans. There is a “great distrust” of the police among the fans, says Emmes. Because there is great reluctance to even ask whether the name appears in the data set. According to the motto: If I trust myself to be in it, then that could be the reason to actually end up in the file.
The colleagues in Fürth handle it differently. There the fan help calls on all supporters to submit a request for information. You see the “data collection rage” of the Bavarian authorities reached a new level and the football fan under “general suspicion”.
It is an open secret that such databases exist. Between 2015 and 2016, files of civil servants with knowledge of the scene (SKB) were uncovered in ten federal states, mostly through parliamentary inquiries; at that time there were four locally anchored databases in Bavaria.
The example of Rhineland-Palatinate shows that there is another way. A database was made public there in 2015, where officials with knowledge of the scene collected information primarily about fans of 1. FC Kaiserlautern. Now the authorities are trying a test: Since April, no contact or escort persons of the allegedly violent fans should be saved, in future people should be informed when their data is saved. And every twelve months, the storage of fans is checked by the police. One step towards each other.