COMMISSIONER FOR DATA PROTECTION IN OPEN CONFLICT WITH GOVERNMENT
In a progress report from his office, the Swiss Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, Odilo Guntern, warns against "new dangers" resulting from "the gradual expansion of the existing police systems" and the "unfounded creation of legal grounds that can justify everything." The report has drawn unusually angry reactions from the Federal Department of Justice and Police (EJPD).
In 1989, the discovery of a secret police register of "politically suspect" persons sparked one of the major scandals in Swiss history of this century. A Minister and the Federal Public Prosecutor were forced to step down and an outraged public opinion demanded an end to state protection activities threatening civil liberties (see FECL No.6, p.1).
Yet, five years later, Swiss authorities do not have seemed to have learned any lessons from the affair. The 1989 scandal resulted only in a reorganisation and modernisation of poli-cing. Politically active foreigners are still under open surveillance and have become a special target for large-scale police controls and raids. Powerful police computers have been set up for the registration and control of foreigners and asylum seekers (ZAR-3 and AUPER-2).
"Electronic policing" is, however, not only threatening foreigners. Several police databases are directed at Swiss citizens too: The ISIS computer serves "state protection", the DOSIS system stores information on drug-related crime, and currently an additional system is being established for the fight against organised crime.
All these systems may be used for storing "soft", i.e. non-verified information, including data on persons not suspected of a particular crime (see FECL No.13, p.7; No.23, p.7).
The Commissioner for Data Protection expresses concern about "the ever more impressive number of direct (on-line) lines to the [police computer] network that provides a growing number of differing administrative public bodies with direct access to the databanks of the police". He warns against weakening data protection under the pretext of a more efficient fight against crime.
Guntern further expresses scepticism about a public campaign launched by the Federal Department of Justice and Police (EJPD) on "internal security". Based on statistical evidence, Guntern suggests that, contrary to the campaign's message, crime is not on the increase in Switzerland, and that the existing methods suffice for the control of criminals.
Indirectly, he accuses the EJPD of giving higher priority to the threats against internal security than to the danger that such a public campaign might "under certain circumstances discriminate against drug abusers, asylum seekers, refugees, and eventually Jews, Yugoslavs or Turks".
Guntern also criticises the Swiss parliament's second chamber for having accepted restrictions on data protection and thus of privacy in a bid to combat international organised crime.
Mr Guntern's outspokenness seems to have come as a surprise for the government. So far, opposition to the EJPD's policies on public order and internal security was mainly limited to civil liberties groups and the political left - but Mr Guntern is a prominent member of the conservative Christian Democrat party, the CVP.
This might explain the vehement oral reaction of a senior official, Armin Walpen, general secretary of the EJPD. In front of the press, Walpen suggested that Mr Guntern had obviously felt the need to mark his "coming-out" as a data protector. Guntern's "dark warnings" should be seen as a "temporary over-reaction". But the senior police official ended with a "warning" to the Commissioner. Should Guntern continue to polemicise against "measures relevant to data protection", he would run the risk that "the Department will abandon its current reticence and strike back hard in public", Mr Walpen thundered. A bizarre threat for a senior police official in a democratic country to level against a commissioner installed by the government.
Sources: Wochenzeitung, 24.6.94; Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 8.7.94