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Week 40: The week in which we were excited about Brandenburg
Deutsch (original) · Auto-translated to English
The 40th calendar week is coming to an end. We have published 13 new texts with a total of 99,089 characters. Welcome to the weekly review of network politics.
Dear readers,
There is something that really upsets me: when people suggest that democratic rights are something that is granted to us by the grace of some government. And if it no longer fits, you can – very nonchalantly – get rid of it.
This week, Jan Redmann, Interior Minister of Brandenburg, touched a nerve with me. If he has his way, freedom of information requests should no longer be made to the police in Brandenburg. And anyway, 90 percent of requests would be rejected anyway. So – he suggests – you can save yourself the effort altogether.
I find that incredibly contemptuous. If he thinks that the police no longer have to tell people about their work, then they must at least do the work to find good reasons for it. And these reasons must be contestable – if necessary in court. Just like it is the case with freedom of information requests. As is the case in a democratic society. Just as befits a transparent and verifiable state.
In Brandenburg, the right to inspect files and access information even has its own place in the state constitution. “The state constitution sets clearer limits on changes to the file inspection and access to information law than the considerations in the aforementioned discussion at the federal level,” a spokesman for the Brandenburg Ministry of the Interior wrote to me in August. Therefore, the discussion in Brandenburg is not comparable to that at the federal level.
At that time it was said that the rights to information about critical infrastructure should be restricted. That in itself is a problem. Now it's also about the police. They have long been able to reject requests for sensitive information and do so regularly. To curtail a constitutional right out of convenience so that you no longer have to justify it? For me, this is not compatible with state constitutional law.
A specific draft law regarding the planned changes is not yet known. And somewhere I still hope that Redmann will simply say goodbye to abolishing access to information for the police. Because a constitutional complaint, which would hopefully follow, could also entail a lot of effort. And he could really save himself that.
I wish you a good weekend
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