Controversial police software: Palantir’s “entry to exit.”

Palantir will probably only be used by the German police for three to five years, Hesse's CDU Interior Minister Roman Poseck estimated at an event at the EDV court day in Saarbrücken. Then the US analysis software can hopefully be replaced by a German or European alternative product, said Poseck.

The “Gotham” software from the US company Palantir enables investigators to search for people or connections in existing police data. The investigators no longer have to access each police file individually; rather, Gotham searches the files automatically and can also include unsorted data such as the contents of confiscated hard drives or wiretap transcripts and draw conclusions.

Only law professor Anne Paschke criticized the principle in Saarbrücken: “Data is brought together here that is stored in different files for good reason.” Minister Poseck argued that an investigator could also look into various police files, but this would take much longer. The Hessian police are very satisfied with the Palantir software.

In 2017, Hesse was the first federal state to introduce Gotham for its police force. Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia followed, and most recently Baden-Württemberg. However, most federal states reject Palantir, also because Palantir founder and co-owner Peter Thiel is an outspoken anti-democrat and therefore they do not trust the software. For Palantir fans, the uneven federal handling of the software is a problem because the police at federal and state levels should work with the same analysis software.

“Palantir is still superior to the competition,” stated Minister Poseck, “that’s why we can’t get out immediately,” and as a minister he couldn’t be responsible for a “security gap.” However, he estimates that competing products will have caught up within “two to three years”. Palantir and the new software would then probably have to be used in parallel for another one or two years.

NRW recently extended its Palantir contract, but only for one year. Hesse could do it that way, said Minister Poseck, “that would then be the start of Palantir’s exit.”

A competing product is expected from the German Schwarz Group (Lidl). The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution wants to work with the French program Chapvision in the future. The internal police project P20 aims to store police data in a more structured way, so that no super software is required to deal with chaos.

The green-black government of Baden-Württemberg has purchased Palantir, but has not yet introduced it. The Greens, who were taken by surprise by the CDU during the procurement process, then pushed through many special requirements. “In Baden-Württemberg, no search should be made in the data of witnesses and victims stored by the police,” explained Thomas Hentschel, the Green Party’s justice policy spokesman in the state parliament, in Saarbrücken. Only data on perpetrators, suspects and threats should be searched. In addition, data from online searches and residential surveillance (“major eavesdropping”) should not be accessible to the Palantir software.

“In the other federal states, developments in Baden-Württemberg are being closely monitored,” said Hesse’s Interior Minister. How efficient will Palantir still be with the restrictions imposed by the Greens? Or to put it another way: Is a green-restricted Palantir perhaps an option again?

Computer scientist Jörn Erbguth also doesn't believe in the end of Palantir in Germany: "If the competitors catch up in two to three years, Palantir will probably get better in the same time," he predicted in Saarbrücken. Then Hesse's Interior Minister Poseck would probably again claim that a Palantir exit is impossible because it would lead to a security gap.