Overview
- Parliament passed the police‑law amendment with a large majority (113–22, one abstention), giving the state police a legal basis to use Palantir’s Gotham platform.
- The new provision allows police to develop, train, test and validate IT systems using personal data regardless of suspicion, including clear names and face photos when anonymization is infeasible or disproportionately costly, with data sharing to third parties permitted in such cases.
- The state signed a roughly €25 million, five‑year contract earlier this year reportedly without an exit clause, with operational use planned from the second quarter of 2026.
- Officials say processing will occur only in secured data centers in Germany under police control, excluding foreign access and without direct handling of sensitive data by Palantir staff, though the data‑protection authority says it has not yet reviewed the software.
- Civil‑liberties groups and data‑protection experts warn of constitutional and privacy risks, a petition has gathered about 13,000 signatures, the GFF plans legal action, and similar legal changes are advancing in other states such as North Rhine‑Westphalia.