Football fans in the sights of the police.

This is nothing new.

After all, there are more than enough examples of right-wing extremist and violent tendencies penetrating the fan scene, even the deliberate infiltration of the culture in the stadium from the far right and the acquisition of stewards under dangerous thugs.

It is the duty of the state to look carefully.

And it would be a gross failure to neglect relevant developments.

But the latent danger must not be a license to restrict civil rights.

Then it looks like the recently publicized surveillance case in Bavaria.

More or less secretly, at least quietly, a database called "EASy GS" has been set up in the Free State, located at the State Criminal Police Office.

It contains the personal data of football fans.

So far, according to Kicker, information on around 1650 people has come together, while the nationwide "File Violent Offenders Sport" (DGS) only lists around 500 Bavarians.

Not on the basis of a "factual"

The discrepancy alone would not be a reason to fundamentally question the passion for collecting.

After all, the justification of the Bavarian State Ministry seems plausible at first glance.

The aim is to use the database to identify “connections and connections between members of violent scenes” in order to be able to take preventive action.

This is called danger prevention in police-German.

Intervene before it's too late.

That is worth striving for.

However, the data is not stored in Bavaria on the basis of “individual facts, but rather on an individual forecast”.

Loosely translated: Even those who are not suspected of a criminal offense or an administrative offense are registered.

Against this background, the suspicion that the "EASyGS" file also records movement logs and leads to sociograms of fans, with which one can find out who is which group, including a violent one, at least spatially close, cannot be dismissed out of hand. No wonder that privacy advocates see the right to informational self-determination violated. Not to mention the legitimate complaint that those affected have not yet been notified of their admission.

In order to get out after a bad “individual prognosis” before the expiry of the storage period of ten years at the longest, the suspects would have to prove their innocence.

And would not be safe from further unpleasant consequences of the classification for so long.

There should be no automatic networking with other police databases.

However, individual transmission is possible.

The negative storage can catch up with those caught in the atmosphere of violent fan groups anywhere, even if they were not on a football trip.

Anyone who considers this to be right must have more to offer than an “individual forecast”.