Following appeals from the canton of Lucerne, the Federal Court announced this Friday that it had “annulled” the regulations concerning the automated search for vehicles and traffic monitoring in this canton, as well as those on “the network of police information systems of the Confederation and cantons.
After a decision by its Grand Council, the canton of Lucerne adopted new cantonal regulations concerning security in 2022. It introduced “automated search”, which allows optical capture of moving vehicles with license plates and vehicle occupants. “An automated comparison with reporting directories and police search orders is carried out almost simultaneously.”
This data is kept for 100 days and should help prosecute “serious offenses and search for missing or fleeing people”. For the Federal Court, this goes too far: “The cantons do not have the competence to legislate in this area. Surveillance measures for the purposes of criminal prosecution require a legal basis in the Swiss Code of Criminal Procedure.
He also considers that “the recording, exploitation and retention of data, on a large scale, constitute a disproportionate attack on fundamental rights”. So no Big Brother in the canton of Lucerne.
Concerning the regulation of the network of police information systems of the Confederation and the cantons (the POLAP project), the TF notes that the canton of Lucerne, as well as other cantons, “have adopted their own legal bases to be able to participate as soon as the platform is operational.
Here too, the TF finds that it goes too far in relation to the rights of litigants. The data thus collected “will be made immediately accessible through the appeal procedure, without a request for administrative assistance being required beforehand, which makes control, particularly judicial control, more difficult”.
Finally, it notes that “the contested regulation does not constitute a sufficiently precise legal basis for such a serious attack on the right to self-determination in matters of data and also contravenes the principle of proportionality”.
