The 26th European Police Congress covered a wide range of topics, from football to climate activism, artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and the effects of cannabis. The event was held around the large hub27 exhibition hall in Berlin, which also had an outdoor area where large equipment was on display and police climbers demonstrated their skills.
One of the key developments presented at the event was the “Twenty” messenger, which is based on the matrix protocol and aims to network the authorities and organizations with security tasks in their work on site. The system could be in use for the 2024 European Football Championship.
As part of the preparations for the event, Mareike Kotrtmann from the geoinformation specialist Esri explained that each stadium and its surroundings should have a “digital twin” so that the planners can work with great precision. Together with the Atos subsidiary Eviden, they want to support the police in the European Football Championship.
Exhibiting companies emphasized the trade fair character of the police congress, with Christoph Markson from Palantir Technologies giving a presentation on good software design. However, the NSO Group, which manufactures the spyware Pegasus, gave no presentation or information.
On the political side, Berlin’s interior senator Iris Spranger (SPD) received great applause when she spoke about past-generation glue-ups, calling them “simply taking hostages.” She explained that numerous ambulances got stuck in traffic jams, and fines of 2000 euros or more did not seem to bother activists, which is suspicious. The extension of custody to five days announced in the coalition agreement should be implemented as soon as possible.
Finally, at the beginning of the police congress, Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, spoke about the problem of sexualized violence against children, which has increased by eight percent in Germany. The EU Commission’s proposal to control contact with children, also known as “chat control,” faces the problem of the confidentiality of communications.
