When former state president C. Wulff stood accused of having received benefits from a film producer known to him for several years, he argued: “Is a politician not entitled to have friends?” Before such background, the question of where to draw the line between social life of a public servant or politician and criminal behavior arises. Are such persons subject to permanent threat of criminal prosecution if they accept invitations etc., or is it their obligation to the general public to refrain from accepting donations from persons who have interests in their decisions, even if these persons are long known friends of the public servant?

After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, it was determined that some of the presumed perpetrators had lived in Germany where they had been studying technical subjects in particular. Public authorities supposed more potential assassins (so-called “sleepers”) were staying in Germany until they received an order to start their mission. In order to discover such persons, data screening was carried out in each federal state of Germany. In the course of it, all universities were obliged to hand over the data material concerning their enrolled students for data alignment by police authorities. Up until now, appeals of affected students against those measures have been successful in Hessen, Nordrhein-Westfalen and Berlin. Those events give reason for a critical reflection of the means of data screening by the police.