Anti-Terror Policy

Among the most fervent critics of Wolfgang Schäuble's latest plans was Klaus Uwe Benneter, Social Democratic Party (SPD) member of the German parliament's committee for interior affairs, who wasn't mincing words.

"A minister who spreads this kind of hysteria becomes a security risk himself," he told the Leipziger Volkszeitung Thursday in response to Schäuble's comment to weekly news magazine Stern that presuming suspects were innocent until they had been proven guilty was inappropriate in the fight against terror.

Ute Vogt, deputy leader of the Social Democrats, was equally alarmed.

"Anyone who questions the principle of innocent until proven guilty is the wrong person to be in charge of upholding and protecting the constitution," she said.

Nothing new for Germany

Though she called the comments "imprecise and unfortunate," German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said Schäuble's statements did not break any new ground.

"Naturally the presumption of innocence does not apply to averting dangers," she said Thursday. "The presumption of innocence applies only to criminal proceedings, not preventive actions."

Zypries said Germany's discussion of anti-terror measures had become "somewhat cloudy" and added that the results of Schäuble's plan "remain to be seen."

Speaking to the daily Berliner Zeitung, however, Gerhart Baum, a former German interior minister and member of the free-market liberal FDP party, described Schäuble's comments as "constitutionally unacceptable" and called on Chancellor Angela Merkel to rein in her minister.

"I find it extraordinary that she has refrained from comment," he said.

Finding common ground

Within the framework of new anti-terror legislation, the minister intends to expand Germany's surveillance structure significantly and, among other things, give the police automatic access to digital passport photos and fingerprints that will in future be stored on German identification documents.

The minister has also proposed expanding video surveillance of public spaces, and automatic scanning and database comparison of vehicle license plates traveling or parked on public roads.

The German government already gave its approval Wednesday to a draft law that would require telephone operators to save call records for at least six months -- in a move that data protection advocates fear will compromise citizens' rights.

The law, which Zypries said is needed to bring German regulations in line with European Union law, would require saving data regarding who makes contact, and when.

But growing controversy surrounding such plans has prompted Merkel and SDP leader Kurt Beck to call for a round of talks among coalition leaders. Merkel's chief of staff in the chancellery, Thomas de Maiziere, is reported to have been asked to schedule a meeting "as quickly as possible," to give ministers an opportunity to re-establish common ground with regard to anti-terror policies.