Bern asks the Federal Court to reinstate automatic plate reading

The security department of the canton of Bern has asked the Federal Supreme Court to authorise the immediate use of automatic vehicle searches for serious offences. The request follows the ruling of 12 August that suspended the system.

The devices read the number plates of passing vehicles and compare them with databases of ongoing searches. The canton of Bern introduced the tool in August 2024. The Federal Court ruling requires the canton to revise its legislation, judged inadequate in terms of data protection.

The head of the department, Philippe Müller of the Liberal Radical Party, said the system would no longer be used in its current form. The application filed in Lausanne concerns the two exceptions identified in the ruling itself, which the canton would like to apply without waiting for the legislative revision.

A recurring issue

The question is not confined to Bern. Several cantons have adopted similar systems in recent years, and federal case law has moved consistently in the same direction: the systematic collection of data on people who are not suspects requires an explicit legal basis setting out which offences justify it, how long data is kept and who may consult it.

Automatic plate reading produces a record of the movements of everyone who passes the device, not only of the vehicles being sought. That is the point the judges focused on: investigative usefulness is not enough to make the collection proportionate if cantonal law does not limit its use.

In Ticino the cantonal police have devices of this kind and their use has been the subject of questions in the cantonal parliament. The Bern ruling sets a benchmark that every canton will have to take into account when drafting its own legal basis.