24 Human Rights in Counter-Terrorism Investigations well as stop-and-search programmes conducted in some OSCE participating States, none of which resulted in any terrorism-related convictions.31 32 Case Study – A data-mining exercise* In order to identify terrorist sleepers, police forces of state A start using public and private databases to gather and screen personal records of individuals. The criteria used for the search are: being male, being aged 18 to 40, being a current or a former student, having a traditionally Muslim name, and being born in or having the nationality of several specified countries with a predominantly Muslim population. Through this data-mining exercise, millions of personal records are collected and thousands of people are identified as potential terrorist sleepers and, subsequently, more closely examined. However, none of these people are charged with a terrorism-related offence. Question: Does this data-mining initiative comply with human rights? In principle, data-mining could be a legitimate tool for protecting national security. However, the criteria used in this case were not based on evidence gathered during an investigation related to a particular terrorism-related offence. There was no evidence of an imminent and specific danger motivating the creation of such a profile. There was only the general threat of a hypothetical future attack and general stereotypical assumptions about who would carry out an attack. The use of such broad profiles that include characteristics such as the presumed religion and national origin of individuals interferes unnecessarily and disproportionately with their right to private and family life and the principle of non-discrimination. * This case study is taken from the facts of a case before the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany and the analysis of the case by the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism.32 31 32 “Report on the Expert Meeting on Security, Radicalization and the Prevention of Terrorism”, OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, 28–29 July 2008, para. 25, <www.osce.org/odihr/34379>. German Federal Constitutional Court, BVerfG, 1 BvR 518/02 and United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Martin Scheinin, Report to the UN Human Rights Council, 29 January 2007, op. cit., note 2.