LeAK & AnGer

Automatic Anonymisation and Pseudonymisation of Court Decisions

Very few court decisions are currently made public in Germany, mainly because people have to anonymise them manually at great time and effort. However, a large number of legally relevant documents are indispensable for legal practice and legal science as well as for the development of digital services in business, government and administration. Automated processes for anonymising these texts are necessary so that large volumes of court decisions can be made available in a time and resource-efficient manner in accordance with the applicable data protection regulations. The judgements made available in this way could, for example, be used as training data to develop processes based on artificial intelligence (AI) that will make the work of courts and authorities easier in the future.

The use of legal field-specific software solutions for the automatic anonymisation of court judgements is unprecedented in the field of e-justice and legal tech. The researchers are also doing pioneering work by systematically combining results from different areas of law for the first time and anonymising and pseudonymising court judgements comprehensively. This makes urgently needed data for the digital transformation of processes in state institutions available on a large scale. In addition, not only the private sector legal tech community and existing start-ups will stand to benefit from the large database of anonymised and pseudonymised judgements, but also the digitalisation of the state and administration as well as the innovative strength of Germany as a business location as a whole.

AnGer is a part of the research network Anonymisation for secure use of data (https://www.forschung-it-sicherheit-kommunikationssysteme.de/forschung/it-sicherheit/forschungsnetzwerk-anonymisierung)