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Since 2008, the Berlin police has collected data on 4.2 million mobile phone connections, reports German daily Tageszeitung. Most of the data has been collected in order to capture those who have set fire to luxury cars, a phenomenon that has been rampant in the German capital for the last five years. In 410 data requests by the judiciary to mobile phone operators, the police were able to identify the names and home addresses of people located near a burning car. "The only problem is they never identified any suspects," the paper notes.
Berlin's regional opposition, composed of Die Linke [The Left Party], The Greens and The Pirate Party, is up in arms over the situation. For its part, the ruling coalition of Social-Democrats and Christian Democrats supports the police, arguing that "all the state's resources must be mobilised to find the pyromaniacs". Since the mid-2000s, between 400 and 760 cars are set on fire each year in Berlin.
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