The 19th case of the Stuttgart detectives Thorsten Lannert and Sebastian Bootz is about the murder of Elena Stemmle, an acting student with part-time jobs at an online escort service and at the software company Bluesky. There she was a test subject for the social analysis program of the same name, the pride of managing director Mea Welsch and developer David Bogmann. Bluesky is a self-learning program that uses big data to predict future violent behavior. While this is intended to prevent crime, Lannert and Bootz suspect David Bogmann of past violence. Because the police can also correlate data and in the Stemmle case they point to David Bogmann as the likely perpetrator.
When a video surfaced online,comes from Bogmann's IP address and shows Elena Stemmle's presumed death, the noose tightens around the developer. But he has completely different concerns at the moment, because he fears that Bluesky is about to get out of control. Cameras and sensors record us, data is compiled into profiles, and last but not least, big data is a gigantic possibility for surveillance. In the new "Tatort" from Stuttgart, author and director Niki Stein deals with the logic of data analysis and the question of who actually has power over us and our data. The "Tatort: HAL" takes place in the near future, which may be present sooner than we expect. And to which not only the Stuttgart "Tatort" commissioners have to behave.