Germany’s coalition government has approved regulation to allow an expansion of the country’s video surveillance network, as police officials called on Berlin to rethink its suspicion of CCTV cameras in the wake of Monday’s Christmas Market attack.
Laws in Germany around the use of surveillance cameras are more restrictive than in many other countries and, even though Monday’s attack took place on one of the busiest squares in the city, no footage of the incident has yet been made public.
The proposed new laws will allow for an increased use of CCTV in public places such as sports stadiums and shopping centres, as well as forcing data protection commissioners to give greater weight than before to “the protection of life, health and freedom” when deciding whether to permit video surveillance.
Wednesday’s decision is not a direct reaction to the truck attack on Breitscheidplatz square, but the result of an initiative taken by the interior minister, Thomas De Maizière, after July’s gun rampage in Munich and an attempted suicide bombing in Ansbach.
While the new legislation would represent a relaxation of the country’s strict privacy laws, the power to allow or to ban CCTV cameras in public spaces remains with Germany’s states and city states.
Only the regions of Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Saxony and Saarland allow the use of surveillance cameras in “public places”, a definition that does not cover railway stations or public transport.
In Berlin, there are almost 15,000 CCTV cameras installed on vehicles, about 3,200 of which can be switched to live transmission. But data privacy regulations stop the police from installing cameras in public spaces that transmit images in real time.
In June, Berlin’s then interior minister tried to change local law to allow CCTV surveillance of crime hotspots such as Alexanderplatz and Kottbusser Tor in Kreuzberg. But the proposal failed partly because of a last-minute intervention by the Pirate party, which entered the state parliament in 2011 on a data protection agenda.
The city’s police union argues that restrictions put its officers at a disadvantage compared with those in regions such as Bavaria, where they can set up mobile CCTV units.
“We need better and more intelligent surveillance in public places, and Monday’s tragedy has shown precisely why,” said Bodo Pfalzgraf of the German police union. “We would know a lot more about the perpetrator by now if we had been allowed to install video cameras on Breitscheidplatz square. We couldn’t have prevented the attack, but our investigation would be more advanced by now. CCTV can save lives”.
Benedikt Lux, an interior policy spokesperson for the Berlin Green party, which governs the city in a coalition with the Social Democrats and the Left party, said it was hypothetical to assume more video surveillance would have prevented Monday’s attack or helped to speed up the hunt for its perpetrator.
“Other measures, such as increasing the number of police officers, are much more important to help track down suspects,” said Lux. He argued that Breitscheidplatz square was not legally considered “public space” for the duration of the Christmas market and there was nothing in Berlin’s laws to stop the company that ran the market from temporarily installing CCTV cameras as long as it marked cameras in accordance with the law.
Berlin’s business senator, Ramona Pop, ruled out an expansion of video surveillance under the current coalition government.
However, critics argue that a series of high-profile manhunts may be softening Berliners’ attitudes to CCTV in public spaces. In 2015, a man who had abducted and murdered two boys in the capital was identified and caught thanks to footage from a private security camera which a bar owner in Berlin’s Moabit district had illegally pointed at the “public space” on the pavement outside.
Last month, police arrested a Bulgarian national suspected of kicking a young woman down a flight of stairs at Berlin’s Hermannstrasse station after CCTV footage of the attack went viral worldwide.
