Missing Link: An infrastructure protection duck floats on the Spree
Berlin's government found how to protect infrastructure: video surveillance in swimming pools and less transparency.
What sounds like a Berlin farce has a pioneering character far beyond the often so idiosyncratic city-state: data protection and freedom of information are to be sacrificed in favor of an obscure concept of security. The Berlin Senate, supported by the CDU and SPD factions in the state parliament, shies away from little. A role model for the rest of the republic?
When a cable bridge near the Lichterfelde heating plant is set on fire on January 3rd, what experts have been warning about for years happens: blackout. At least for parts of Southwest Berlin, primarily residential areas often inhabited by the comparatively well-off residents of the capital, such as the upscale villa island of Schwanenwerder in Wannsee. Because there was no alternative high and medium-voltage connection, neither within Berlin nor, almost 40 years after the fall of the Wall, to the Brandenburg side, because the state-owned operator Stromnetz Berlin had built a single point of failure into its network. 45,000 households were initially left without power.
Pretexts instead of infrastructure protection
The perpetrators were quickly identified: left-wing radical Vulcan groups were said to be responsible – but which ones, how, and why sparked a colorful debate. Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt offered a million euros for the perpetrators' capture. Two months after the act, no one has yet been apprehended. What became clear, however, was not only that the connection was extremely insecure. The initial statements about alleged security precautions around the cable bridge also turned out to be mere pretexts by those responsible – anyone who wanted to could approach the bridge directly and implement their intentions unhindered and unobserved.
However, Berlin's state politics sees completely different points that are now high priority and urgently needed: data protection and freedom of information are considered complicit. That is why both are to be significantly restricted with a legislative proposal, which is to be finally debated in the state parliament in the coming days.
And this is an idea that is repeatedly put forward in other federal states and at the federal level: it is too easy to identify critical infrastructure. To put it bluntly: thanks to OpenStreetMap or other map services, Russian disposable agents, left-wing radicals, and others could systematically paralyze the republic. However, what the Berlin state government has now presented is a special variant of this perspective: no more information if it could be dangerous for the state in any way.
"Even today, the Freedom of Information Act already provides for the possibility of redacting information containing truly sensitive data," explains Vasili Franco, spokesperson for domestic policy for the Greens in the Berlin House of Representatives. "I am not aware of any IFG requests that would have concerned sensitive information about the Berlin power grid." In a city like Berlin, the essential lines are hard to miss – and to know that cables are connected to power plants and substations, you don't need any special prior knowledge.
Secrecy instead of infrastructure protection
Now, one doesn't have to go so far as to connect the proposed exception directly to a funding scandal that also became public via a state IFG request involving politicians from the CDU, which governs in the Red City Hall. However, it is obvious that the governing coalition is in a great hurry to push through its restrictions on essential transparency regulations.
And also that the state government wants to grant itself a generous exception if it has to expect to get into legal disputes. "Simply by the fact that the Senate is considering plausible preliminary deliberations, it could restrict freedom of information," fears the Green domestic politician Vasili Franco. Legal disputes could plausibly follow any tender. The Senate, in turn, argues that this is by no means a blank check for refusing information, but can only be a valid reason for refusal if it is sufficiently substantiated.
Cameras should film acts instead of deterring
But: What all this has to do with infrastructure protection is another secret of the Berlin government with Governing Mayor Kai Wegner and his well-known deputy, former Federal Minister for Family Affairs and current Senator for Economic Affairs Franziska Giffey. A secret that even an IFG request could hardly uncover, as long as it is still permissible, because internal government deliberations are almost always excluded from disclosure rights until their conclusion, the so-called "arcana," which are intended to enable open discussion.
However, it is not only the state IFG that is the subject of a peculiar battle between Christian Democrats and Social Democrats in Berlin. The Social Democratic Interior Senator Iris Spranger said in parliament at the end of February: "In the case of video surveillance for the protection of critical infrastructure, the otherwise required markings must be omitted so as not to draw attention to facilities or installations of critical infrastructure through warning signs."
In other words: the data protection law should be changed so that video surveillance for infrastructure protection no longer needs to be indicated. It could therefore take place secretly. One of the few effects of video surveillance that can be proven at all is the sometimes effective deterrent effect: when cameras are visible and perpetrators therefore seek other targets. The official new course in Berlin, however, is: We prefer to film during an act to clarify afterwards, rather than deter before the act.
Into the swimming pool with the camera
The new enthusiasm for filming is leading to further developments: Because there have been repeated problems in Berlin's swimming pools in the past, video surveillance for swimming pools has also been included in the legislative proposals in the name of infrastructure protection. This urgently needs improvement – even for enforcing house and swimming rules. What does that have to do with the protection of critical infrastructure? And who checks the video recordings that are made there? And their whereabouts? Here, too, the argument is made: the presence of video surveillance does have a preventive character. In reality, the reason for legalization is something else: there are already cameras at the pools – but the data protection officer criticized the lack of a legal basis. It clearly has nothing to do with civil defense, critical infrastructure, or national defense.
But it has a lot to do with a policy that is failing in infrastructure protection and prefers to obfuscate its shortcomings rather than present clear analyses on how to achieve more redundant infrastructure. How to ensure greater resilience in the event of a failure.
Sharp protest from civil society
As a result, 34 organizations have now addressed an open letter to Berlin's state politicians on Friday, from the CCC to the German Journalists' Association and the AG Kritis to Wikimedia Germany. "Such an expansion of exceptional circumstances would practically mean the erosion of the Freedom of Information Act," they warn. Effective protection of critical infrastructure is already possible today – and transparency in administration has primarily positive effects. "Especially at a time when trust in state institutions is declining, such a step is a fatal signal," say the senders of the letter. Berlin has also positioned itself as a pioneer for open data and digital innovation, which is endangered by the current plans.
Perhaps it is a good thing that Berlin, as a comparatively irrelevant city-state, is showing how not to do it: Regardless of political camps, these would not be adequate answers to the challenges of the present. If the project fails in Berlin, it could make greater disasters, for example, at the federal level, unattractive in advance. Because reducing state transparency in the name of security and curtailing citizens' information rights is currently very popular. And it is, of course, much cheaper to change annoying laws than to ensure reliable power supply or generally well-thought-out infrastructure operating concepts.
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Meanwhile, the coalition agreement of the black-red Berlin government contains a clear commitment: Open by Default should become the new standard. "The coalition will introduce a transparency law based on the Hamburg model as quickly as possible, excluding only the area of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution from its scope." It dates from 2023. Berlin was already aware of attacks on infrastructure at that time – and the war in Ukraine was also in full swing. For the rest of the republic, it would certainly not be a good sign if the openness of administrative action, fought for over decades, were now to become the first victim of a lack of competence. The Freedom of Information Acts were precisely intended to reveal.
(nie)
