CCC considers instructions for sabotaging surveillance
Activists such as Amnesty International and Chaos Computer Club are ringing the alarm. The German “security package” “radically limits fundamental rights”.
(Image: ImageFlow/Shutterstock.com)
All-round biometric surveillance, including facial and voice recognition online, is suddenly on the German government's wish list. Both for the investigation of everyday crimes and before anything has even happened (known as "danger prevention" in police parlance). Civil libertarians do not want to accept this. "Fundamental rights are being radically restricted in a rush job. The government, which started out as a coalition for progress, is breaking its coalition agreement, opening the door to mass surveillance and undermining the fundamental rights of particularly vulnerable groups," says Svea Windwehr, Co-Chair of D64 – Center for Digital Progress.
"The German government is allowing itself to be driven by the fascists and is switching in record time from 'preserving anonymity' to 'biometric surveillance of everyone'. But there are no technical solutions to social problems," says Matthias Marx, spokesperson for the Chaos Computer Club (CCC). "If this bill is passed, it will no longer be enough to write nice statements and organize a demonstration against data retention every three years. In future, we will have to lead people to sabotage and shut down surveillance measures."
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"At the moment, we need to uphold human rights and not outdo each other with racist attributions and mindless tightening of the law. After years of discussing countermeasures to racial profiling, the traffic light coalition now wants to expand random checks at record speed. These powers are a gateway to racial profiling and should be abolished instead," explains Christian Mihr, Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International in Germany, "In future, the state should be allowed to search all our photos or sound recordings online using voice and facial recognition technology, whether they are photos from a child's birthday party, our vacation snaps or a self-recorded song. This violates the privacy of the entire population. The right to protest is also under threat if people ask themselves in future whether photos of demonstrations will be analyzed using facial recognition. Right now, we need an active civil society that dares to show its face in the truest sense of the word – not an intimidated one."
No facial recognition campaign
The No Facial Recognition campaign aims to persuade citizens to influence the politicians in the traffic light coalition to follow their own coalition agreement. In addition to the three civil society organizations mentioned above, ten others, including Digitale Freiheit, EDRi (European Digital Rights) and Wikimedia Deutschland, are among the supporters.
AlgorithmWatch is also on board: "The traffic light's activism is going in completely the wrong direction. We are all still in shock from the Solingen murders. But precisely because the situation is very emotional, there is a danger of overshooting the mark. The idea that AI-supported data analysis and biometric recognition of public images and videos will ensure greater security is a false promise. Not a single crime would be prevented as a result."
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