The number of video cameras on station premises should be from around 8000 to 800 Stations to about 11. 000 increase. That is an increase of around 30 percent. The federal government and Deutsche Bahn agreed on this. You want to spend around 180 million euros for this.

After homicides 2019 in Frankfurt am Main main train station and in Voerde train station, the Federal Ministries of the Interior (BMI) and for Transport and Digital Infrastructure, together with the railways and Federal police agree to initiate additional security measures. A working group recommends in a report technical, structural, personnel and conceptual possibilities at seven selected project stations, some of which are already being implemented.

Test am Berliner Südkreuz The report also forms the basis for the agreement that has now been reached. The roughly 3000 new cameras represent, according to the BMI, “a leap in quality in the recordings”: “They create high-resolution images.”

Over a project period of three years, the railway from 2021 is to set up a “safety station” at Berlin’s Südkreuz. “There, different variants of protective barriers for travelers on a platform as well as’ intelligent video analysis technology” are being tested to increase security and are being considered over the long term under scientific supervision, “says the BMI. The aim is to analyze how security can be increased,” without causing any disadvantages to passengers “. The tried and tested mechanisms and processes should not have any effect on the punctuality or capacity of the trains.

The railways and the Federal Police started in June 2019 at Südkreuz, but the results are still not available. The software should recognize this based on recordings from around 80 installed cameras, for example, people lying on the floor, abandoned pieces of luggage and crowds of people or “fast movements”.

“Intelligent video monitoring ” In principle, the federal government had already in September 2019 with the infrastructure manager of Deutsche Bahn, Ronald Pofalla (CDU), agreed that “intelligent video surveillance” should in future “be an important support instrument, especially for the federal police”. At that time – in contrast to the new announcement – there was explicit talk of analysis methods with automated face recognition.

Interior Minister Seehofer (CSU) and the federal police had previously had a pilot project for biometric face recognition at Südkreuz 2018, despite protests from data protection officials, was rated as a great success. The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) accused those involved of whitewashing.

With a first draft for the reform of the Federal Police Act, the Federal Ministry of the Interior wanted to codify biometric video surveillance. This failed because of the resistance of the SPD. According to the will of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the Federal Police should also be able to access passwords from telemedia services such as WhatsApp, Gmail and Tinder in the future.

(olb)