ÜBERWACHUNG UNTER ÜBERWACHUNG
// SURVEILLANCE UNDER SURVEILLANCE
Ever wondered how many surveillance cameras are already watching you in Berlin?
The screenshots show the open source project „Überwachung unter Überwachung" which runs on OpenStreetMap. Its goal is to map every cctv camera in the city and everyone can contribute. Each dot you see is a lens. Each lens feeds a system. And that system unfortunately just got a serious upgrade…
In December 2025 Berlin's conservative CDU-SPD coalition passed a new police law „ASOG — Allgemeines Sicherheits- und Ordnungsgesetz", one of the most expansive surveillance reforms in Germany so far. It legalizes automated facial and voice recognition, behavior scanners on public video feeds, state trojans on private devices, and AI trained on police data.
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is sold as a revolution in public safety. Real-time facial recognition and predictive policing softwares such as Palantir pretend to prevent crime before it happens. In practice, these technologies turn public space into an omnipresent surveillance network. Police can now run biometric scans not only on suspects, but on their contacts and companions as well. Anyone in the social orbit of suspects can become a target themself.
These surveillance cameras are not neutral. They don't protect the public, rather they create a police state. The moment a person enters the field of view the cameras and the surveillance system behind decide who counts as suspicious, who gets followed, who gets archived. A face becomes a file. A route becomes a pattern. A friend becomes evidence. The cameras are already there. The law to point them at you and expand their network is already passed here in Berlin.
At least projects like „Überwachung unter Überwachung“ work both ways. As a community we can document the infrastructure that documents us, and decide for ourselves where we want to be seen and where not.
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