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Behavioral scanner in Berlin: displacement of the weakest
Video surveillance with behavioral analysis is now running permanently in Berlin. A data protection officer, an addict, two social workers and two business owners present their perspectives on the
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Video surveillance with behavioral analysis is now running permanently in Berlin. A data protection officer, an addict, two social workers and two business owners present their perspectives on the new technology.
The most impressive building at Kottbusser Tor in Berlin is the NKZ. And the most impressive balcony of the NKZ is the one over the street that runs through the middle of the house. The balcony is located directly in front of the windows and doors of a police station and offers the best view of what is happening on the square.
This is Tom Jennissen, data protection officer. He works for themhttps://sicherheit-ohne-ueberwachung.org/">DigitalCompany, alliance partner of “Security without Surveillance”. Jennissen currently has a large number of police cameras in view. 30 of them were recently hung around the Kottbusser Torhttps://netzpolitik.org/2026/behavioursscanner-in-berlin-kreisverkehr-de...Week started. An image recognition system analyzes the live streams to see who is doing what - and whether it indicates a crime.
Jennissen looks down at the Kottbusser Tor, a roundabout over which an elevated railway runs; there are a few barren open spaces between the star-shaped access roads. Passers-by stream out of and into the subway entrances, to the supermarket and to the library. A few addicts are standing and sitting loosely spread out on one of the paving stone carvings around the roundabout.
Not just a panopticon
“This isn’t just a panopticon,” says Tom Jennissen. "Not only could you be monitored. Everyone is actually being analyzed all the time." Here at Kottbusser Tor it's not about testing the technology, says Jennissen, but about "whether people accept it."
Automated video surveillance is currently not aimed at drug-related crime. This is currently the most common type of offense on the Kotti with 560 of around 3,400 offenses recorded on the Kotti in 2025. The software also probably does not recognize subsequent offenses that are presumably related to acquisitive crime: theft, robbery, burglary or receiving stolen goods, a total of 1,068 cases in 2025. Foreigners who are required to leave the country (300 offenses against residence laws in 2025) also naturally remain hidden from the software. Due to a lack of microphones, the cameras cannot be used to track the 69 insults per year. And the service fraud (75 cases in 2025) is eliminated because it takes place in public transport.
The software is currently only intended to detect two classes of behavior. Movements indicating bodily harm (461 cases in 2025). And people who lie. As we all know, this is not a crime at all. The police are supposed to use this to detect accidents, but in doing so they expose homeless people to unjustified increased surveillance pressure.
Thanks for this show
The system was presented at the end of October. With a show fight, to which the Interior Senatorhttps://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article413531495/berlin-so-funktioniere...Spranger warmly congratulated. However, the previously claimed anonymization of those filmed using stick figure abstractions was not the case: the police saw ithttps://www.politico.eu/article/berlin-startet-ki-ueberwachung-am-kottbu...of the show fight.
“Dude” is one of many addicts who spend a lot of time at Kottbusser Tor. In the last ten years things have gotten really bad in the drug scene at Kotti, people are being robbed here, says “Dude”, who doesn’t want to give his real name.
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What will AI surveillance change? “Nothing,” he says. “If anything, next time they’ll just go one street further.” The residents would then complain again.
Above all, repression
A study has shown how likely this result is. Thehttps://daten.berlin.de/datensaetze/crack-studie-berlin-finalreport...“Crack study”, commissioned by the Berlin Senate Department for Science, Health and Care. The study shows a “spatially fragmented and dynamic open drug scene that is characterized by repression processes, unstable consumption settings and a high level of everyday stress.” According to the study, repressive measures such as the new automated camera surveillance are not effective in the long term because they “mainly contribute to spatial displacement”. The Berlin internal administration hashttps://pardok.parlament-berlin.de/starweb/adis/citat/VT/19/SchrAnfr/S19...Already admitted in Marchthat “people relevant to the police” avoid the surveillance pressure at Kottbusser Tor in side streets.
The types of behavior that the system should raise an alarm about are not legally defined. Through a request from the Green Party, it was revealed that the software in Berlin caused “physical altercations, attacks or helpless people or people lying on the ground.”https://pardok.parlament-berlin.de/starweb/adis/citat/VT/19/SchrAnfr/S19...should. In addition to violent situations, emergency situations are also included in the catalog of behaviors that the AI can search for.
Those who live at Kottbusser Tor are mostly homeless. Dude points to a man lying on the floor in a sleeping bag. The police usually wouldn't bother him, he says. Nevertheless, the additional focus on homeless people is dangerous. Dude was homeless himself for four years, he says. He remembers many situations in which residents or the police behaved hostilely towards him. “When the police are called, the homeless person always ends up being the perpetrator,” he says.
Police access is always legal
The monitoring software that is now used here constantly compares the video images with patterns that it has obtained from training data. If there is a sufficiently high match with a pattern that indicates a crime, an alarm is sent to the police. The person on duty will then be informed based on the well-documentedhttps://netzpolitik.org/2026/interview-ueber-ki-und-das-lavender-system-...biastend to follow the warning with a solid response. In addition, people at the Kottbusser Tor can be checked regardless of the reason as a designated weapons and knife ban zone, which lowers the inhibition threshold for sending emergency services even in unclear situations.
There are many offers for homeless or addicted people at Kottbusser Tor and the surrounding area. Luke is committed tohttps://gangway.de/">Gangway, an association that does street social work with young people and adults in Berlin. Clients without a fixed place of residence could be displaced by camera surveillance, he says. “Then it may be that we simply can’t find the people anymore.” He would also probably not meet clients who are obliged to leave the country at this location in the future.
There is now a working group at Gangway that is dealing with the new police powers, says Lukas. “All measures are currently developing in a regulatory and security policy direction, and unfortunately street social work is also following suit.” In many initiatives, people assumed that they had to support this path in order to continue to receive funding, he says. Gangway and other projects regularly fight to get them approved by the Senatehttps://www.berlin.de/ba-friedrichshain-kreuzberg/aktuelles/pressemittei...Funds cut.
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Force to testify
Lukas fears that he will no longer be able to fulfill his de-escalation role. “When there are conflicts, we try to make sure people don’t get themselves into further trouble.” If in such a case he is identified using the video recording and called as a witness, he would have to testify, even at the expense of clients and the relationship of trust with them.
A man who does not want to give his name works in a nearby shop. He is convinced that technologies such as behavioral analysis could soon be used to track politically active people. He moved to Germany from Turkey a few years ago. Therehttps://background.tagesspiegel.de/digitalisierung-und-ki/briefing/tuerk...the policefor example, demonstrators using facial recognition. If Berlin really wanted to improve the lives of local people, the city would have to make socio-economic adjustments, the man says: “If you can’t create a good social and economic structure, you can’t create a good society.”
Another man is opening a kiosk. He's happy about the cameras. One of them hangs directly in front of the shop, as he immediately shows. The square is usually full of homeless people and there is a lot of violence, he says. "The cameras are perfect. So you can see what's going on here."
Repressed and rationalized away
A social worker is on her way to work and thinks AI-supported video surveillance is “activism that won’t achieve anything.” She is employed at a nearby homeless shelter. “People are being pushed out and rationalized away, and we are the ones who have to absorb that.” All that money would be better spent in social offerings, she says. “Or should they rather renovate the daycare center around the corner.”
What happens next with the cameras and many other topics are currently being negotiated in coalition talks. Data protection officer Tom Jennissen does not believe that they will be dismantled again. Once something has been rolled out, it is difficult to stop it again. “Everything will be done to ensure that the trial operation is considered a success.” The current phase called “real trial operation” does not actually serve to evaluate the benefits of the system, but only to “https://www.berlin.de/polizei/polizeimeldeen/fakten-hintergruende/arti...Checking functionalityand stability of the system in daily use.” It is intended to clarify the question of whether it is running at all.
Jennissen doesn't think that the police are just experimenting with the new technology to see whether they actually need it. “The Kottbusser Tor is not a test laboratory,” he says. “That would mean that it is designed to be open-ended.”
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