There is a growing number of governmental cameras throughout the world, tracking innocent civilians in their daily lives.
Germany now wants to join the likes of China, France, Great Britain and the US in additionally utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) for the mass surveillance of their citizens.

The German first-adopter & pilot city Mannheim has proudly announced, that they use AI to live track and identify people on the feed of the cameras they installed all over the city.
The AI further follows peoples movements and tries to classify them into behaviors, somewhat similar to what (as part of a wider program) China is doing.
This program began 2018 and has recently been extended to 2026 – giving shame to the ‘liberal’ in liberal democracy & revealing hypocrisy when considering how actively the country has been advocating, implementing & enforcing the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The public television station ZDF recently produced a TV segment about that program. In it, they show that 69% of young adults agreed that AI should be used to fight crime, even at the “expense of privacy”.
As the source, they refer to their own, highly questionable “representative survey”:
- Small sample of 1000 people
- Only 25-34 year-olds
- Imprecise phrasing
- The time-frame of 22.-28.7.2024 (which is less than 2 months after a terror attack in Mannheim & during which on the 23rd a terror attack happened in Munich)
Additionally, it’s worth noting, that of the 12 members of the ZDF board, 8 belong to the three parties in charge of a group of changes in the law that would heavily violate people’s privacy called “Security Package” (4 CDU, 3 SPD, 1 Bündnis 90/Die Grünen). Which is not a good look, especially considering that “concentrated political influence” on the station has been admitted in the past.
For the surveillance program the same explanation as always is used: “more security” & funnily, this time even “more privacy”, because they would pixelate the footage until the AI decides there is an abnormality / “dicey situations”… How about a protest? Eventually, the AI will recognize “people and objects” as well as “postures and movement sequences of people”.
Interestingly, this goes hand in hand with the latest plan: “…the federal government wants to enable more artificial intelligence in police work in order to be able to compare photos of suspects with social media”.
Even if you don’t post pictures of yourself on the web, somebody at a birthday party taking a harmless selfie with you slicing a cake in the background might be enough to be biometrically identified.
Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
There was widespread outrage when Edward Snowden & Wikileaks… revealed secret mass surveillance programs by the US, but now German politicians are slowly creeping them into law, step by step, widely unnoticed.
If you call it “pilot project” meaning: violating the rights of only a regionalized amount of people for an extensible amount of time, it seems to be perfectly acceptable.
Especially if you quickly announce “people already feel safer” due to camera surveillance in the city (58% instead of 51% according to their own “security survey”).
“Only rarely are there negative side effects, for example, that people avoid the monitored locations.” – So what if criminals avoid them? Simple answer: More surveillance!
The aforementioned “Security Package”, would even make this project somewhat, somehow legal.
It even compliments the EU chat control law (supported by the majority of member states), which legislators are trying to force onto people.
The legal foundation for a wide range – mass surveillance program is being built law by law, all under the cover of fighting crime such as pedophilia & terrorism.
How this is supposed to be legally compatible with European regulation such as the GDPR, seems unclear.
If this law came into reality, the world would become – different from what you might have expected – a brighter place! As you would suddenly see people wearing colorful anti-AI clothing everywhere!
Just because we have gotten so used to utilizing cameras to capture our own and each other’s faces, bodies, and movements – digitally, it shouldn’t feel normal when a government does it to capture us, for whatever reason – physically.
Let’s unite against the increasing weaponization of AI ¹, the reduction of our freedom, as well as the severe violation of our rights.
– Your Author A of the MadeInDex Team
Can you find all easter-eggs in the illustration? 😉
¹ A dystopian future with robocops & AI soldiers is not as far away as you might think, and advanced computer vision in governments hands is part of the roadmap there.
*“Quotes have been translated from German.”
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