Podcast: More surveillance cameras? So what?

Let’s assume the state relies on surveillance cameras with face recognition. Will there be less crime then? Or does the technology lead directly to a surveillance state? A thought experiment.

Birthe Sonnichsen
ARD capital studio

Video surveillance, for example at train stations, airports and in some public places, is part of everyday life in Germany. It should create additional security.

So far, these images have usually been evaluated by people. But automatic facial recognition software that works with artificial intelligence is on the advance and has already been tested publicly in Germany – for example at a Berlin train station in 2017. Around 80 percent of the test subjects were recognized by the software at the time.

What happened if…

What if there were such automatic face recognition everywhere in Germany? Would we really have less crime then? Would that mean that many people were innocently imprisoned as a result of software errors? And would the new technology lead us straight to a surveillance state?

The two correspondents answer these questions Birthe Sonnichsen and Marcel Heberlein from the ARD capital studio in Berlin and search for the future podcast of daily News together with experts for answers.

Thought experiments in the Tagesschau podcast

“sometimes accepted” is the award-winning * future podcast of the daily News. Every week a six-person team of correspondents thinks from the ARD capital studio in Berlin a current political idea into the future and plays through the possible consequences in a thought experiment: Let’s assume that Germany would no longer export weapons – what would the political consequences be? Or suppose that cash would be abolished – what effects would that have on our everyday lives and the economy?

Numerous experts help to find answers to these questions, positive examples from other countries show what is already possible elsewhere today and thus provide new impulses in political debates.

You can listen to the audio podcast “once accepted” at home or on the go on your smartphone at any time. Every Thursday a new episode appears here on our website in the Tagesschau app, in the ARD audio library and on numerous other podcast platforms.

* Winner of the “Prix Europa” 2020 in the “Digital Audio Project” category