
German police storing bodycam footage on Amazon cloud - tannhaeuser
https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-storing-bodycam-footage-on-amazon-cloud/a-47751028
======
arrrg
This is such a frustrating phantom discussion. It‘s so pointless, yet so
typical of German cargo cult privacy considerations.

Bodycam footage can both be a tool of surveillance and opprosion (if the
police has sole control over how, when and what is used) as well as a tool for
dissolving power asymmetries (when use is controlled not by the police).
That‘s the important discussion to have, not this weird Amazon discussion.

~~~
floatingatoll
The topic of this article is “this weird Amazon discussion”. Consider finding
a more relevant link about your point (or writing one!) and posting it to HN
so your desired topic of discussion can be aired.

~~~
tucosan
arrrgs comment is on topic and he makes a valid point about the way privacy-
related topics are discussed in Germany.

Your comment on the other hand is (passive) aggressive in tone, unwarranted
and out of place in this community.

~~~
floatingatoll
Not passive at all, nor aggressiveness. The comment I replied to raises a very
real and important question around whether surveillance is compatible with
freedom and democracy, and it absolutely deserves a discussion. However, the
importance of that discussion does not automatically nullify ‘lesser’
discussions within that concern space such as the one raised by German
citizens about Amazon being subject to classified orders by the United States.
The comment I replied to demands that we refocus the discussion away from the
link posted and towards the also-relevant concern of surveillance and society.
Had it instead simply talked about that concern rather than decrying our
interest in this link’s discussion, I would have had no objection.

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renholder
Everyone's saying, " _I don 't see the problem, here,_" but it's pointed to
(but not expounded upon) in the article:

> _Even though the servers are located in Germany, US security and
> intelligence agencies could access the data, Strasser warned, demanding that
> the Federal Police expand its capacity "to preserve sovereignty over the
> core state function of internal security."_

For more on this concern, see here[0].

[0] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19238119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19238119)

~~~
prepend
I don’t think confidentiality is that important for bodycam footage. In the
sense that most will be released anyway.

Integrity is critical as you would never want deletion or editing by
unauthorized. But this is pretty easy to protect independent of Amazon.

This seems like a non-issue unless, for some reason unknown to me, they have
extra reasons for not wanting the NSA to see bodycam footage. Although I
suspect that any German data center is the same, if not more vulnerable.

~~~
renholder
> _I don’t think confidentiality is that important for bodycam footage. In the
> sense that most will be released anyway._

Why would _most_ videos be released, anyway; especially, in Germany? This is
_all_ videos, inclusive of "routine stops" or "health and wellness checks".

> _This seems like a non-issue unless, for some reason unknown to me, they
> have extra reasons for not wanting the NSA to see bodycam footage._

Why would they need _extra_ reasons for not wanting that? Your supposition
seems to infer that they should be o.k. with the NSA wanting to see bodycam
footage any time that they want?

That makes no sense... That would be akin to saying that the Americans should
be fine with the Chinese seeing bodycam videos any time that they choose. If
it's not fine for one, why would it be fine for the other?

>Although I suspect that any German data center is the same, if not more
vulnerable.

Possibly but they wouldn't be victim to the Cloud Act, yeah?

------
dewey
So it’s certified by the BSI for that use case but people complain about it?
If that’s a problem they should fix the certification not just complain
because there’s no suitable “german” vendor.

They even mention it’s encrypted (hopefully on the client end) so it wouldn’t
even matter where you put it.

------
outside1234
As opposed to some poorly run operation by T-Systems? Yes please!

~~~
rndgermandude
Eh, there is a bunch of European cloud providers. Off the top of my head:
hetzner (de), ovh (fr), upcloud (fi).

~~~
expertentipp
Is Hetzner still sending paper contract over the post even over a single
instance of a virtual server?

~~~
tetha
The new hcloud is actually fairly impressive. They are considering their go
client and they terraform provider as an integral part of their product and
had them out on day 1. And it looks like they are taking a pretty fast
incremental approach based on customer feedback, with new features every
couple of months.

Sure, we can go on how the big cloud providers have all of this and it's small
steps, but it's pretty exciting to see a german hoster go into this direction.

------
tjpnz
Plenty of organisations store encrypted personal information in S3 buckets.
I'm failing to see an issue here.

~~~
Crosseye_Jack
That maybe, possibly, there is a non 0 percent chance that maybe Amazon are
using the data to help their facial recognition system (doesn’t the AWS
Contract forbid Amazon using customers data this way with out explicit
permission? It’s been a while since I’ve read the whole terms for AWS. Just to
clear what I mean is Amazon automatically just processing everything ever
uploaded to anything on AWS for their own benefit without the permission of
the AWS Customer or the permission of the person who is “in the data”).

But then again their is an non 0 chance that Amazon are not recording
everything we say via their echos so they can simulate our voices and ring up
all the local shops and tell the owners to go fuck themselves so we have to
use amazon for everything...

Either that or the implication is that because the police are using S3 to
store bodycam footage, they MUST be using their facial recognition system too.

Edit: Jesus fucking Christ HN, it’s a bloody joke, I thought the part where
Amazon are calling owners of local shops would of given that away. Guess I’ll
have to be more explicit :-P I’m mocking the article because they state that
their is privacy implications because they use AWS. Well their are privacy
implications if you use any vendor or even if you self host.

~~~
floatingatoll
Being more explicit won’t help; being less sarcastic will. “That maybe,
possibly, ...” is one example of where your otherwise interesting argument is
weakened unnecessarily.

------
bluesign
Ok after a bit digging:

\- German police signed a service agreement (probably with Motorola) as the
model of bodycam is Motorola Si500. [0][1]

\- Motorola is one of the service providers working with Amazon. [2]

"Motorola offers a digital evidence management solution that simplifies the
way your agency captures, stores, and manages multi-media content. The
solution includes the Si Series Video Speaker Microphone that combines voice
communications, body-worn video, still images, voice recording and emergency
alerting into one compact, easy-to-use device. Integrated with Motorola’s
secure cloud-based CommandCentral Vault digital evidence management software,
this solution is streamlining technology and reducing costs for law
enforcement everywhere."

\- They have some short nice video about their security [3]

\- Basically it is totally cloud solution, although it has client side
encryption, if you think Amazon can be compromised, rest of security falls
apart too.

[0] [https://www.weser-kurier.de/deutschland-welt/deutschland-
wel...](https://www.weser-kurier.de/deutschland-welt/deutschland-welt-
politik_artikel,-bundespolizei-kann-kuenftig-bodycams-nutzen-
_arid,1807856.html)

[1] [https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/products/police-
came...](https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/products/police-
cameras/si500.html#tabproductinfo)

[2] [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/the-future-of-
poli...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/the-future-of-policing-
body-cameras-video-storage-and-data-management/)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m9dlR6JCvI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m9dlR6JCvI)

------
taspeotis
> Federal Police are using a cloud service from Amazon to store videos because
> the internet company is the only one in Germany with a certificate from the
> Federal Office for Information Security.

> "At the moment there is no state infrastructure available that meets the
> demand," the Federal Police said.

TL;DR: Government department uses an approved vendor, news at 11.

~~~
Mirioron
I think what's much more interesting is that the only approved vendor is
Amazon.

~~~
expertentipp
I see nothing strange in it. German businesses consider „cloud” and internet
in general as dumb and obsolete cost inducing topic. I can totally imagine no
local provider being able to comply.

------
rikkus
It’s possible to bring your own encryption to AWS. You can put an HSM you
control on your own infrastructure and keep your keys there. As a step further
you can encrypt before sending any data there in the first place, though
you’re then operating more critical systems yourself, of course.

------
vinay427
Note to mod (if this is an appropriate way to contact them): I would suggest
changing the link to the non-mobile version - [https://www.dw.com/en/german-
police-storing-bodycam-footage-...](https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-
storing-bodycam-footage-on-amazon-cloud/a-47751028)

The mobile version is very difficult to read on my desktop browser.

~~~
rat9988
I guess it would just make it difficult for mobile browsers? Unless they
automatically switch to mobile mode from the desktop website.

~~~
vinay427
They do automatically switch, at least for me (Firefox on Android).

