German police storing bodycam footage on Amazon servers

Privacy advocates and cyber security experts raised concerns on the choice of German police to store bodycam footage, which may be used as evidence, on Amazon servers.

The choice of the German police of storing bodycam footage on Amazon cloud storage has raised privacy and security concerns.

The news was first reported by the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper on Saturday,- According to the newspaper, Federal Police are using a cloud service from Amazon to store bodycam videos because the tech giant is the only company in Germany that was certificated by the Federal Office for Information Security.

The interior ministry explained that storing data on Amazon’s servers is in compliance with German data security and privacy standards.

Authorities also added that data are encrypted and stored on servers located in Germany.

“At present, there is no state infrastructure available that fulfills the requirements.” The Federal Police Headquarters told the newspaper. “The provider is currently the only one in Germany to offer a corresponding cloud solution certified by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) Make available. The Ministry points out that “the German data protection standards would be respected”. “The data is encrypted and stored exclusively on servers in Germany”

The decision is already a political case in Germany, Benjamin Strasser, a lawmaker from the opposition Free Democrats who requested the information from the interior ministry, argued that storing highly sensitive data with a private company posed “an incalculable risk.”

Strasser pointed out that US intelligence agencies could access the data threatening sovereignty “over the core state function of internal security.”

The deputy chairman of the Greens parliamentary group, Konstantin von Notz, also raised privacy concerns by explaining that Amazon sells facial recognition software to US Police that is used for analyzing bodycam videos.

“That this company is now to administer the bodycam recordings for the Federal Police leaves more than a bad feeling,” said von Notz.

The videos are used as evidence in court cases, but the use of bodycams has caused controversy in Germany.

“The data is encrypted and stored exclusively on servers in Germany,” the ministry said.

Sven Hüber, the deputy chairman of the Police Union (GdP), pointed out that the choice of storing videos on Amazon servers raises “competition and practical issues.”

It is therefore all the more important for digital security management to prevent unauthorized access and data leaks, he said.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – bodycam videos, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.