Berlin’s regional parliament has passed a far-reaching overhaul of its “security” law, giving police new authority to conduct both digital and physical surveillance.

The CDU-SPD coalition, supported by AfD votes, approved the reform of the General Security and Public Order Act (ASOG), changing the limits that once protected Berliners from intrusive policing.

Interior Senator Iris Spranger (SPD) argued that the legislation modernizes police work for an era of encrypted communication, terrorism, and cybercrime. But it undermines core civil liberties and reshapes the relationship between citizens and the state.

One of the most controversial elements is the expansion of police powers under paragraphs 26a and 26b. These allow investigators to hack into computers and smartphones under the banner of “source telecommunications surveillance” and “online searches.”

Police may now install state-developed spyware, known as trojans, on personal devices to intercept messages before or after encryption.

If the software cannot be deployed remotely, the law authorizes officers to secretly enter a person’s home to gain access.

This enables police to install surveillance programs directly on hardware without the occupant’s knowledge. Berlin had previously resisted such practices, but now joins other federal states that permit physical entry to install digital monitoring tools.

More: Germany Turns Its Back on Decades‑Old Privacy Protections with Sweeping Surveillance Bill

IT security experts caution that maintaining hidden system vulnerabilities for state use exposes everyone to greater cyber risk. They also question the constitutional legitimacy of combining digital espionage with physical intrusion into private homes.

The revised law also changes how police use body cameras. Paragraph 24c permits activation of bodycams inside private homes when officers believe there is a risk to life or limb.

The government presents this as a measure for officer safety, but many view it as an open door to video surveillance within citizens’ most private settings.

Paragraph 26e expands “cell tower queries,” allowing police to obtain data on every mobile phone connected to a specific tower during a chosen timeframe.

This form of data collection can identify the movements of thousands of uninvolved individuals, including people who might simply have attended a protest.

Under paragraph 24d, automatic license plate recognition systems will be used to record and cross-check vehicle plates with databases. Paragraph 24h also grants police the ability to neutralize or even take control of drones in certain situations.

Paragraph 28a introduces biometric face and voice matching, using publicly available information from the internet.

This gives Berlin’s police the ability to compare surveillance footage with images posted on social media platforms. This as a major step toward automated identification of individuals in public life.

A further innovation, paragraph 42d, authorizes the use of real investigative data, such as photos, videos, and text messages, for “training and testing” artificial intelligence systems.

This breaks the principle that data collected for one purpose cannot later be reused. Because AI models can reveal patterns from the original material, this clause risks turning police archives into training sets for machine learning systems.

The law also lengthens preventive detention periods. Under paragraph 33, individuals may now be held for up to five days, or up to seven in terrorism-related cases.

Lawmakers discussed this provision in connection with protests by the environmental group “Last Generation,” whose civil resistance actions have triggered repeated detentions.

The group NoASOG denounced the law as an attack on civil society, while the Society for Civil Rights (GFF) announced plans to prepare a constitutional complaint.

Berlin’s data protection commissioner, Meike Kamp, had already warned that approving the state trojan amounts to “a frontal attack on the IT security of all citizens.” She said the overall framework creates “a constitutionally highly questionable density of surveillance.”

Berlin now joins the list of German states that have widened police authority in recent years, but the scope of this legislation stands out. It links physical home entry, digital interception, and artificial intelligence analysis under one legal structure, reducing the barriers between policing and private life.

The range of new powers granted to police shifts the balance decisively toward state control of personal information.

Berlin is a city once known for strong privacy traditions and the ASOG reform marks a decisive moment. Whether it withstands constitutional review will determine how far Germany’s commitment to individual privacy can bend in the name of security.

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