A 2016 terrorist attack changed the conversation on surveillance in Germany

Germans tend to be suspicious of state surveillance. That wariness has been reflected in government policy since World War II. Until now.

On December 19, 2016, a man drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing twelve people and injuring 56. The attack shocked Germany.

“It became easier to push through laws and other projects that may have been in the works for a while,” says Deutsche Welle reporter Jefferson Chase. “There was a kind of impetus behind it.”

With that momentum, the government has pushed through 17 new surveillance measures in an effort to prevent another terror attack. The policies authorize things like expanded video surveillance and allowing police to access data collected by telecommunications companies on their users.

Some Germans are worried by what they see as an infringement on civil liberties. The telecommunications law doesn’t specify targets — every user’s data and metadata is fair game to law enforcement. “Although the authorities say that they would only ever use this [to investigate] very serious crimes,” Chase says, “serious crime” has no legal definition. “A lot of people feel that this could be a slippery slope.”

Another controversial policy lowered the minimum age of individuals who can be monitored by German intelligence services from 16 to 14. That measure followed a few cases in the country in which radicalized young people were involved in violent incidents.

Political opposition to the measures is growing.  "We're sliding into a surveillance state," criticized 84-year-old former German Interior Minister Gerhart Baum. "In all my days I've never experienced such an abundance of measures."

The issue of surveillance is likely to pop up in Germany’s election, but whether any surveillance measures are retracted depends on the results in September.

Outside the political sphere, Chase said, “there are going to be an awful lot of lawsuits in the coming months — and maybe years — to try to determine how much of this legislation is actually constitutional.”