Ten cameras per square kilometer: NL residents increasingly recorded

Due to significant growth in the number of private cameras registered with the police, the Netherlands is increasingly under surveillance. The police currently have 321,000 private cameras registered in its database, amounting to about ten cameras per square kilometer, AD reports based on figures tech site VPNGids got from the police after appealing to the Open Government Act.

Anyone who installs a security- or doorbell camera in the Netherlands can register it on the police’s Camera in Beeld database. The database allows the police to know at a glance whether a certain spot is recorded, which is useful information when solving crimes.

Citizens don’t need permission to hang a camera. And while the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) warns that citizens aren’t allowed to record the street, no one checks unless there is a complaint. If the police want to hang a camera recording the public space, they need permission from the mayor, Lotte Houwing of privacy advocate Bits of Freedom explained to AD. “But because of that database, the police circumvent the rules.”

More than 321,000 cameras registered with the police average out at about 10 per square kilometer. But there are big differences between municipalities. Amsterdam has almost 170 cameras per square kilometer. Nijmegen and Zoetermeer also count over 100. The database gets about a thousand new registrations per month, according to the newspaper.

A study by Nieuwsuur a few years ago showed that almost 90 percent of private security cameras record at least a bit of the street. Houwing also mentioned that figure. “We are well on our way to a nationwide camera network,” he said.

The AP is also concerned about the growing “big brother” effect in the Netherlands, spokesperson Quintin Snijders told AD. “If we all hang up cameras to keep an eye on the neighborhood, no one can go out on the street without being filmed. Apart from the fact that it is against the law, we also have to ask ourselves: do we want that?”

Karel van Engelshoven, in charge of Camera in Beeld at the police, called it nonsense that the police are circumventing the camera rules by using its database instead of asking the mayor to put up a camera. “There is a huge difference between those two types of cameras. With a public camera, you can observe continuously. We can only request the footage of a private individual or a company after the fact,” he told the newspaper. The police do that about 5,000 times a year, he said.

He also thinks that the 90 percent figure is incorrect. “Those 321,000 cameras are installed at 60,000 locations. Suppose you have an entrepreneur who films in 25 places, one of which is at the entrance gate with a piece of street added. Then his entire arsenal immediately counts s ‘aimed at the public road,’” Van Engelshoven said. He thinks “a quarter at most” are aimed at the street.