Can my city film me? Street cameras, explained

Public-space surveillance runs on public-task bases in national law (Art. 6(1)(e) plus police statutes) — municipalities designate zones, justify them (crime statistics, not vibes), and answer to oversight: many countries require periodic necessity reviews, and DPAs audit municipal camera programmes and do order dismantling of unjustified zones. Your practical rights: signage telling you filming happens and who operates it (Art. 13 duty — the sign at the zone entrance); an access request for footage of yourself — same one-month clock, same masking-of-others rules, aimed at the operating authority; and complaint routes through the DPA for cameras that overreach (into courtyards, windows, protest-adjacent chilling placements — protest surveillance draws the sharpest scrutiny everywhere). The escalation brake: upgrading street cameras to real-time facial recognition is where the AI Act slams the door — banned for law enforcement in public except narrowly authorised serious-crime cases, and municipal “smart city” analytics (crowd emotion, behaviour flagging) sit in high-risk or prohibited tiers. When your town council floats such pilots, the demandable document is the DPIA — these deployments require one, and councils have shelved projects when asked to publish it. Private cameras aimed at public space play by different rules — the operator’s, not the state’s.