Berlin’s Newest Criminal Offense: Snap the Wrong Photo, Face Two Years in Prison

When a state begins to threaten its citizens with two-year prison sentences for taking pictures of fully clothed people, one might reasonably ask whether the political class in Berlin has lost all sense of proportion. The German cabinet has approved a draft law from SPD Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig that penalizes the unauthorized, deliberate photographing or filming of clothed buttocks, genitals, and female breasts. The bill, which now moves to the Bundestag, aims to punish imagery that obviously seeks to present these body parts in a sexualized manner.

The path to this criminal code expansion began in Cologne, where jogger Yanni Gentsch caught a man filming her rear end. Finding that such conduct fell outside criminal statutes, she gathered roughly 137,000 signatures on an online petition. In August 2025, she handed her demand to North Rhine-Westphalia’s Justice Minister, Benjamin Limbach of the Greens. Limbach readily championed the cause, finding an enthusiastic ally in Federal Justice Minister Hubig. The initiative eventually hitched a ride on Hubig’s wider legislation against digital violence, sparked in part by public squabbles surrounding celebrity fake-porn accusations.

The initial draft was even more sweeping, proposing investigations whenever an image was made in a sexually determined manner. Though revised after sharp pushback, the underlying mechanism remains deeply troubling. Establishing whether a photograph intentionally sexualizes a fully clothed body part requires law enforcement to divine a photographer's internal state of mind.

Legal professionals have voiced grave concerns regarding this subjective standard. The German Bar Association pointed out the immediate danger to personal privacy: any individual who falls under suspicion—even a parent taking pictures at a children's school play—must subsequently explain their motives. To clear up those motives, prosecution authorities will predictably demand access to the suspect's entire collection of photos, browser history, and private chat communications.

What is framed as a modern measure against digital violence swiftly becomes a convenient doorway for extensive state intrusion into personal data. Rather than addressing the glaring deficiencies in core public safety, German lawmakers seem determined to expand the penal code into ever more subjective territory. When police powers expand to inspect private digital lives over ambiguous camera angles, the boundary between public protection and state overreach grows uncomfortably thin.

Written by Martina Kirchner martina.kirchner@alpineweekly.com