Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Leonid Timchenko is perplexed about the claims to the Ministry of Internal Affairs about the alleged intention to create a "digital concentration camp" through the adoption of the bill "On a unified system of video monitoring of the state of public security."

In an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine, Timchenko said that video monitoring is already working everywhere, it covers most highways of national importance, cities, educational institutions, as well as all commercial facilities that take care of their safety.

"First of all, we are talking about responsibility, because today the owners of such systems are not responsible for the dissemination of information processed by their systems," Timchenko said.

Speaking about the controversial positions of the bill, he noted that it is about confidentiality. "Everyone is worried about the privacy of their movement and personal life. We emphasize that the facts of information leakage that exist today do not concern video surveillance systems that are under the administration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Police," the deputy minister said.

Timchenko also stressed that the bill is a framework. "It will not create additional problems for existing systems and certainly will not create additional problems for citizens," he assured.

The Deputy Interior Minister explained: "A person who does not commit administrative or criminal offenses, who has nothing to hide, should not be afraid of video cameras – he is not interesting to law enforcement agencies!"

Clarifying the key positions of the normalization of the work of video cameras, Timchenko said: "An important provision that will also be spelled out in the law is the need to save information from cameras for a while and the obligation to provide information to law enforcement agencies according to an established algorithm."

"This bill will be opposed not only by those who have something to hide, but also by those who administer CCTV cameras and who use them at their own discretion," he concluded.