One of the important recommendations issued by the Public Defender concerned the installation of surveillance cameras in police stations in all places where detainees and persons invited for voluntary interview are taken to.259 Visits of special preventive group show that in 2020, a number of police stations still had the problem of adequately equipping indoor and outdoor perimeters with video cameras. At the same time, there was still an active use of the offices of police chiefs and their deputies for interviews with detainees or persons with different statuses in the facility, where no audio-video surveillance was carried out, which significantly increased the risk of ill-treatment.260 The Ministry, in a reply sent to the Public Defender's Office, notes that the scarcity of the working space infrastructure and the interrogation rooms in the institutions often do not allow for an interview with a detainee and/or a voluntarily invited person in a confidential environment. The answer states that taking into account the circumstances of the case, the work cabinets of specific individuals are used in such cases, however, it is also stated that they consider it unacceptable to conduct video surveillance in the above rooms because Georgian law does not allow permanent video surveillance of specific employees. The Public Defender considers that the placement of video cameras in police stations, in places where a detainee, a witness or a person voluntarily invited for an interview is present including in work rooms does not violate Georgian legislation and cannot be considered as a violation of police officers' right to privacy. In particular, according to the third paragraph of Article 12 of the Law of Georgia on Personal Data Protection: "A video surveillance system may be installed in the workplace only in exceptional cases if it is necessary for the purposes of personal security and protection, protection of property, protection of confidential information and for examination/testing unless these objectives can be achieved by other means." Clearly, the safety of a detainee - protection from torture and ill-treatment - is a legitimate purpose to justify the installation of a video surveillance system in such places. The Public Defender notes that the purpose of issuing the above-mentioned recommendation is to not allow the detainee / person invited to an interview on a voluntary basis being moved and kept in a space that is not covered by video surveillance systems. According to the available data, the staff rooms are the areas where the detainees are present despite the lack of video surveillance, which is not denied by the Ministry. Accordingly, the Public Defender proposes to the Ministry to eliminate the practice of conducting interviews in the staff rooms and instead set up separate rooms in police stations equipped with video surveillance systems, where it will be possible to interview detainees and/or volunteers. If the use of work rooms for conducting interviews continues, they should be equipped with a video surveillance system. One of the important recommendations of the Public Defender was to gradually equip the staff of the territorial bodies with police body cameras of better capabilities, to make it mandatory and to set deadlines for keeping records. It should be noted that the Public Defender has been addressing the Ministry with the above-mentioned recommendation for years. In the information provided to us by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2018, it is clear that the Ministry agreed with the content of the 259 260 For more information see Chapter: Audio and Video Recordings. For more information see Chapter: ill-treatment. 84