Warsaw — The Ministry of Justice has decreed that every cash machine and deposit terminal in Poland must now film its users continuously, with recordings kept for a mandatory 90 days. Banks, taking the directive with bureaucratic zeal, have begun equipping branches with wall-sized screens so that designated «viewing officers» can monitor each withdrawal in real time, a practice the ministry calls «transactional transparency».
«We are not merely storing footage,» said ministry spokesman Tadeusz Wrona, standing before a bank of monitors showing a man retrieving his pension. «Every zloty must have a witness. If a customer blinks during a deposit, we want to know why.» The first week of the program saw banks hire 12,000 new employees to fill viewing shifts, with some branches converting their lobbies into auditoriums where customers waiting in line can watch the person ahead of them count out cash.
The initiative has spread beyond the machines themselves. In Kraków, a bank has installed cameras in the queue itself, so that even those merely waiting to use the ATM are recorded, their footage added to the 90-day archive. «We are building a complete visual history of Polish banking,» Wrona added, as a teller paused her work to applaud a customer who successfully completed a transfer. The ministry has announced that next month it will extend the requirement to credit card payments, with plans to film every transaction at the point of sale, ensuring that no purchase goes unwitnessed.