German company receives 10.4 million euros conditional fine for camera surveillance

A German privacy regulator has handed out a conditional fine of more than ten million euros to a company that monitored employees with security cameras. That is against European privacy legislation.

The local privacy regulator of the state of Lower Saxony handed out the fine to a computer salesman, Notebooksbilliger.de AG. The company monitored employees with video cameras for more than two years. They were in the workshops, but also in warehouses and even common areas. According to the regulator, the images were kept for 60 days in most cases. That is ‘much longer than necessary’.

According to the company, the camera surveillance was necessary to prevent theft from the warehouses. The privacy watchdog does not think that is a good reason. “Camera surveillance is only allowed if there are specific indications against certain people. In that case it is allowed to follow them for a short time with cameras.” That was not the case at Notebooksbilliger.de, says the regulator. “Video surveillance was not used there for a period of time or against specific people.” In addition to employees, customers were also wrongly filmed because there were cameras in the sales area of ​​the store.

The regulator says that camera surveillance is a ‘major infringement of the right to privacy’ and that companies are not allowed to use it just like that. “Companies need to understand that they are seriously infringing the rights of their employees,” the regulator said.

The company violates the AVG with the camera surveillance and can therefore be fined a maximum of twenty million euros or four percent of the annual turnover. This is still a conditional fine that the computer seller does not have to pay if it adjusts its camera system.