Vienna police officers – Court Ruling (Austria, 2021)
General GDPR enforcement action
This case relates to broader data protection obligations, not specifically to cookie or consent banner compliance. It is not included in cookie statistics or the Risk Calculator.
The Austrian court ruled that publishing videos of police officers on social media without their consent violated their privacy rights. The officers were filmed during an identity check, and the footage was shared online to accuse them of racial profiling. This decision highlights the importance of respecting privacy when sharing content online.
What happened
Police officers were filmed during an identity check, and the videos were published on social media without their consent.
Who was affected
The affected individuals were Vienna police officers who were filmed and identified in the videos.
What the authority found
The court found that publishing the videos without making the officers unidentifiable violated their right to privacy under GDPR.
Why this matters
This case underscores the need for individuals and companies to consider privacy rights before sharing identifiable content online. It serves as a reminder that privacy laws protect individuals from unauthorized dissemination of their personal data.
GDPR Articles Cited
National Law Articles
In their complaint to the DSB (Austria) the data subjects, both police officers, together with other colleagues, alleged a violation of the right to secrecy. The complainants carried out an identity check. In its course they had been filmed with several smartphones by the persons checked (controllers). The first complainant had repeatedly informed the controllers that it was a criminal offense to publish the video material. However, this was ignored and the material was published on social media (Facebook and Instagram) without making the data subjects unidentifiable. The controllers wanted to draw attention to ethnic profiling or accuse the complainants of such a procedure, as they felt discriminated by the identification, which in their opinion was only based on the colour of their skin. In the videos the controllers did not only make remarks to the effect that the identification of the complainants was done on racist grounds, but also used insulting words towards the complainants. The complaint was partially upheld by the DSB and it was found that the respondent had violated the second complainant's right to secrecy by publishing a picture of the complainant’s on his Instagram profile and thereby violated the complainant's right to secrecy by at least publishing a picture of the first complainant on his Instagram profile. For the rest, the complaint was dismissed. The Federal Administrative Court (Bundesverwatungsgericht – BVwG) stated that the image recordings were in any case personal data of the complainants pursuant to Article 4(1)GDPR, as the identification of the data subjects was possible. Through the publication, the respondents had also processed the personal data of the complainants within the meaning of Article 4(2) GDPR and, as the operators of their Instagram and Facebook profiles, were also to be qualified as data controllers under data protection law pursuant to Article 4(7) GDPR for their respective profiles. Furthermore, the posting of the
Outcome
Court Ruling
A ruling by a national court on a data-protection matter.
Related Cases (0)
No other cases found for Vienna police officers in AT
This is the only recorded case for this entity in this jurisdiction.
Details
About this data
Cite as: Cookie Fines. Vienna police officers - Austria (2021). Retrieved from cookiefines.eu
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