Vienna police officers – Court Ruling (Austria, 2021)

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