Court case AN 14 K 22.00468 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2022)

The controller is a cyclist who took pictures of parking offences and, together with a short description, sent it to the police authority in charge to report the offence. The case at hand concerned photographs taken in June 2020 of various vehicles that showed the parking situation and the vehicles' license plates. In June 2021, the competent DPA issued a reprimand against the controller in accordance with Article 58(2)(b) GDPR. The DPA argued that taking and redirecting pictures of the parking offences constitutes processing of personal data and that the controller did not fulfil their informational duties pursuant to Articles 13(1)(d) and 14(2)(b) GDPR. The authority claimed that there was no legitimate legal basis under Article 6(1) GDPR for the processing, as the controller neither obtained a consent of the vehicle owners nor had a legitimate interest that would justify the processing. The controller was requested to pay an administrative fee of 100 euros. The controller filed a complaint against the DPA's decision in a written statement at the Administrative Court of Ansbach. The Administrative Court Ansbach overturned the DPA's decision. It held that the reprimand issued by the DPA is unlawful because the claimant did not violate any provisions of the GDPR, which is a condition for a reprimand pursuant to Article 58(2)(b) GDPR. Material scope of the GDPR According to the court, the GDPR applies in the case at hand since taking pictures of vehicles and forward them to the police constitutes the processing of personal data in accordance with Article 2(1) GDPR and Article 4(1) GDPR. A license plate is information that allows the identification of a natural person, despite the fact that the provision of additional information from authorities is necessary to identify the data subject. Furthermore, the household exemption laid down in Article 2(2) GDPR is not applicable since the processing of personal data is leaving the private sphere. The pictures taken w