PRESS RELEASE
In its Decision of 11th December 2014 (C-212/2013), the European Court of Justice has ruled that:
The second indent of Article 3(2) of Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data must be interpreted as meaning that the operation of a camera system, as a result of which a video recording of people is stored on a continuous recording device such as a hard disk drive, installed by an individual on his family home for the purposes of protecting the property, health and life of the home owners, but which also monitors a public space, does not amount to the processing of data in the course of a purely personal or household activity, for the purposes of that provision.
The European Court’s Decision indicates that this processing of personal data falls under the scope of Law no. 677/2001 and that of Decision 52/2012 and the natural persons in question have the quality of data controllers and must observe the rules on the processing of personal data (namely the image). We would like to mention that according to article 2 paragraph 6 of Law no. 677/2001, this law doesn’t apply to the processing of personal data carried out by natural persons exclusively for their personal use, if the data in question is not intended to be disclosed.
In this context, the Supervisory Authority draws attention to the fact that natural persons who wish to carry out such processing operations must direct the video surveillance cameras in such a way so as to avoid the surveillance of public spaces.
If the video surveillance cameras installed by a natural person also capture images from public spaces, the person in question will be considered as a data controller and will have to observe the provisions of Law no. 677/2001.
Link to ECJ’s C- 212/2013 Decision:
The Legal and Communication Dept.
17.12.2014
