Who Watches the Watchmen? - Data Protection Requirements for Monitoring Systems

Monitoring systems can be used by both private and public bodies. The European legislator created the legal basis and limits with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR; Regulation (EU) 2016/679) and the Directive on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties (Directive (EU) 2016/680). These also provide control and law enforcement possibilities for the data protection supervisory authorities. The granting of sufficient transparency is a central issue, especially in the area of video surveillance. Based on the discussion of the legal conformity of the data protection requirements themselves, the way in which information is provided is debated in this field. Here, the potential of data protection regulations remains largely unexploited.