Video recording employees at work is unnecessary, privacy watchdog says

Constantly recording employees doesn‘t really align with privacy regulations, a French data privacy watchdog has decided, slapping fines on employers utilizing the practice.

The French data protection agency CNIL has sanctioned several companies that failed to comply with what it calls the “data minimization” principle. The legal requirement dictates that the collection of personal data has to be adequate, relevant, and limited to what is necessary.

After analyzing several complaints, CNIL decided that uninterrupted video surveillance of employees at their place of work does not align with the “data minimization” principle. The only exception is when an employer can justify the need for recording with circumstances linked to security or theft. Since the investigated companies were not recording their workers for security reasons, they will have to pay up to €20,000 ($22,000).

CNIL has also fined businesses that listen to what their employees say over the phone. The privacy watchdog explained that telephone recording must also be proportionate. Authorities believe that “improving sales” or “training employees” does not justify recording everything employees say over the phone.

Both cases came to CNIL's attention via the “simplified sanction” procedure. The procedure focuses on EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) violations that already have precedent. CNIL commits to solving such cases in under one month.

Since the beginning of the year, the French privacy watchdog has issued 28 simplified sanctions with fines worth nearly €300,000 ($330,000).

However, that pales in comparison to the fine CNIL and the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) issued to Uber. The ridesharing platform was slapped with a €290 million ($324 million) fine for “transferring personal data outside the EU without sufficient guarantees.”