9 ms·

The fact that someone was fined for using a dashcam is beyond absurd.

donretag 7y ago
"a man illegally used a dashcam, he was fined 300 euros. It was a camera recording the use of a car from the driver's point of view, which is illegal." Insane.
- hvhsb 7y ago
  What's insane, the fact that you can't just go around recording people and cars?
  - tempestn 7y ago
    On public streets, yeah, that's kind of insane. It's pretty common for people to have a dashcam running with a buffer so if you're involved in a not at fault accident or someone vandalizes your car, or such things, you have documentation.
    - hvhsb 7y ago
      Of course, that's why it says "illegally". Those dashcams can be installed legally, and this guy's wasn't legally installed.
      - tooop 7y ago
        Where is info on how to install it legally and why this stupid ban on dashcams when GDPR actually allows it (it made dashcam usage easier in my home country as now you don't have to register as data processor because dashcams fall under surveillance). I feel that this is a bad thing - you have a regulation that covers all EU but some countries have their specific laws overriding it and banning things that are allowed under GDPR.
    - izacus 7y ago
      Some societies think that tracking people on public spaces isn't acceptable either. I don't know why it would be insane - if anything, losing all privacy because you stepped out of the house is the insane thing.
      - tooop 7y ago
        Insane would be the fact that i cannot use pictures/video taken in a public setting for my personal use. Publicising these pictures/videos are another thing and that is covered by GDPR.
    - malka 7y ago
      If it's a model with a buffer, it's allowed. What is not allowed is to have lying around hours of footages with licences plates, etc. on it.
  - droithomme 7y ago
    Yes, that's what's insane.
  - donatj 7y ago
    In public? Something your brain already does?
- mtw 7y ago
  Actually he was lucky. Austrian law says the fine should be €10,000. It is not legal to own or to use a dashcam in Austria, like in a few other European countries
  - oh_sigh 7y ago
    Not true. You can have a dash cam, but it has to be the kind that continuously overwrites its own data and only records when it detects an accident. You can also record based on your intent - if your intent is to, say, capture a scenic drive ,then you can do that. If your intent is to just capture the license plates of 1000s of other cars that pass you, you can't do that. These laws were changed in ~2018 in Austria.
    - bosie 7y ago
      How can a dashcam possibly detect an accident? Wouldn't that basically start recording after the fact and hence be mostly worthless?
      - detaro 7y ago
        No, they are allowed to have a buffer of last X minutes.
      - oh_sigh 7y ago
        Accelerometers. How it works is there is something like a 5 minute, constantly overwriting video file. Once the accelerometers detects an abrupt deceleration, it determines an accident occurred and marks the previous 5 minute segment of video as read-only.
      - romwell 7y ago
        The dashcam will record into a, say, 5-minute buffer until the accelerometer registers a high value, at which point it starts writing into a new file (so the buffer becomes a permanent record of the 5 minutes prior to the incident). That's one way to implement it, one can come up with many others.
- droithomme 7y ago
  The same link mentions issuing a GDPR reprimand against a person for using a security camera inside their own home.
  - inetknght 7y ago
    The one I saw said that the CCTV system in the home was also set up to record other peoples' properties too.
  - henrikschroder 7y ago
    It's not the GDPR that made this illegal. It was most probably illegal before the GDPR, and it was probably enforced by the same agency that now enforces GDPR. The GDPR is an umbrella that covers all the new things it introduced, but also a lot of old things the various national data privacy agencies covered.
  - detaro 7y ago
    Where does it say that? The linked article says "recordings of their house", which very well could e.g. be a camera on the outside, capturing surrounding public space. (also probably existing law, not GDPR specifically: video surveillance has been fairly strictly regulated for a while)
  - M2Ys4U 7y ago
    Recording in one's own home is exempted under the GDPR[0]. I suspect something broader was involved here. [0] Article 2(2): "This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data [...] by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity"
    - PeterisP 7y ago
      A prime example where GDPR would apply to a security camera in your own house would be if that camera was used to record renters (including short term rentals e.g. AirBnB) without their knowledge. For example, I recall reading about cases of renters finding out that the landlord has installed hidden cameras in the bedrooms and showers.
- blub 7y ago
  Some countries are sane enough to enshrine privacy in public spaces into law, because of the potential for abuse. This is slowly but surely being eroded also in Germany. Multiple cities are trialling full video surveillance to stop the terrorists. e.g: Some USA towns have near 100% video surveillance through the Amazon doorbell cameras (Ring) of the town's inhabitants. Some content is publicly available, cops can also request it. Then Amazon is posting captured video as Facebook advertisements to identify suspected thieves. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pajm5z/amazon-home-surveillance-company-ring-law-enforcement-advertisements https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pajm5z/amazon-home-survei...
  - swebs 7y ago
    Good. Fuck thieves.
    - blub 7y ago
      The tricky part is evaluating the side-effects and undesired outcomes and balancing those. Otherwise any fool can say that we should abolish privacy to punish group because they're bad. And indeed they've been saying that for decades.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
DanBC 7y ago
1) We don't know much. GDPR allows processing if it's for purely personal use, so if he's putting it on youtube with ads that takes it out of purely personal use. 2) As the linked news article says, Austria may be getting the balance between cautions and fines wrong, which is why they may face a case in EU. > In Germany, for example, people use caution instead of punishment - which is why Austria may face an EU case.
AnssiH 7y ago
Austria has had a ban on dashcams for years, though, so it is not a new thing brought by GDPR. Another EU country with a similar ban is Luxembourg.
- tzs 7y ago
  Based on this article [1], it looks like EU country laws on dashcams ranges from similar to the US, to legal but with restrictions on the duration, retention, or use of the footage, to illegal to use subject to fines, to illegal to use subject to prison, to illegal to even own one regardless of whether or not you are using it. How aware are EU drivers of these differences? Is it well known to those in places with less restrictive rules that their cameras could get them in a lot of trouble if they take them with them when they take a road trip that passes through other EU countries? [1] https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/998528/Dash-cam-car-Europe-fines-prison https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/998528/Dash-cam-ca...
  - detaro 7y ago
    Don't know dash cams specifically, but it's common knowledge that laws surrounding what's in your car (e.g. emergency kit) vary and you need to check up on that.
  - fyfy18 7y ago
    It's basically impossible to know. Even laws which should be really clear, such and if and when you need winter tires are not clear. At the end of March I drove across Europe from south of Spain, and had summer tyres on. The weather conditions were good, so I was fairly confident I would be ok without winter tyres, but a lot of European countries have laws requiring then at certain points of the year. I knew in my destination country you needed winter tyres until April 1st, but I couldn't find anything clear on all the countries in-between. Austria was actually the toughest, my understanding is their laws are you need winter tires if the road conditions dictate you need them. In some cases snow chains can be used, but not on highways. But this was based on reading English forum posts from 10 years ago, so I have no idea if it's still correct. I tried to find something clear from an official authority (probably doesn't help I don't speak German) or an automobile association website, but couldn't.
deleted 7y ago
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nickjj 7y ago
I wonder where the line is drawn when it comes to things like that. Yesterday I was walking on the side of the road and some girl was half way hanging out of the passenger window recording a video of the scenery. I was able to see her from a few hundred feet away. Eventually the car intersected with me and I was in the line of sight of the video for a second or 2. Of course I made a stupid pose to photo bomb her video which I found hilarious while continuing my walk home. But under GDPR, is she technically in violation for recording me without my consent? I can't imagine how any of that could really be enforced. What about all of those Youtubers who happen to record people in a busy place like NYC or Vegas. Do they really get written consent from 400-500 people in the background for 10 seconds of video?
- Aengeuad 7y ago
  The line is drawn at surveillance of a public place [0] and in this instance only in Austria, as other commentors have pointed out the laws may have changed in 2018 to allow for dashcams that continuously overwrite old footage but I can't verify that. It is not illegal to make recordings in a public place in Austria, although you may have some limitations on what you can do with that footage if it captured other people and those limitations may change depending on what was captured (i.e., whether it was incidental, or footage of a crowd). In Germany for instance dashcams are perfectly legal, you only have conditions on what you can do with that footage afterwards, for instance posting it on Youtube or social media is a big no-no, and unlike Austria you're likely to get a warning in Germany instead of a fine [1]. [0] https://helpv2.orf.at/stories/1717004/index.html https://helpv2.orf.at/stories/1717004/index.html [1] https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000092017999/erst-vier-strafen-wegen-dsgvo-seit-mai https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000092017999/erst-vier-str...
- alkonaut 7y ago
  This can vary between jurisdictions but in all jurisdictions i know, photographing someone in a public location is always legal and never requires consent. Whether publishing requires consent varies, in the normal case it does for commercial but not for journalistic purposes. Note that laws written this way usually distinguish “taking photos” from “surveillance” - so mounting the camera on a street corner immediately changes the legal context. This may be why dash cams fall into the surveillance category in some places.
detaro 7y ago
Some countries don't consider public space free-for-all for recordings, and have different balances between privacy and the interest in recordings. E.g. in Germany, legal dashcams require a trigger to keep a recording long-term, so no long-term recordings exist in the normal case, but in the case of e.g. a crash the interest of the car owner in evidence is fulfilled.
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  So, I assume that recording in public spaces is illegal in general and they make a specific exception to allow dash cams on the conditions mentioned?
  - maxheadroom 7y ago
    >So, I assume that recording in public spaces is illegal in general and they make a specific exception to allow dash cams on the conditions mentioned? The act of recording isn't the problem but the retention of the data records. If you have no need to keep a recording of a day's video for any purposes, then that falls under the provisions of likely being exploited data (e.g.: being used to build a profile of a person's travels throughout the day, week, year, etc.). In the sense of the allowances, it's about balancing the need of the data's use (e.g.: in car accidents) versus the privacy impacts to other individuals (e.g.: you post your dashcam footage to YouTube and don't obfuscate faces or license plates). An example of this, pre-GDPR, was when Google was forced to obfuscate faces and license plates in Google Maps for Street View.
  - atoav 7y ago
    It is a weird one in Germany. Generally you can record everything because of a law called Panoramafreiheit, however once you start to have discernible individuals on your photograph/video you need their consent, because individuals own the Bildrecht (”image rights”) to themselves, while you as the creator own the Urheberrecht (”creator rights”). And it needs both for a image to be taken legally. So you get their written consent, ask them if it is okay or take the risk that they will e.g. see themselves in your movie and force you to take it down. This fits with the general feeling that filming another person without asking is seen as extremely rude. The key here is that people need to be recognizable, so pictures of crowds usually don’t count. Certain architects can also forbid circulation of photographed versions of their building if it is central subject of the photograph — but I only know of one such thing. Note that this all was enshrined in law way before GDPR. Unless you stick your camera into other people’s faces without asking or plan to distribute your images on a bigger scale you will probably manage without ever hearing about these laws.

"a man illegally used a dashcam, he was fined 300 euros. It was a camera recording the use of a car from the driver's point of view, which is illegal." Insane.

hvhsb 7y ago
What's insane, the fact that you can't just go around recording people and cars?
- tempestn 7y ago
  On public streets, yeah, that's kind of insane. It's pretty common for people to have a dashcam running with a buffer so if you're involved in a not at fault accident or someone vandalizes your car, or such things, you have documentation.
  - hvhsb 7y ago
    Of course, that's why it says "illegally". Those dashcams can be installed legally, and this guy's wasn't legally installed.
    - tooop 7y ago
      Where is info on how to install it legally and why this stupid ban on dashcams when GDPR actually allows it (it made dashcam usage easier in my home country as now you don't have to register as data processor because dashcams fall under surveillance). I feel that this is a bad thing - you have a regulation that covers all EU but some countries have their specific laws overriding it and banning things that are allowed under GDPR.
  - izacus 7y ago
    Some societies think that tracking people on public spaces isn't acceptable either. I don't know why it would be insane - if anything, losing all privacy because you stepped out of the house is the insane thing.
    - tooop 7y ago
      Insane would be the fact that i cannot use pictures/video taken in a public setting for my personal use. Publicising these pictures/videos are another thing and that is covered by GDPR.
  - malka 7y ago
    If it's a model with a buffer, it's allowed. What is not allowed is to have lying around hours of footages with licences plates, etc. on it.
- droithomme 7y ago
  Yes, that's what's insane.
- donatj 7y ago
  In public? Something your brain already does?
mtw 7y ago
Actually he was lucky. Austrian law says the fine should be €10,000. It is not legal to own or to use a dashcam in Austria, like in a few other European countries
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  Not true. You can have a dash cam, but it has to be the kind that continuously overwrites its own data and only records when it detects an accident. You can also record based on your intent - if your intent is to, say, capture a scenic drive ,then you can do that. If your intent is to just capture the license plates of 1000s of other cars that pass you, you can't do that. These laws were changed in ~2018 in Austria.
  - bosie 7y ago
    How can a dashcam possibly detect an accident? Wouldn't that basically start recording after the fact and hence be mostly worthless?
    - detaro 7y ago
      No, they are allowed to have a buffer of last X minutes.
    - oh_sigh 7y ago
      Accelerometers. How it works is there is something like a 5 minute, constantly overwriting video file. Once the accelerometers detects an abrupt deceleration, it determines an accident occurred and marks the previous 5 minute segment of video as read-only.
    - romwell 7y ago
      The dashcam will record into a, say, 5-minute buffer until the accelerometer registers a high value, at which point it starts writing into a new file (so the buffer becomes a permanent record of the 5 minutes prior to the incident). That's one way to implement it, one can come up with many others.
droithomme 7y ago
The same link mentions issuing a GDPR reprimand against a person for using a security camera inside their own home.
- inetknght 7y ago
  The one I saw said that the CCTV system in the home was also set up to record other peoples' properties too.
- henrikschroder 7y ago
  It's not the GDPR that made this illegal. It was most probably illegal before the GDPR, and it was probably enforced by the same agency that now enforces GDPR. The GDPR is an umbrella that covers all the new things it introduced, but also a lot of old things the various national data privacy agencies covered.
- detaro 7y ago
  Where does it say that? The linked article says "recordings of their house", which very well could e.g. be a camera on the outside, capturing surrounding public space. (also probably existing law, not GDPR specifically: video surveillance has been fairly strictly regulated for a while)
- M2Ys4U 7y ago
  Recording in one's own home is exempted under the GDPR[0]. I suspect something broader was involved here. [0] Article 2(2): "This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data [...] by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity"
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    A prime example where GDPR would apply to a security camera in your own house would be if that camera was used to record renters (including short term rentals e.g. AirBnB) without their knowledge. For example, I recall reading about cases of renters finding out that the landlord has installed hidden cameras in the bedrooms and showers.
blub 7y ago
Some countries are sane enough to enshrine privacy in public spaces into law, because of the potential for abuse. This is slowly but surely being eroded also in Germany. Multiple cities are trialling full video surveillance to stop the terrorists. e.g: Some USA towns have near 100% video surveillance through the Amazon doorbell cameras (Ring) of the town's inhabitants. Some content is publicly available, cops can also request it. Then Amazon is posting captured video as Facebook advertisements to identify suspected thieves. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pajm5z/amazon-home-surveillance-company-ring-law-enforcement-advertisements https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pajm5z/amazon-home-survei...
- swebs 7y ago
  Good. Fuck thieves.
  - blub 7y ago
    The tricky part is evaluating the side-effects and undesired outcomes and balancing those. Otherwise any fool can say that we should abolish privacy to punish group because they're bad. And indeed they've been saying that for decades.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

DanBC 7y ago

1) We don't know much. GDPR allows processing if it's for purely personal use, so if he's putting it on youtube with ads that takes it out of purely personal use. 2) As the linked news article says, Austria may be getting the balance between cautions and fines wrong, which is why they may face a case in EU. > In Germany, for example, people use caution instead of punishment - which is why Austria may face an EU case.

AnssiH 7y ago

Austria has had a ban on dashcams for years, though, so it is not a new thing brought by GDPR. Another EU country with a similar ban is Luxembourg.

tzs 7y ago
Based on this article [1], it looks like EU country laws on dashcams ranges from similar to the US, to legal but with restrictions on the duration, retention, or use of the footage, to illegal to use subject to fines, to illegal to use subject to prison, to illegal to even own one regardless of whether or not you are using it. How aware are EU drivers of these differences? Is it well known to those in places with less restrictive rules that their cameras could get them in a lot of trouble if they take them with them when they take a road trip that passes through other EU countries? [1] https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/998528/Dash-cam-car-Europe-fines-prison https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/998528/Dash-cam-ca...
- detaro 7y ago
  Don't know dash cams specifically, but it's common knowledge that laws surrounding what's in your car (e.g. emergency kit) vary and you need to check up on that.
- fyfy18 7y ago
  It's basically impossible to know. Even laws which should be really clear, such and if and when you need winter tires are not clear. At the end of March I drove across Europe from south of Spain, and had summer tyres on. The weather conditions were good, so I was fairly confident I would be ok without winter tyres, but a lot of European countries have laws requiring then at certain points of the year. I knew in my destination country you needed winter tyres until April 1st, but I couldn't find anything clear on all the countries in-between. Austria was actually the toughest, my understanding is their laws are you need winter tires if the road conditions dictate you need them. In some cases snow chains can be used, but not on highways. But this was based on reading English forum posts from 10 years ago, so I have no idea if it's still correct. I tried to find something clear from an official authority (probably doesn't help I don't speak German) or an automobile association website, but couldn't.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

nickjj 7y ago

I wonder where the line is drawn when it comes to things like that. Yesterday I was walking on the side of the road and some girl was half way hanging out of the passenger window recording a video of the scenery. I was able to see her from a few hundred feet away. Eventually the car intersected with me and I was in the line of sight of the video for a second or 2. Of course I made a stupid pose to photo bomb her video which I found hilarious while continuing my walk home. But under GDPR, is she technically in violation for recording me without my consent? I can't imagine how any of that could really be enforced. What about all of those Youtubers who happen to record people in a busy place like NYC or Vegas. Do they really get written consent from 400-500 people in the background for 10 seconds of video?

Aengeuad 7y ago
The line is drawn at surveillance of a public place [0] and in this instance only in Austria, as other commentors have pointed out the laws may have changed in 2018 to allow for dashcams that continuously overwrite old footage but I can't verify that. It is not illegal to make recordings in a public place in Austria, although you may have some limitations on what you can do with that footage if it captured other people and those limitations may change depending on what was captured (i.e., whether it was incidental, or footage of a crowd). In Germany for instance dashcams are perfectly legal, you only have conditions on what you can do with that footage afterwards, for instance posting it on Youtube or social media is a big no-no, and unlike Austria you're likely to get a warning in Germany instead of a fine [1]. [0] https://helpv2.orf.at/stories/1717004/index.html https://helpv2.orf.at/stories/1717004/index.html [1] https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000092017999/erst-vier-strafen-wegen-dsgvo-seit-mai https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000092017999/erst-vier-str...
alkonaut 7y ago
This can vary between jurisdictions but in all jurisdictions i know, photographing someone in a public location is always legal and never requires consent. Whether publishing requires consent varies, in the normal case it does for commercial but not for journalistic purposes. Note that laws written this way usually distinguish “taking photos” from “surveillance” - so mounting the camera on a street corner immediately changes the legal context. This may be why dash cams fall into the surveillance category in some places.

detaro 7y ago

Some countries don't consider public space free-for-all for recordings, and have different balances between privacy and the interest in recordings. E.g. in Germany, legal dashcams require a trigger to keep a recording long-term, so no long-term recordings exist in the normal case, but in the case of e.g. a crash the interest of the car owner in evidence is fulfilled.

lone_haxx0r 7y ago
So, I assume that recording in public spaces is illegal in general and they make a specific exception to allow dash cams on the conditions mentioned?
- maxheadroom 7y ago
  >So, I assume that recording in public spaces is illegal in general and they make a specific exception to allow dash cams on the conditions mentioned? The act of recording isn't the problem but the retention of the data records. If you have no need to keep a recording of a day's video for any purposes, then that falls under the provisions of likely being exploited data (e.g.: being used to build a profile of a person's travels throughout the day, week, year, etc.). In the sense of the allowances, it's about balancing the need of the data's use (e.g.: in car accidents) versus the privacy impacts to other individuals (e.g.: you post your dashcam footage to YouTube and don't obfuscate faces or license plates). An example of this, pre-GDPR, was when Google was forced to obfuscate faces and license plates in Google Maps for Street View.
- atoav 7y ago
  It is a weird one in Germany. Generally you can record everything because of a law called Panoramafreiheit, however once you start to have discernible individuals on your photograph/video you need their consent, because individuals own the Bildrecht (”image rights”) to themselves, while you as the creator own the Urheberrecht (”creator rights”). And it needs both for a image to be taken legally. So you get their written consent, ask them if it is okay or take the risk that they will e.g. see themselves in your movie and force you to take it down. This fits with the general feeling that filming another person without asking is seen as extremely rude. The key here is that people need to be recognizable, so pictures of crowds usually don’t count. Certain architects can also forbid circulation of photographed versions of their building if it is central subject of the photograph — but I only know of one such thing. Note that this all was enshrined in law way before GDPR. Unless you stick your camera into other people’s faces without asking or plan to distribute your images on a bigger scale you will probably manage without ever hearing about these laws.