Two people went to court because their neighbour installed CCTV in a public stairwell, but the Court of Second Instance (TSI) ruled that the installation did not violate any privacy law, the Court of Final Appeal (TUI) said in a statement on Monday.
According to the statement, C, whose gender was not revealed in the statement, installed a CCTV camera outside his or her flat facing a public stairwell, so that the police could monitor the household’s home quarantine. However, the statement added, A and B were not happy with C’s installation because it recorded every single person’s entry and exit when they were using the public stairwell. The statement pointed out that A and B took the matter to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), and complained that C did not get the consent of the building’s residents before installing the CCTV camera, which, they argued, violated their image rights as well as Penal Code Article 186 – “invasion of private life” – and Article 191 – “illegal recordings and photographs”.
The statement noted that, however, initially the court ruled that C’s action did not construe as a violation of image rights. Therefore, the statement said, the criminal prosecution decided to reject A and B’s accusation. The statement underlined that A and B disagreed with the court’s ruling and appealed to the Court of Second Instance.
The statement said that after a panel of judges reviewed the evidence, it did not find any flaw in the previous ruling. The statement pointed out that even though A and B thought that C’s action intruded into, and invaded, their private lives, the building’s stairwell is not a private area. The statement underlined that as the police asked C to hand in the recordings from his or her CCTV, according to local law, C’s action “was impossible” to have violated the two articles of the Penal Code. The statement concluded that C’s actions – installing CCTV and handing recordings to the police – were legal, i.e., A and B’s appeal was rejected by the court.
