ÚOOÚ reconsidered its position on cameras in apartment buildings

Prague - According to the Office for Personal Data Protection (ÚOOÚ), owners of apartment buildings may monitor the entrance doors to individual apartments with recording cameras only in exceptional cases and with the consent of their residents. More lenient regulations apply to monitoring other common areas, including the entrance doors to the building. The office announced this today in a new position statement, taking into account existing findings and decisions of the Supreme Administrative Court.

"Based on current practice, the office has reassessed and unified the conditions for camera monitoring in cases that do not pose significant issues and, when all given rules are met, do not improperly interfere with privacy," said ÚOOÚ spokesperson David Pavlát.

The office considers monitoring areas such as basements and attics, garages, stroller rooms, bike storage rooms, mailroom spaces, and the exterior of the building and its immediate surroundings to be a proportionate intervention. Similar regulations also usually apply to the entrance doors to the building, entrance hallways to elevators and stairwells, as well as elevators and staircases.

Monitoring these spaces generally interferes with privacy to a reasonable extent, considering other parameters of the camera system, and from the perspective of the principles of purposeful and proportionate data processing, it does not pose significant issues, stated the ÚOOÚ.

According to the office, monitoring specific apartments may lead to serious violations of the right to protect one's private and personal life. "It can only be carried out in exceptional and justified cases, and only with the consent of the residents of the affected apartments," the office affirmed.

The introduction of a camera system in the building must also be approved by all residents of the building, according to ÚOOÚ. A majority resolution of the owners' association or housing cooperative would not suffice to implement the camera project. Visitors to the building must be informed of its existence via an informational sign. Footage from the cameras should generally be stored for seven days to two weeks and secured against unauthorized access.