Studio Legale Pavan Website

The employer can install hidden cameras without informing the employees if he has the well-founded suspicion that they are robbing him and if the losses sustained for their conduct are huge. This is established by the European Court of Human Rights with a ruling dated 17 October 2019.

The case concerned the events of a Spanish supermarket dating back to 2009, where, due to inconsistencies in the count of goods in the warehouse, security cameras had been installed, partly visible and partly hidden, to thwart the perpetrators of the theft. It was the hidden cameras that took over the cashiers to carry out various thefts of the goods, a conduct paid by 14 workers with as many letters of dismissal.

The disputed redundancies were considered legitimate by the Spanish justice despite the Iberian legislation provides, like the Italian one, that the personnel be informed of the presence of video surveillance systems. Some workers then resorted to the Court of Strasbourg for violation of the art. 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights which protects the private life of individuals.

With the sentence of October 17, the ECHR established that the due disclosure to the personnel could be omitted given the reasonable suspicion of a serious fault of the workers and the extent of the damage they had caused (and would presumably have further perpetrated) to damage to the company. The ECHR therefore considered that the evaluation of the Spanish togates did not exceed the discretionary margin granted to them where they considered proportionated the short occult monitoring performed by the employer compared to the existing privacy rights of workers.