GDPR: German Laptop Retailer Fined $12.6M For Video-Monitoring Employees

The data regulator for the German state of Lower Saxony has fined a local laptop retailer a whopping $12.6 million for keeping its employees under constant video surveillance at all times for the past two years without a legal basis. From a report: The penalty represents one of the largest fines imposed under the 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) not only in Germany but across Europe as well. The recipient is notebooksbilliger.de AG (doing business as NBB), an online e-commerce portal and retail chain dedicated to selling laptops and other IT supplies. The State Commissioner for Data Protection (LfD) for the state of Lower Saxony said that the company installed two years ago a video monitoring system inside its warehouses, salesrooms, and common workspaces for the purpose of preventing and investigating thefts and tracking product movements. Officials said the video surveillance system was active at all times, and recordings were saved for as much as 60 days in the company's database.

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