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Comment by nickjj | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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

[1] https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000092017999/erst-vier-str...

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.

Depends heavily on the jurisdiction. In Germany, there would be two parts to this; Panoramarecht (Right to Panorama) and some general opinions of judges.

Panoramarecht means that the girl can film into a crowd or public space for her own reasons if she wants to. As long as she doesn't put one person in the center of the image or focuses on them in other ways, it's generally permitted.

There is also some more general law handling, if you posed for the picture, judges would generally agree that this constitutes consent to be recorded (a more recent case would the famous Angry German Hat Incident, in which a very angry right-wing man walked up to a camera team to complain about being recorded; the judge ruled that the camera team was justified in recording at first due to Panoramarecht and the man walking up to them, knowing they were recording, rightfully so, constituted consent to be recorded further).

Posing to a camera or walking up to it basically means consent in germany; you noticed the camera and you did take actions that would put you center in the image or make you a focus point.

As far as i understand this doesn't fall under GDPR unless the video is published because of personal use. If she publishes the video, you have the right to ask her to take it down/remove your PII from the video. But there might be additional local privacy laws that change things and GDPR has nothing to do with it.

As we learned from this listing, the video's controller is required to notify the subject that he appears in the video before processing it. If the controller does not have enough information to contact the subject, he cannot fulfill that requirement, and is therefore noncompliant.

I would disagree because "The rules don’t apply to data processed by an individual for purely personal reasons or for activities carried out in one's home, provided there is no connection to a professional or commercial activity." Obviously when you put the video out in the world those rules start to apply (especially if you make money from that - ads etc.). I don't see how GDPR applies if i take pictures on my vacation and show them to my family/friends after (this is purely personal use). Even in case of surveillance (dashcam, cctv) you don't need to get consent from every person, you just need to inform them (signage) that surveillance is happening.

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