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Comment by dirkt | Hacker News Reader

See other comment: This court decision now will help a lot if the employees now file for civil damages. But that's a separate case.

And given that basically all bigger German companies have a works council [1], this is really really likely to happen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council

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Fines going to the state in Germany is actually a problem imho. The damages you can expect for this are laughable, 40k is a typical payment to the family for wrongful death (cost of burial plus anguish). For video surveilance at the workplace you can expect a few hundred bucks at most, if the court even takes the case and doesn't dismiss it outright as minor.

If there were punitive damages awarded to the victims, a lot more illegal behaviour would be properly prosecuted. Officials like the state data protection officer are intentionally understaffed, so they only prosecute the most egregious problems. Private citizens and their attorneys could take up the slack if it were financially viable.

>Officials like the state data protection officer are intentionally understaffed, so they only prosecute the most egregious problems. Private citizens and their attorneys could take up the slack if it were financially viable.

I can assure that this is not an issue for Germany. If anything they are overstaffed based on the false and egregious bullshit I have had to pay lawyers to get overturned.

That sounds like a highway towards a system where only the ones who can afford (in terms of time and many) persecution get justice. With a nice dose of second order effects you usually get from a "everybody sues everybody for everything because you may get rich system". Reminds me of a certain "justice" system on the other side of the pond.

The solution to weak law enforcement is to give more power to the law enforcement, not to a selected class of privileged people.

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