Monitoring by camera devices on family houses has become a common element of property protection for individuals and legal entities, thanks to the availability of systems, easy installation, or the ease of use of the system itself in the form of a range of user-friendly applications.

Visual, audio or other data of a person recorded by a camera device is personal data. However, such data may not be subject to the protection of GDPR (2016/679) under certain conditions, because GDPR does not apply to the processing of personal data by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or domestic activity. Simply said, natural persons (note, not legal persons, nor natural persons-entrepreneurs) installing a camera system in their family house do not have to comply with the GDPR if they monitor only and exclusively their own private property (e.g. the interior or exterior of the family house and/or private land belonging to the house).

Therefore, neighbouring land, public areas (streets, roads) or common parts of a residential property (e.g. a shared corridor or shared entrance of a terraced housing development) must not be monitored. If the cameras also cover such areas, you would be considered as a controller and would have to adapt the monitoring to the GDPR rules and at the same time comply with all the obligations associated with it (e.g. to determine the proper legal basis for such monitoring, to comply with the information obligation, to take appropriate technical and organisational measures, etc.).

In this regard, it should be noted that if you have camera footage that covers only and exclusively your private property, but you would like to provide such footage to the police or publish it on the Internet, the provisions of the GDPR will already apply to you.

For more information on monitoring by camera devices, please refer to the guidelines of supervisory authorities, e.g. the Office for Personal Data Protection of the Slovak Republic HERE or the Office for Personal Data Protection of the Czech Republic HERE. If you are interested in finding out whether you meet the above exception in your case, or if you do not, what your obligations are, please do not hesitate to contact us.