The Supreme Court has issued a ruling that gives the green light to communities of owners to install security cameras in common areas if the objective is to protect the safety of neighbors. The civil judges have rejected the appeal of a Madrid resident who requested compensation of 2,500 euros because her community had installed cameras in the hallways of each floor to record acts of vandalism that had occurred in previous weeks. The measure, says the Supreme Court, is “suitable for the legitimate purpose of protecting the safety of residents and their property.”
The woman went to court to demand that the community of owners remove the surveillance cameras that they had placed on all floors of the building, claiming that they not only recorded the common areas but also that they could see who entered and left the houses, even the inside the homes.
The Supreme Court denies this main accusation: the cameras did not record images of the interior of the homes. “They only capture them in the common areas of the building,” explains the Civil Chamber. Placing security cameras in a building, the judges say, can affect the privacy of neighbors, for example if it is possible to recognize who enters and leaves different houses, something that affects privacy. But it is not “an absolute right” and you can know these data, even through the peepholes of other houses, or with a concierge service.
In this case, locating the cameras in common areas of each floor was justified, as also understood by the Spanish Data Protection Agency. It was agreed by the majority of the owners’ meeting and the need was justified “by the occurrence of acts of vandalism in the building prior to its installation, without it having even been alleged that there was another more moderate measure to achieve the indicated purpose.”
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