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. Civil judges rejected the appeal of a Madrid woman who sought compensation of 2,500 euros because her community had installed cameras in the corridors of each floor to record acts of vandalism that occurred in previous weeks. The measure, according to the Supreme Court, is “adapted to the legitimate aim 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 they had placed on all floors of the building, claiming that they not only recorded common areas but also could see who was entering and leaving the houses, even the interior of the houses.
The Supreme Court denies this main accusation: the cameras did not record images of the interior of the houses. “They only capture them in the common areas of the building,” explains the Civil Chamber. Placing security cameras in a building, judges say, can affect the privacy of neighbors, for example if it is possible to recognize who enters and leaves different houses, which affects privacy. But this is not “an absolute right” and you can know this data, even through the peepholes of other houses, or from a concierge service.
In this case, the location of the cameras in the common areas of each floor was justified, as also understood by the Spanish Data Protection Agency. It was accepted by the majority of the owners’ assembly and the necessity was justified “by the occurrence of acts of vandalism in the building before its installation, without it even being alleged that there was another more moderate measure to achieve the indicated goal. .”
