COMMUNITY OF OWNERS & VIDEO-SURVEILLANCE. WHAT IS BETTER IN ORDER TO COMPLY WITH THE LAW, CONTRACTING AN EXTERNAL VIDEO SURVEILLANCE SERVICE, OR THE COMMUNITY MAKING VIDEO SURVEILLANCE DIRECTLY?

21 Jan COMMUNITY OF OWNERS & VIDEO-SURVEILLANCE. WHAT IS BETTER IN ORDER TO COMPLY WITH THE LAW, CONTRACTING AN EXTERNAL VIDEO SURVEILLANCE SERVICE, OR THE COMMUNITY MAKING VIDEO SURVEILLANCE DIRECTLY?

The answer is that neither option alone is superior to the other in compliance.

The law perfectly allows both options and since both this law and the Spanish Data Protection Agency tell us that the hiring of an external video surveillance service or the installation of the cameras by a third party does not exempt the community from liability or compliance with regulations about protection of personal data, the reality is that whatever option we choose, the community can never be considered disjointed from that responsibility or what it entails. Having said that, it is also necessary to emphasize that the Law points among the:

obligations of the community of owners as sole responsible for the processing of personal data

that is obtained by video-recording to actively secure and verify the compliance with the data protection obligations of third parties commissioned or contracted by it for such processing (in our case the external video surveillance companies). It will therefore be necessary for a community to demonstrate that it performs this “surveillance” to the “surveyor” in order to prove that it is faithfully complying with the legal provisions and avoiding the risks of sanctions. Perhaps there is more than one who thinks, in the words of a Spanish saying, that “for that trip I do not need saddlebags” and that it is better to take care oneself of what you will have to supervise in any way if you order it to another.

Therefore, our advice will always be that the community manages and engages actively and directly in the processing of the data and images obtained, either through a continuous and creditable assessment by its staff about the security and protection if the processing and management of systems is carried directly by the community or through such continued and creditable assessment of systems, skills, and organizational measures, and in general compliance with the protection of data if the surveillance has been delegated to an external video surveillance company.

We finally advise any community of owners who have decided to directly carry out the handling of the video surveillance system that they enable a competent assistant professional who is expert on data protection legality, a function that in some cases will be very similar to that of the figure of the Data Protection Officer. This will ensure and protect the community against possible errors and non-compliance in general.