Illustrative image of the State Council. – BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
The Board of state Friday ordered a municipality in Essonne to stop using thermal cameras installed in schools to fight the spread of
Covid-19, sanctioning data processing without consent.
Referred by the League for Human Rights (LDH), the Council of State “orders the town of Lisses to cease the use of thermal cameras which had been deployed in schools”. He “considers that these clearly infringe the right to respect for the privacy of students and staff, unlike the fixed camera installed in the municipal building, the use of which is not compulsory”.
A victory “which has the vocation to make jurisprudence”
In the context of the spread of the new coronavirus epidemic, the town of Lisses – more than 7,500 inhabitants – had decided to install, as of April 17, thermal cameras, fixed and mobile, in administrative and office premises. entry to elementary schools. The League for Human Rights (LDH) denounced a “processing of personal data” operated “without informed consent”.
Last week, the Cnil, French gendarme of personal data, had already alerted the rapid and uncontrolled use of cameras, by communities or companies, intended to measure the temperature, to check the wearing of the mask or to ensure respect for social distancing, as part of the fight against Covid-19.
“This is a real victory which is intended to make jurisprudence (…) beyond the town of Lisses”, reacted the lawyer of the LDH, Patrice Spinosi. “European law imposed the solution. We cannot do anything with the new digital tools on the sole pretext of wanting to guarantee people’s health, “he told AFP.
At the hearing Tuesday, the various right mayor of Lisses, Thierry Lafon, and the lawyer of the commune, Me Claire Waquet, had defended a strictly local measure, taken “within the framework of the fight against an epidemic” to preserve employees municipal and school children. They noted that no parents of students had complained and stressed that there was “no data storage”, disputing a “processing of personal data”.
Infringement of privacy
However, it is this “processing” of data that the Council of State sanctions. The judge in summary proceedings notes that pupils and teachers “must obligatorily submit to this temperature measurement to access the establishment and that an abnormal result involves the obligation for them to leave the establishment”.
He “deduces from this that this collection of health data constitutes an automated processing of personal data within the meaning of the GDPR (general data protection regulations, reference text at European level). In the absence in particular of a text justifying the use of these cameras for reasons of public health and in the absence of the consent of the pupils and the staff, the conditions are not met to allow such processing of the data ”.
The judge therefore considers that the municipality of Lisses is “manifestly unlawful interference with the right to respect for the privacy of students and staff, which includes the right to the protection of personal data and the freedom to come and go”.
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