Taking Videos of Police Operations – An interference with the rights of police officers?

17 October 2019 – need2know

Our Partner Sonja Dürager, specialised amongst others in IT-law, trademark, copyright, data protection, and unfair competition, wrote an article in German: Taking Videos of Police Operations – An interference with the rights of police officers?

It is the spirit of our time to take photos of everything and everyone at every more or less interesting event and to distribute them on various platforms. Private recordings of police deployments also belong to it. What was previously reserved for the police using bodycams in case of need, now also reaches the hobby photographer. For proof purposes with critical situations this is comprehensible.  If the motives lie however only in the satisfaction of the sensationalism of the Youtube Community, this seems to be questionable opposite the individual policemen due to privacy related aspects. Recently, the Austrian Supreme Court had to assess such a situation (Supreme Court 27.6.2019, 6 Ob 6/19d), and decided that the recording as such was admissible, especially since the state authority would have to reckon with the fact that police force would be documented, but the publication violates the policeman’s right to his own image according to Section 78 UrhG.

Full Article in German

If you would like to receive future issues of need2know follow us on LinkedIn or please send an email to subscribe@bpv-huegel.com.

 

 

© 2026 bpv Hügel Rechtsanwälte

Our use of cookies

We use necessary and functionality cookies to make our site work. We only use analytics cookies to improve our website if you enable them. By using this tool for individual settings of the cookies, we will send a cookie to your device to remember your preferences.

For more detailed information about the cookies we use, see our Cookies Policy.

Necessary Cookies Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect the website functions.

Functionality Cookies

Functionality cookies allow users to customise how a website looks for them: they can remember usernames, language preferences and regions. We use functionality cookies for storing your user preferences and remembering if you have been to the site before so that messages intended for first-time users are not displayed to you. These cookies do not collect information about you that could be used for marketing purposes and do not remember where you have been on the Internet.

You may disable these cookies with the button, but you should be aware that any preferences will be lost and you will have to make them again on your next visit. It is also possible that the website will not work properly or you will lose some functionality.

Analytics cookies (including US providers)

"Web analytics cookies" collect aggregated information about user behaviour to improve our website. We would like to use such cookies from Google Analytics to improve our website by collecting and evaluating information about the use of our website. The provider of Google Analytics is Google LLC, which is based in the USA. The USA is not certified by the European Court of Justice as having an adequate level of data protection. In particular, there is a risk that your data may be accessed by US authorities for control and monitoring purposes and that no effective legal remedies are available against this. By activating the button under "Web analytics cookies (including from US providers)", you agree that we may set these cookies and that you also agree to the transfer of data to the USA. You can revoke your consent at any time via the cookie settings on our website.