cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/12975112

A CCTV company owned by the municipality of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, had sued the Slovenian Data Protection Authority (DPA) in order to block the release of municipal CCTV system data. But the ruling of an administrative court made it clear that making the CCTV system data available is in the public’s interest, not just because the system was paid for with public funds but also because the citizen have the right to know where and how the municipality is surveilling them.

During the hearings of this case, the municipally-owned company used several bad faith arguments to block the release of the data under the local FOIA law. First, they tried to shift the responsibility to the municipality, which previously named the company as the relevant actor. The company then claimed that the data set is too big to compile. Other ineffectual arguments used were: the release of the data will have negative consequences for crime prevention and that the data was not in the public interest.