Smart doorbells causing flood of privacy complaints

Last year, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) received 1,050 reports from citizens about smart doorbells and other security cameras filming more than is permitted under privacy legislation. A year earlier, it received 800 reports, the Volksrkant reports.

“Privacy is a fundamental right,” AP chairman Aleid Wolfsen said to the newspaper. “But because the entire country is now full of private cameras, that right is continuously violated.”

The number of doorbell cameras in the Netherlands has rapidly increased. In 2021, there were 640 thousand smart doorbells in the country, according to market researcher Multicsope. Last year, that increased to 1.2 million.

The AP follows up on reports by informing citizens about the rules and, if necessary, investigating on sight whether there’s a privacy violation. However, due to capacity issues and the many complaints, the AP can’t investigate many of the reports. Based on research it has done, the authority concluded that “the majority of video doorbells are there illegally” - they film part of the public space, which is not allowed.

This privacy violation is annoying to the locals living around it but is a goldmine for the police. The police regularly force Netherlands residents to give up footage recorded by their doorbell cameras for crime investigations.

There are now 314,000 private cameras registered with the police’s Camera in Image project, which shows the police where cameras are hanging if they are looking for video material. “It sometimes seems as if the police are actually encouraging putting up those cameras,” said Wolfsen. “That irritates us.”