Parking offenders reported: 700 euro fine for snitching

Well meant, badly done

Actually, he just wanted to help: A man from Saxony discovered an incorrectly parked car and reported it to the authorities via the "weg.li" platform. As proof, he uploaded a photo - including the license plate and... the passenger's face. This proved to be his undoing, as BILD reported.

The Dresden Higher Regional Court has now ruled that this was a clear violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The receipt came promptly: 100 euros in compensation to the person pictured and a whopping 627.13 euros in legal fees. The bottom line is over 700 euros - for a single photo.

Data protection beats a sense of order

The judges made it clear that anyone who takes and forwards photos with recognizable faces is treading on thin ice - even if the intention is good. In this case, a picture without a face would have been sufficient to document the parking violation. This is what the so-called principle of data minimization prescribes: Only collect as much personal data as is absolutely necessary.

And something else also played a role: the person concerned did not know for months where the photo was stored and who had access to it. The court also considered this to be a serious violation of the right to informational self-determination.

The ruling goes even further: the man must not only delete the submitted image, but all copies - even on private devices or in cloud storage.

Reporting platforms under pressure?

With the ruling, popular online reporting platforms such as "weg.li" are now also coming under the spotlight. This is because many users may not even know that they could violate data protection rules with an ill-considered click - and thus be asked to pay themselves.

The legal gray area is getting smaller and smaller. Those who report violations are caught between civic duty and data protection risk. And even if parking offenders often cause trouble: photos with faces or other personal features can have expensive consequences - even if they were taken with a clear conscience.

Comment: When the helper becomes the perpetrator

This judgment shows how absurd reality can sometimes be. Someone wants to enforce the rules - and is punished themselves. Of course data protection is important. But when the protection of personal rights suddenly undermines the sense of order, something is going wrong.

Anyone reporting incorrectly parked cars in future will have to think more about the photo angle, image detail and pixelation than about the actual offense. That is a deterrent. And that cannot be in the interests of a functioning society. The right to data protection should not become a free pass for rule-breakers.