Data protection for drone footage

If people are recognisable in an aerial image, two separate rights apply: the right to one’s own image (§ 22 KUG) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as soon as the image is stored, processed or published.

The general principle is that publishing images in which people are recognisable requires their consent – especially for commercial use. Exceptions include people appearing merely as incidental elements in a landscape or building image, or at meetings and processions, provided that individual people are not specifically highlighted.

Compared with conventional photography, drones further complicate the situation in two respects: they can capture perspectives that those affected do not expect, such as enclosed gardens or through windows, and they often record uninvolved third parties during a flight without them even noticing. Anyone systematically creating images containing personal data – for example during recurring surveying or inspection flights over inhabited areas – should have a plan for dealing with incidental images: make people unrecognisable (pixelation), delete the images or prevent them technically from being created in the first place.

A violation of the right to one’s own image may even constitute a criminal offence as an offence involving the taking of images under § 201a StGB if it concerns the highly personal sphere of life – for example, images taken in enclosed areas such as gardens or through windows.

For the copyright aspect – where buildings or structures, rather than people, appear in the image – please see our article Are photographs of buildings, squares and parks permitted?

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