Court of Amsterdam decision demonstrates “threshold for use of fingerprints is high”

The Court of Amsterdam (‘the Court’) issued, on 15 August 2019, its decision on Case 7728204 CV VERZ 19-9686, where it upheld the choice of an employee of Manfield Schoenen BV, a retail company, who refused to provide their fingerprint for a newly introduced system of finger scan authorisation for cash registers.

The Decision highlights that Article 29 of the Act Implementing the GDPR (‘UAVG’) allows the processing of biometric data, such as fingerprints for the purpose of unique identification if the same is a necessity to fulfil authentication or security purposes. In addition, the Decision also notes that the processing of such biometric data is forbidden under Article 9(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Source: Netherlands: Court of Amsterdam decision demonstrates “threshold for use of fingerprints is high”