New Case Law on Restrictions for Employee Monitoring in the Workplace in Germany
According to the German Federal Labor Court, Germany’s highest court for employment disputes, German employers are not allowed to monitor employees in the workplace without a concrete suspicion of a criminal violation or, in some cases, a serious breach of duty. This means that employer monitoring of an employee’s computer usage without a concrete suspicion, including the use of keylogging software that records all keyboard entries made at a desktop computer does not comply with German data privacy laws. Courts may exclude evidence obtained under violation of German data privacy laws from their proceedings.
