D: Mass screening costs Deutsche Bahn AG 1.1 million Euros

Category: Nachrichten
By: O. Gönner - 2B Advice GmbH - the privacy benchmark

As was reported in the German newspaper, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, on 10/19/2009, the data protection officer for Berlin, Alexander Dix, has issued a penalty notice against Deutsche Bahn AG, Germany's national rail operator, for the sum of 1.1 million Euros ($1.6 million).

As part of its fight against corruption, Deutsche Bahn's internal auditing division screened 173,000 of the 240,000 employees and their relatives over several years. The aim of this screening was to determine whether employees were maintaining contact with suppliers, providing bogus companies with lucrative contracts or profiting in other damaging ways.

 

Berlin's data protection officer accused the train operator as early as 2009 of several significant breaches of the Federal Data Protection Act (Budensdatenschutzgesetz). With this accusation, he assumed that the screenings that were carried out were not in line with legal requirements. As they set out in a statement from April 22, 2009 on their website, Deutsche Bahn maintains that the data protection officer's allegations are unfounded. Rather, the company claims that factual and legal errors have been made.

 

The company has 14 days to raise objections to the penalty notice.

 

As a result of this incident, Deutsche Bahn AG has followed in the footsteps of the German telecoms firm, Deutsche Telekom AG, by creating a specific position on its board for a "compliance, data protection and legal director"; the new director will deal with all data protection issues within the company. This position has been occupied by Gerd Becht, a lawyer, since 10/16/2009.

 

The problem of fighting corruption has not been made easier for companies with the amendment to employee data protection legislation. § 32 of the amended Federal Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz), allows for a screening of employees in principle only in the case of recorded factual indications that an employee has already committed an offence. However, as part of the fight against corruption, companies must prevent crimes before they are actually committed. Companies are being left on their own in current legal debates, since there is no consistent interpretation of § 32 of the amended Federal Data Protection Act. Only future judgements can bring legal certainty.

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