Barrister warns that dashcams could breach GDPR rules

William Bulman

William Bulman BL told the Irish Independent that the indefinite storage of footage recorded from a car dashboard could breach the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

His warning came after AXA Ireland and Nextbase announced plans to offer AXA customers a 10 per cent discount on dashcams.

Mr Bulman said: “There is clearly an issue. Even though these cameras are programmed to over-write the footage after a specific period, which is usually quite short depending on the card size, computer technicians can retrieve over-written data.

“Even though nothing is stored for any great length of time, GDPR is a potential issue.”

He added: “If footage is to be stored for a longer period of time - or permanently stored so that it could be used for legal purposes either in a pending civil or criminal court case - then serious questions about how the data was stored arise.

“There are also issues such as the storage of data containing a person’s personal details ranging from the registration number of their vehicle potentially through to identifying where they may live.”