Comment by wongarsu
8 hours ago
The easier way of phrasing it is "you can't record in public, except in certain circumstances". Those certain circumstances just happen to encompass most things reasonable people want to do.
In Europe there is very much an expectation of privacy in public. But that expectation is not absolute, it competes with various other rights and public interests.
For example you can make street photography without blurred faces, because art trumps privacy in this instance. If you start making photos of individuals instead of areas then privacy wins out again and you need consent. A surveillance camera is not creating art, so it doesn't have that excuse going for it and needs a really good reason to be pointed at public areas (and "I fear someone's going to break into my private home" is generally not a good enough reason). And even if you can set up the surveillance camera, operating it requires complying with the GDPR, which has a lot to say on that topic
Note the "I fear" is treated differently if you e.g. have to remove graffiti hate speech from your front door on a weekly basis. It's just about the "you better have a concrete reason to fear, pure abstract fear won't cut it", and as always, data minimization principles do apply.