If you were disciplined after monitoring attendance with CCTV... Supreme Court "Violation of Personal Information Act"

[Financial News] If a daycare center director monitored a childcare teacher's work attitude through closed-circuit (CC) TV and passed it on to a disciplinary officer, it can be punished for violating the Personal Information Protection Act, according to the Supreme Court's judgment. It is considered an act of using personal information even if the content of the video was conveyed, not the video itself.
According to the legal community on the 28th, the Supreme Court's 2nd division (Chief Justice Kwon Young-jun) overturned the lower court's acquittal of daycare center director A and the daycare corporation, who were charged with violating the Personal Information Protection Act, and sent the case back to the Seoul Eastern District Court.
A, who runs a daycare center in Songpa-gu, Seoul, checked CCTV footage in July 2021 to verify whether childcare teacher B used a mobile phone during working hours. A identified that B used the mobile phone several times during work and conveyed this fact to the corporation's disciplinary officer as a matter of 'non-compliance with work instructions'.
The prosecution charged A and the corporation with violating the Personal Information Protection Act, claiming they used the victim's personal information beyond the scope of the collection purpose or for purposes other than intended.
The first trial acquitted A and the corporation. The first trial court judged that the information A conveyed to the corporation "does not correspond to the victim's name, resident registration number, or video, i.e., information obtained as a personal information processor 'itself'" and "does not correspond to information that can identify a specific individual such as the victim's personal details."
The second trial also maintained the original judgment, stating that it cannot be punished for violating the Personal Information Protection Act, but the Supreme Court's judgment was different.
The Supreme Court ruled that "the use of personal information includes not only the act of using collected personal information as it is but also the act of processing, editing, or extracting information from collected personal information" and "whether it corresponds to the use of personal information should be judged by looking at the entire series of actions of using personal information."
Furthermore, "using CCTV video information as data for disciplinary review by A is an act of using personal information, as it is an act of using CCTV video, which is personal information, without transferring the control and management rights of personal information to others," and "there is no reason to view it differently just because the information conveyed by A is not the video itself but information extracted from it," it added.

jisseo@fnnews.com Minji Seo Reporter