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Berlin Humboldt Forum: data saved despite "processing ban".
Photo: Henning Angerer / Hoch Zwei Stock / IMAGO
The Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BlnBDI) has identified "several violations" of data protection in a subsidiary of the Humboldt Forum.
This emerges from a statement that was exclusively available to SPIEGEL.
The process could have costly consequences.
Since the data processing "threatened to have serious consequences for those affected," the data protection authority has now initiated fine proceedings against Humboldt Forum Service GmbH.
According to SPIEGEL information, fines of up to four percent of annual sales or up to 20 million euros could be incurred.
The examination of whether a fine will be imposed and the amount also means that the procedure cannot be completed even after months.
In fact, the sword of Damocles continues to hang over the Humboldt Forum – and it hangs even lower over it.
humiliation and surveillance
Last year, in cooperation with the ZDF program »Frontal«, DER SPIEGEL uncovered a climate of fear in the Humboldt Forum that, according to employees, had already spread before the building opened.
A large number of employees of the Humboldt Forum Service GmbH - responsible for visitor service and security tasks - complained about humiliation and surveillance, described harassment up to the toilet ban.
The Humboldt Forum denied these and other allegations.
Nothing else could be denied.
It was also revealed that supervisors kept a list in which they described their employees in a disparaging way and also suggested salary cuts.
Even private information, such as on psychotherapy, was mentioned and interpreted against the employees.
Questions about a works council were also documented and were one of the criteria for classifying employees as »critical« or »very critical«.
A colleague, on the other hand, was »very social« – she was rated as »very critical«.
The Berlin data protection authority is now criticizing this storage of sensitive information "about the health of individual employees or their interest in a works council".
Elaborate test procedure
The data protection authority intervened as a result of the reporting and a complaint and examined allegations in a complex procedure.
This has not yet been concluded because of the question of fines, but the interim result is that personal data was stored "which is subject to a processing ban".
Although some of the information listed was provided by the employees themselves, this should not be processed by the employer either, according to the data protection authority.
Therefore, a fine procedure has now been initiated.
In 2021, the then Minister of State for Culture, who was responsible for the forum, already criticized the conditions and promised "unreserved clarification" - only that had no consequences.
The managing director of the responsible subsidiary was released and this release was also publicly announced.
But her second job at the higher-level Humboldt Forum Foundation has remained unaffected, to this day.
Employment lawyers consider this tricky.
One waits for the result of the data protection authority before deciding on further consequences, it was said in the past few months and this week at the Humboldt Forum.
But why take so much time?
The data protection authority says that those responsible have been informed about the new status - i.e. about the determination of the violations - but they did not have to wait for it.
Because: "A person responsible can freely decide which internal consequences are to be drawn from an alleged data protection violation." He can initiate this "independently" of the "outcome of a possible examination by a data protection supervisory authority".
According to the labor lawyer Michael Fuhlrott from the Fresenius University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg, the violations are too “serious” “to justify sanctions without a fine”.
In the assessment, however, it will be decisive "how the company cooperates with the authorities and admits mistakes and also creates remedies for the future".