Hey, spare me the bullshit. You know fully well that we are not on the same page. Recording all meetings at work by default for a regular office job is illegal and you have no chance to win the process if any employee sues in Germany. And that would be a costly loss, by the way. You might actually go to jail.
This is video calls. Maybe we are talking about different things? I was thinking an audio recording of a real life meeting in a real life office. In that case, I’d expect it to be clear meetings were being recorded and well known. If you don’t want to be recorded, register issues you want brought up in the meeting with someone else in the meeting and just don’t speak or don’t go.
In your article (English translation):
> Documentation by recording is only permissible without voluntarily declared consent if the interest in the recording outweighs the interest in the data protection of the recorded persons
This is a high bar in Germany, but certainly attainable in some situations. I suspect it is highly contextual.
Fair enough :) My work reality did not factor that possibility in.
I don't think it would change all that much. It might make it easier to justify the measure, but you would still have high bars to claim. In the end it would still be an unusual recording, which might negatively impact employees privacy and in a work context lead to conflict. As it is completely possible and way more common to just have text documentation, logs and meeting outcomes, I really am quite confident that even just a regular voice recording of meetings in a real office would not stand in court.
Also, "it's part of our process and employees have no say in it" as in parent's comment would be without any doubt not legal. Given the requirements you now saw I think we can agree on that now :)