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SECURITY

Aldi staff ‘filmed women shoppers bending over’

Employees at Aldi Süd secretly filmed female customers – especially those wearing short skirts and revealing tops – and swapped the videos among themselves, according to allegations published in Der Spiegel.

Published: 29 April 2012 12:33 CEST
Aldi staff 'filmed women shoppers bending over'
Photo: DPA

It said the videos zoomed in on women with short skirts and revealing tops as they leaned over to pick up food in the frozen section or bent down in other sections of the store to pick up an item. The videos were then burned onto CDs and traded among the employees, the report said.

The magazine said the company would not comment on the specific claims but did say that mistakes may have been made in individual cases.

The report said employees in Frankfurt am Main, Dieburg and other stores in the Hesse region were mainly behind the secret videos.

Aldi Süd said it would take “appropriate disciplinary consequences” should it determine that rules have been violated.

The report said the company employs surveillance cameras in the cashier’s area, even though there have been legal issues with this. Additionally in certain cases detectives have been employed to install mobile mini camera systems. This practice is also legally debatable as well, the report said.

The videos show the EC-card units and also film workers in the storage and delivery areas, the magazine wrote. Peter Schaar, the federal official in charge of data protection, said he has issues with this.

Aldi Süd argues that the cameras are in a secure position in the cashier’s area and do not record customer’s PIN numbers. The videos made available to Der Spiegel however clearly show the EC card terminal used to check out those who pay with the card, the magazine said.

The company also said that the cameras were needed to “protect our employees, customers and delivery personnel from dangerous situations and robberies.” They are used as “a prevention and protection” for the company’s property, Aldi Süd said.

The situation is very different for Aldi-Nord, the magazine wrote. That division only employs security cameras in stores that have experienced a lot of robberies – and the company never uses cameras in the cashiers’ area. Filming the registers and the PIN numbers is “strictly prohibited,” the company told Der Spiegel.

The two companies belong to the same holding company but are run independently.

The Local/mw

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SECURITY

Swedish Huawei ban is legal, court rules

A Swedish ban on Chinese telecoms company Huawei was confirmed in court on Tuesday, citing the country's security as a just reason for banning its equipment in a 5G rollout.

Published: 23 June 2021 07:14 CEST
Swedish Huawei ban is legal, court rules
Photo: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

The administrative court in Stockholm ruled that the decision of the Swedish telecoms authority, PTS, to ban the use of equipment from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE in a new Swedish 5G telecom network last October — a move that irked Beijing — was legal.

Equipment already installed must also be removed by January 1st, 2025.

“Sweden’s security is an important reason and the administrative court has considered that it’s only the security police and the military that together have a full picture when it comes to the security situation and threats against Sweden,” judge Ulrika Melin said in a statement.

Huawei denounced the ruling, but did not say whether it would appeal.

“We are of course noting that there has been no evidence of any wrongdoings by Huawei which is being used as basis for this verdict, it is purely based on assumption,” Kenneth Fredriksen, the company’s vice-president for Central, Eastern Europe and the Nordic region, told AFP.

Huawei will now evaluate the decision and the “see what kind of actions we will take to protect our rights,” Fredriksen added.

After the UK in the summer of 2020, Sweden became the second country in Europe and the first in the EU to explicitly ban Huawei from almost all of the network infrastructure needed to run its 5G network.

Beijing had warned that PTS’ decision could have “consequences” for the Scandinavian country’s companies in China, prompting Swedish telecom giant and Huawei competitor Ericsson to worry about retaliation.

“We will continue to be available to have constructive dialogues with Swedish authorities to see if we can find pragmatic ways of taking care of security and at the same time keeping an open and fair market like Sweden has always been,” Fredriksen said.

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