Volkswagen According to a judgment, data protection has not taken into account when dealing with the diesel scandal. A complaint from the car maker against several warnings from the Lower Saxony data protection officer was only partially successful. VW was also allowed to name the names of employees from the USA Supervisors Larry Thompson (79) sent in, the Hanover Administrative Court judged after more than six hours of hearing. However, the group had not sufficiently informed those affected beforehand.
The state data protection officer had accused the car company that he had violated data protection when dealing with the diesel scandal from 2015. In 2023, he had given a total of five warnings against which VW now defended himself in court. In two points, the court agreed with the car company, in three points to the data protection officer. (Az.: 10 A 4017/23) The judgment is not yet final, both sides can still appeal.
VW had disclosed the names of 22 employees
Specifically, it was about the transfer of data to the US supervisor Larry Thompson, which was used after the scandal was exposed, and to the later appointed examiner of the US environmental protection authority EPA. Among other things, the state data protection officer had complained that VW had also disclosed the names of 22 employees.
The court contradicted this point. VW was able to demonstrate a legitimate interest and also made a balancing of interests before the names were disclosed. The complaint also had no inventory due to the allegedly insufficient encryption of emails to the US supervisor. The encryption used by VW was sufficient, the court said.
On the other hand, two warnings were confirmed due to insufficient information from the employees concerned about the passing on of data and a lack of documenting during exchange with the EPA tester. According to the court, VW had disclosed more than 64,000 documents as part of the US investigations that ran from 2017 to 2022.
The diesel scandal had come to light in autumn 2015 after manipulations during the exhaust gas measurements on VW diesel engines were blown up in the USA. Instead of the use of more expensive exhaust technology, VW had manipulated the measured values using hidden software codes. These ensured that tests were fully cleaned, but occurred many times the emissions in road operations.