Switzerland's Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) on November 5, 2026 published the full text of a decision ordering BLT Baselland Transport AG, the Oberwil-based bus and tram operator, to stop recording passengers with body cameras and to delete or destroy everything those cameras have captured. The decision, dated September 29, 2026 and signed by Commissioner Adrian Lobsiger, finds that no federal law gives the company a sufficient legal basis for the cameras. BLT has appealed to the Federal Administrative Court. Until that court rules, the order is not final, and the cameras remain in use.

The reasoning reaches well beyond one regional operator. According to the FDPIC, the provision on which more than 130 licensed Swiss transport companies base their surveillance, Article 55 of the Passenger Transport Act, was written about 20 years ago with fixed, silent video cameras in mind. Devices that record voices, travel with staff and could be accessed in real time fall outside it. The authority says only Parliament can authorise them, and it points to a Federal Council consultation, open until November 16, 2026, that would allow body cameras on a temporary basis for five years.

In Short

Switzerland's privacy regulator told a bus and tram company near Basel that its ticket inspectors may not film and record passengers with cameras worn on their bodies, and that it has to delete the footage. The regulator says the law the company relied on only covers ordinary security cameras, so Parliament has to approve cameras worn by staff before anyone on Swiss public transport can use them. The company has appealed, so nothing changes until a court decides, and the government is separately preparing temporary rules that would allow such cameras for five years.

What the order requires

The operative part of the decision, issued under Article 51(1) of the Federal Act on Data Protection (DSG), contains three orders. First, BLT is "required to immediately cease the processing of personal data resulting from the use of body cameras and any subsequent processing of personal data obtained in this manner, and to delete or destroy all personal data generated during such processing within 30 days." Second, it must confirm the end of that processing in writing to the FDPIC within seven days of the order becoming final. Third, it must confirm the deletion or destruction of all the data within 40 days of the decision becoming final.

No fine is attached. The order is administrative, and it is suspended. The decision carries a notice that it "was appealed to the Federal Administrative Court and is not yet final." The decision allowed 30 days for an appeal to the court in St. Gallen. The FDPIC's update of November 5 states that BLT has lodged an appeal, that proceedings are pending and that the decision has not entered into force. The update does not give the date the appeal was filed. The decision is published in German only; passages quoted here are in English translation.

The FDPIC first announced the outcome on October 1, 2026 under the headline "Bodycams - EDÖB untersagt der BLT Baselland Transport AG Datenbearbeitung," which translates as the FDPIC prohibiting BLT's data processing. The full reasoning, set out in 44 numbered paragraphs, became public only five weeks later.

How the cameras work at BLT

The facts section of the decision draws on BLT's own internal rules, a document titled "Guidelines on the Use of BODY CAMS at BLT." The cameras are worn by staff of the company's internal security and control service, who count as security personnel under the Federal Act on the Security Services of Public Transportation Companies (BGST). According to the decision, these employees receive basic training, instruction on the legal framework and mandatory annual refresher courses.

Technically, the devices sit in a standby mode in which they record video and audio for a maximum of 30 seconds. Those sequences are "continuously overwritten and not saved." Recording proper starts only when a member of staff activates the camera. Under Article 5 of the guidelines, staff must start recording during stops or checks of private individuals if they believe a criminal offence "has been committed or could be committed and/or that a physical or verbal escalation is imminent." They must then tell the people involved, verbally, that recording has begun. Checks are carried out only in teams.

The guidelines also set transparency rules. Staff wearing cameras must be identifiable, for example by an armband or ID badge. People nearby are meant to know when recording is under way through a warning tone when the device switches on, a red-and-blue flashing indicator light, a red indicator light, or a combination. Covert use is prohibited. Article 2 lists four purposes: to prevent violent or verbal assaults, to document the course of an escalation, to assess the behaviour of those involved and to document criminal offences.

Who sees the footage? Only the designated "video operator," which for the public order and inspection service is the chief operating officer and a deputy.

The cameras that were already there

Body cameras are not BLT's only surveillance. Its buses and trams carry stationary video systems, which, the decision says, record "comprehensively, nonstop" and store personal data of passengers. BLT presented the body cameras as a targeted complement to those systems, a tool for de-escalating conflicts, protecting employees and preserving evidence. Compared with stationary cameras, body cameras "result in significantly less data, but of higher quality," according to the company's position as summarised in the decision. That is, in effect, an argument from data minimisation: fewer recordings, made only when needed.

The FDPIC did not accept that the two systems could be assessed separately. Through its surveillance systems combined, it says, BLT records more than 150,000 people a day, a figure taken from the company's own website.

How the case unfolded

The timeline in the decision is short. On February 17, 2026, the FDPIC learned that BLT had equipped its inspection staff with body cameras and "immediately demanded that the company cease their use." Two days later, on February 19, BLT replied that it would not. It cited its own investigations, in particular an expert opinion it had commissioned, which concluded that the cameras were lawful. BLT said it would keep using them because of its responsibility for protecting its employees.

By letter of February 24, 2026, the FDPIC opened an investigation on its own initiative under Article 49 of the DSG, on the basis of information from the media. Its public notice, which did not name the company, is dated February 26. On May 4 the authority sent BLT its account of the facts for comment. BLT asked on May 22 for more time, received an extension to June 8, and filed its statement at the end of that period together with what the FDPIC calls "comprehensive supporting documents." The decision followed on September 29.

Accounts of the cameras' buffer differ. Swiss broadcaster SRF reported on February 18 that standby footage was overwritten every two minutes, and that BLT had deactivated the standby mode as a precaution. BLT's statement of February 27 and the decision both give 30 seconds as the maximum. According to Netzwoche, staff had been wearing the cameras since the end of January.

Why a private company is treated as a federal body

The first legal question was which rules apply at all. BLT is a company organised under private law. It operates, however, under a passenger transport concession granted by the federal government under Article 6 of the Passenger Transport Act (PBG), and it is bound by the transport obligation in Article 12 of that act. The FDPIC concludes that BLT "performs an administrative function on behalf of the federal government" and is therefore a federal body within the meaning of the DSG in the area covered by its concession.

That classification matters. Federal bodies may process personal data only on a legal basis, under Articles 33 and following of the DSG, and the requirements tighten for sensitive data. The decision rests on those provisions throughout; it does not address private companies that hold no federal concession.

The second question was what kind of data the cameras produce. Under Article 5(c)(5) of the DSG, data on administrative and criminal proceedings or sanctions counts as personal data requiring special protection. Because BLT's cameras exist to document escalations and offences, and because recordings are meant to be handed to law enforcement, the FDPIC places them in that category.

A serious infringement

From there the decision assesses how deeply the surveillance cuts into passengers' rights. The FDPIC weighs the body cameras together with the stationary systems, since both rely on the same provision. Its conclusion is that the combination amounts to "a serious infringement upon the personality rights and fundamental rights to personal freedom and informational self-determination" protected by Articles 10 and 13 of the Federal Constitution.

Part of the reasoning concerns what passengers can understand. "For passengers, it is generally not easy to understand when, by whom, and for what purposes recordings of their faces and voices are used," the decision reads. Different sensors may record at the same time and be configured differently from one operator to the next. Through the combination of image and audio sensors and the "resulting lack of transparency regarding overlapping recordings and surveillance purposes," BLT "exerts surveillance pressure on passengers associated with a 'chilling effect,' which makes it difficult for them to move and express themselves freely and autonomously," according to the FDPIC.

Audio adds a separate layer. The decision notes that voice recordings bring in the criminal-law protection of Article 179ter of the Swiss Criminal Code, which covers the unauthorised recording of conversations.

What the law has to say

A serious infringement needs a basis in formal law, meaning a statute passed by Parliament, under Article 36(1) of the Constitution. For federal bodies processing sensitive data, Article 34(2)(a) of the DSG imposes the same requirement, and the statute must list the categories of sensitive data concerned. Only categories "indispensable for the fulfillment of a statutory task may be processed," according to the decision.

The FDPIC then quotes the Federal Supreme Court (BGE 147 I 478) on how precise such a law must be: "Serious infringements of fundamental rights require a clear and precise basis in the law itself." The court allowed that vague terms are sometimes unavoidable and that police measures against hard-to-foresee threats may require compromises on precision. The FDPIC did not see that latitude extending to this case.

A 20-year-old provision, read narrowly

Article 55(1) of the PBG says transport companies may install video surveillance to protect passengers, operations and infrastructure. Everything in the case turns on two words in that sentence.

The first is "video surveillance." Given the severity of the intrusion, the FDPIC says the term must be read restrictively. It undisputedly covers "stationary recording systems that locally store silent recordings of moving images," which can be viewed only after an incident, for example on a production order from law enforcement, and only with manual authorisation. Could it be stretched to mobile cameras that record sound and might be checked in real time to assess a developing conflict or alert the transit police? "In the opinion of the FDPIC, this is not the case."

The second is "protection of passengers." The FDPIC reads it alongside Article 55(5), under which "recordings shall be disclosed only to law enforcement authorities or to authorities to which the companies report incidents or assert legal claims." From that link it concludes that protection means the investigation of criminal offences after the fact, not their prevention. Reading it otherwise would put everyday friction between staff and passengers on the same footing as the much rarer incidents that become crimes. "The fact that everyday incidents involving abusive passengers are perceived as stressful by BLT staff does not alter this conclusion," the decision states.

History offered no help either. In its message on Railway Reform 2 of February 23, 2005, the Federal Council said passengers had an interest in their data being handled by licensed transport companies according to uniform principles. Real-time surveillance lay outside what lawmakers considered at the time, the FDPIC says. "Audio recordings, on the other hand, would likely have been conceivable even 20 years ago, but are likewise not mentioned in the text."

Nor would an interpretation based on the law's purpose work. The provision is too terse to reveal what conditions lawmakers would have set for body cameras had they known present-day technology, particularly cameras combined with stationary systems whose signals could "trigger automated alarms" using algorithms or artificial intelligence. The FDPIC adds that the transmission of biometric data, given current capabilities for automated facial recognition and voice recognition, "would pose unacceptable risks to fundamental rights for public transportation users as long as the legislature fails to establish adequate regulatory frameworks."

The decision does not say that BLT's cameras transmit live or run any automated analysis. BLT said on October 1 that nothing is streamed live. The FDPIC's point concerns what the legal text would permit if it were read broadly, not what BLT does.

A chief operating officer as rule-maker

The ordinance below Article 55, the Ordinance on Video Surveillance in Public Transportation (VüV-ÖV), was adopted by the Federal Council about 20 years ago, according to the decision, and does not mention body cameras either. Its Article 3(1) lets companies decide on the use of "video recording devices." BLT treated that as sufficient: in February, the company described a body camera as technically a video device under the ordinance.

The FDPIC sees the gap differently. BLT's guidelines run to 17 articles. They specify the areas of deployment (Article 3.2), when recording starts (Articles 3.4 and 3.5) and how recordings are used (Articles 4.1 to 4.6). Both the review of footage and approval of the guidelines rest with the chief operating officer. As a result, the decision says, the processing of personal data by body cameras is "largely determined by the person serving as the 'Chief Operating Officer.'"

That, in the FDPIC's view, cannot stand. The use of body cameras may not, "without sufficient guidelines from the legislature," be regulated "by the transportation industry as a whole, by an individual transportation company, or ordered by an individual officer of such a company." Parliament must set out how, to what extent and for which exhaustively listed purposes new forms of surveillance are used on public transport.

The authority also raises a structural concern. "If each of the more than 130 transportation companies were able to regulate the use of any surveillance measures it deemed appropriate, this would lead to a patchwork of regulations and enforcement practices," the decision states, which would run counter to the Federal Council's stated aim of uniform principles and to passengers' legal certainty.

The finding is categorical. BLT's body camera use "cannot be based on either the PBG, the VüV-ÖV, or any other federal legal acts or norms," and therefore violates the principle of lawfulness in Article 6(1) of the DSG.

Proportionality left to politicians

The decision does not decide whether body cameras are proportionate. The FDPIC acknowledges BLT's interest in protecting employees, passengers and infrastructure. But it says that weighing that interest against the intrusion "is, however, primarily the responsibility of political bodies," so it did not examine proportionality further.

BLT's argument about training and selection of staff met the same fate. The company said its personnel fulfil a clearly defined security mandate. The FDPIC calls the argument "irrelevant in light of the established lack of a sufficient legal basis," adds that BLT's civilian order and control service is not a uniformed transport police force under Article 2(3) of the BGST, and then notes that BLT's measures for selecting and instructing staff "are certainly to be welcomed."

The Federal Council's five-year route

The decision ends by pointing to an exit. The FDPIC "welcomes the Federal Council's ongoing work on a temporary regulation" governing new surveillance capabilities on public transport, on which it has already commented. Any such authorisation should be granted, in line with Article 35 of the DSG, for a limited period through an amendment to the ordinance, which must lead the legislature to clarify the PBG within five years.

That process is already under way. On August 26, 2026, the Federal Council opened a consultation on two texts: an amendment to the ordinance on the security bodies of transport companies, which would let transport police use Taser-type devices, and a total revision of the VüV-ÖV. Body cameras would document whether Taser use was lawful. The draft also creates a basis for equipping driving, control and escort staff with body cameras. It would allow real-time video surveillance in vehicles under certain conditions: where a data protection impact assessment, taking account of route and time of day, confirms an overriding interest, or where a passenger asks for help. Passengers would have to be told that real-time surveillance is in operation.

Body cameras, real-time video surveillance and the use of artificial intelligence to analyse recordings would initially be limited to five years, during which a basis in federal statute is to be created, according to the Federal Council. The consultation runs until November 16, 2026. The Federal Council's release does not mention the FDPIC.

BLT's response

BLT has rejected the decision. In a statement on October 1, the company said it disagreed with essential parts of the FDPIC's findings and would appeal, and that the appeal would have suspensive effect, so the cameras stay in use. As a company, BLT said, it bears responsibility for the safety of its employees.

BLT supported its case with a legal opinion by Felix Uhlmann, a professor at the University of Zurich. According to the company, about 90 percent of deployments take place at stops rather than inside vehicles, and no footage is streamed live. BLT also cited an incident in April 2026 after which the public prosecutor's office of Basel-Stadt requested recordings, the first time BLT body camera footage was used in criminal proceedings, the company said. As early as February, BLT had said it would support any clarification of the legal basis.

Why the decision matters beyond Basel

For marketers and publishers, the case is a reminder of how privacy authorities treat sensors that move through public space and capture people who never chose to be recorded. The FDPIC's objections are specific: combining video with audio, the possibility of real-time access, the opacity of overlapping systems to the people being filmed, and the prospect of automated face and voice analysis. Each has a counterpart in consumer technology that PPC Land has followed this year.

In October, the European Data Protection Board said that manufacturers of smart glasses, not their wearers, must inform bystanders. In September, the Hamburg data protection authority found that Ray-Ban Meta glasses expose bystanders to recording without their consent. Both turn on the same question BLT's indicator lights and warning tones try to answer: how does a person nearby know a device is recording? Wrist-worn microphones raise a version of it too: Apple has blocked under-18s from Apple Watch features that listen to conversations.

Voice and face data carry particular weight. Under the GDPR, biometric data used to identify a person falls among special category data. Spain's data protection authority fined FC Barcelona €500,000 for an inadequate impact assessment covering facial and voice biometric data of about 143,000 members. Facial recognition built on scraped images remains in court: Clearview AI's challenge to a £7.5 million UK fine reached the Court of Appeal in October, and noyb sued the Hamburg authority in April over PimEyes. The human cost of a wrong match was laid out in the case of a Tennessee woman held for five months after a facial recognition hit. Privacy International has asked the UK government to ban live biometric identification among five AI uses.

The decision also cites an earlier Swiss ruling, BGE 146 I 11, in which the Federal Supreme Court found no sufficient legal basis for automated vehicle tracking and traffic monitoring in the canton of Thurgau. Automated number plate reading is the business of Flock, whose camera network a Proton-hosted map put at 214,073 devices in service, served from Swiss servers.

Switzerland, for its part, still has no overarching AI law; the Federal Council set out three possible regulatory approaches in February 2025. The bodycam draft names AI analysis of recordings explicitly, and only for a five-year window.

What the decision does not do is equally clear. It imposes no fine. It makes no finding on proportionality. It does not say BLT misused footage or ran automated analysis. It addresses a company acting as a federal body under a concession, applying the stricter rules that govern public tasks. Its central claim is narrower and, for regulators elsewhere, more portable: a law written for one kind of camera does not authorise the next kind, and filling that gap is a job for Parliament rather than a company's internal guidelines.

Timeline

  • February 23, 2005: The Federal Council's message on Railway Reform 2 says passenger data should be processed by licensed transport companies according to uniform principles.
  • February 12, 2025: Switzerland's Federal Council report sets out three approaches to AI regulation.
  • End of January 2026: BLT inspection staff begin wearing body cameras, according to Netzwoche.
  • February 17, 2026: The FDPIC learns of BLT's body cameras and demands that their use stop.
  • February 18, 2026: SRF reports on the dispute.
  • February 19, 2026: BLT tells the FDPIC it will continue using the cameras.
  • February 24, 2026: The FDPIC opens an investigation by letter under Article 49 of the DSG; its public notice is dated February 26.
  • February 27, 2026: BLT says it will keep using body cameras and supports clarification of the legal basis.
  • April 2026: An incident leads the Basel-Stadt public prosecutor to request BLT body camera footage, according to BLT.
  • May 4, 2026: The FDPIC sends BLT the facts of the case for comment.
  • May 22, 2026: BLT requests an extension, which is granted until June 8.
  • June 8, 2026: BLT files its statement and supporting documents.
  • August 26, 2026: The Federal Council opens a consultation on body cameras, real-time surveillance and AI analysis on public transport, limited to five years.
  • September 10, 2026: Hamburg's regulator reports Ray-Ban Meta glasses expose bystanders without consent.
  • September 29, 2026: The FDPIC issues its decision against BLT.
  • October 1, 2026: The FDPIC announces the outcome; BLT says it will appeal and keep using the cameras.
  • October 2026: The EDPB says smart glasses makers must inform bystanders.
  • October 19-21, 2026: The Court of Appeal hears Clearview AI's case over a £7.5 million UK fine.
  • November 5, 2026: The FDPIC publishes the full decision, noting that BLT's appeal is pending before the Federal Administrative Court.
  • November 16, 2026: The Federal Council's consultation closes.

Summary

Who: Switzerland's Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, Adrian Lobsiger, and BLT Baselland Transport AG, a bus and tram operator in Oberwil that holds a federal passenger transport concession. The Federal Council and the Federal Administrative Court are also involved.

What: The FDPIC ordered BLT to stop recording passengers with body cameras, delete all footage within 30 days and confirm both steps in writing once the order is final. It found that Article 55 of the Passenger Transport Act and its ordinance cover only stationary, silent video surveillance, so body cameras that record voices lack a legal basis. BLT has appealed, which suspends the order.

When: The decision is dated September 29, 2026, was announced on October 1 and was published in full on November 5, 2026. A Federal Council consultation on temporary rules for body cameras closes on November 16, 2026.

Where: Basel-Landschaft, Switzerland, with implications for more than 130 licensed transport companies across the country.

Why: The FDPIC treats BLT as a federal body processing sensitive data on criminal matters, which requires a basis in a statute passed by Parliament. It found the combination of stationary cameras and body cameras recording sound a serious intrusion on passengers' rights, with a "chilling effect," and said that only lawmakers, not a company's chief operating officer, can authorise new forms of surveillance on public transport.