On 1 October 2026, Switzerland's Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) announced that it had prohibited BLT Baselland Transport AG from processing data through bodycams worn by its ticket inspectors. It also ordered the company to delete everything collected. The decision is dated 29 September 2026. It is a small case with a large lesson: in a country that licenses more than 130 public transport operators, surveillance powers cannot be improvised one company at a time.
What the FDPIC decided
According to the FDPIC's announcement, the use of bodycams breached the lawfulness principle of the Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP). The Commissioner concluded that it cannot be based on the Passenger Transport Act or on any other federal legislation. The order has two parts: stop the processing, and delete the personal data already gathered. The FDPIC also warned that if each licensed operator wrote its own rules, the result would be "a non-transparent patchwork of regulations."
The investigation began after press coverage. The FDPIC announced on 26 February 2026 that it had opened proceedings under Art. 49 ff. FADP because there were sufficient indications of a possible violation. BLT falls under the FDPIC's supervision because it operates under a federal passenger transport licence. The FDPIC said it would give no further information while proceedings were ongoing.
The strongest case for BLT
The operator's argument deserves a fair hearing. Blick reported that the cameras were introduced at the end of January 2026 against a background of rising aggression towards transit staff. In standby mode, footage is overwritten every two minutes. Longer recording starts only when an inspector activates the camera. SRF reported that BLT cited incidents roughly every two days, and that it defended the cameras as a workplace safety measure. Employers do have a duty of care. A conductor who is threatened alone on a late tram has a real interest in evidence and deterrence. BLT also pointed to the existing ordinance on video surveillance in public transport as its legal footing.
The SRF report adds that the FDPIC read that 2010 ordinance as covering fixed cameras, not mobile bodycams. SBB's transport police have used bodycams since September 2024, but SRF notes that broader rollout was held back pending legal clarification. The regulator was not singling out a reckless operator. It was applying a rule that other actors in the sector had already treated as binding.
Why the process objection is sound
The FDPIC's core point is institutional rather than hostile to the technology. Wearable cameras that record audio and video in close quarters capture passengers, bystanders and staff, and they can be switched on at the wearer's discretion. That is a different intrusion from a fixed camera with a known field of view. Where the state, or a company performing a public transport mandate, wants to expand that kind of recording, a democratic mandate matters. A statute can set purposes, retention limits, signage requirements, access rules and oversight. A company policy cannot give passengers any of those assurances.
There is also a pro-innovation argument for insisting on clear law. Surveillance rolled out first and justified later invites backlash, litigation and forced deletion, as BLT has now found. That is a worse outcome for security, and for public trust in new tools, than a rule written in advance. Operators that must guess how a regulator will read an old ordinance cannot plan investments sensibly.
Where proportionality cuts the other way
Still, a ban with deletion is a blunt remedy. BLT had already stepped back before the decision. SRF reported that it deactivated the continuous standby recording and moved to button-activated recording only. A short rolling buffer that overwrites itself every two minutes is far less invasive than the long-term retention that data protection law is most concerned about. A proportionate regime would reflect that difference, with the strictest rules reserved for stored footage.
The decision also leaves frontline workers in limbo. Unless something else replaces the cameras, staff face the same risks as before, and the FDPIC's order does not make those risks go away. The FDPIC itself points to the legislative route. The Federal Council is developing temporary regulations for surveillance technologies in public transport, with a time-limited authorisation framework. The FDPIC's announcement also refers to Art. 35 FADP, under which lawmakers must clarify the statutory basis within five years.
What a good rule would look like
The policy question is no longer whether bodycams are allowed. It is what a lawful framework should contain. Evidence from the pilots should shape it. The Federal Council and Parliament should consider:
- a single national standard for all licensed operators, rather than 130 different policies;
- activation limited to defined incidents, with clear signage and audible announcement;
- short, fixed retention periods, with access restricted to incident investigation and prosecution;
- a duty to publish usage and incident data, so that the effect on staff safety can be measured and the rules revised;
- a sunset or review clause, consistent with the time-limited approach the Federal Council already envisages.
This would give staff protection and passengers certainty, and it would give regulators a clear yardstick. It would also avoid the stop-start cycle in which a company deploys a tool, a regulator intervenes and the data is deleted.
The wider lesson
The FDPIC has shown that the revised FADP, in force since 2023, has teeth against public-mandate operators, and that a stated safety purpose does not substitute for statutory authority. That is a defensible reading, and arguably a liberty-protecting one. The cost of vindicating it falls on the people the cameras were meant to protect. Parliament can fix that quickly, and it should. Until it does, the sensible default for operators is to wait for a clear legal basis and to use less intrusive measures, such as visible uniform markings, panic alarms and de-escalation training, in the meantime.