UK Group Wants Mandatory Flash For Phone Cams

meganthom writes "The BBC is carrying a story about some privacy groups' concerns about the new camera phones. Privacy International, a London-based group, is asking that all phones flash when they are being used to take a photograph. In Korea, the government would like phones to make a loud sound when taking a picture. Also mentioned, several companies/labs do not allow employees to have photo phones on site. Anyone remember that Dilbert?"

Comments

Electrical Tape

[Cpt_Kirks]

Tape would neutralize both "fixes" pretty easily.

Re:Electrical Tape

[caluml]

How will they address the video capture mode of new phones then? Require the light to stay on all the time? Make it emit an annoying bleep while it is recording? Battery life will suffer too. Sure to be popular.

Re:Electrical Tape

[a1cypher]

I think maybe they dont mean a flash as in a high voltage camera flash to illuminate the shot, but rather something simple like a red led next to the lense that can be seen by those in the photo.

They could even market it as a feature. Red Eye reduction... although I am not sure you have to worry about red eye when theres no flash, but you get the point.

For a recording video, you could just have this light stay blinking (or on constant) much like many existing camcorders already do. Wouldnt drain battery life too much and 90% of those buying the phone wouldnt mind, unless you are explicitly using the phone for things that you shouldnt be.

Re:Electrical Tape

[lazy_playboy]

... or people that dont want their photos taken..
If you don't want your picture taken, don't go out in public. Easy :)

Re:Electrical Tape

[Justin205]

that can be seen by those in the photo

Which wouldn't work out if the camera was pointing at an inanimate object ("sensitive information"), or into a "private area".

Unless you want the light to be absolutely blinding, it'd be near-useless.

Remember, some normal phones have lights on them, for incoming call, charging, etc... So the people in the photo may not even realize it's a camera either.

I think the UK should ban...

[IgLou]

Paranoid idiots.

It's a silly solution.

[caluml]

Im sure no-one will figure out putting their finger over the flash, or taping something over it, or opening up the phone, and cutting wires.

Pointless

[thebra]

This seems pretty pointless. I guess for the average cell phone "photographer" this would just annoy them. For the criminal that is using the cell phone to take pictures of your credit card or up your skirt I'm sure they will just find an easy work around.

Shrug

[MikeMacK]

The popularity of camera phones has made it much easier to take illicit photos without permission.

Exactly how are people taking "illicit" pictures with cell phones, that they couldn't take with ordinary digital cameras?

Re:Shrug

[sik0fewl]

Not to mention key chain cameras. Those things are small and blend in quite nicely with a set of keys.

Re:Shrug

[legirons]

"The popularity of camera phones has made it much easier to take illicit photos without permission."

In other news, the installation of CCTV surveillance cameras every 50 f*ing metres has made it easier to take illicit photos without permission.

Re:Shrug

[jdreed1024]

Exactly how are people taking "illicit" pictures with cell phones, that they couldn't take with ordinary digital cameras?

I think instead of "permission", the original post meant "attracting attention. Come on, even though requiring flashes might be overreacting, since this is pretty obvious. Say you're on the subway, and you see some guy sitting on a seat, and next to him is a woman standing with a skirt on. The guy has his cell phone in his hand - it's pointing with the cover facing down, but so what, lots of people hang on to their cell phones. That's not real suspicious. Picture the same scene with a guy holding a camera in his hand. You can clearly see it's pointed up the woman's skirt. That's pretty obvious.

Also, plenty of workplaces do in fact ban cameras (or would at least start asking questions if you walked around with a camera) - the Dilbert comic strip is the exception, not the rule.

Personally, I'd like to see camera phones banned not because of the legal issues, but because I want to be able to buy a damn cell phone that isn't loaded with useless features.

That Dilbert...

[rd]

Dilbert is too real to be funny anymore.

Why the arbitrary distinction?

[Staplerh]

Given that I've seen digital cameras that are far smaller than even the tiniest camera phones, it seems like a knee-jerk reaction to condemn camera phones. I can understand the banning of camera phones from a workplace, but only if cameras in general are banned. Otherwise, it's an arbitrary knee-jerk reaction.

Besides, the image quality is quite poor on camera phones as opposed to an equal-sized (and equally small) digital camera.

Re:That Dilbert

[slapout]

If security is that tight, why do you allow visitors in the first place?

Not mandatory, default

[3Suns]

I'm not sure how the /. article could vary so far from the content of the bbc article, but the part about flashing is practically an afterthought, one sentence about it at the very end. "The government also considered the use of a default flash, but plans were abandoned after concerns from manufacturers."

When are lawmakers going to learn that it's the action that should be legislated, not the capability? You don't fine people who own sports cars because the are capable of speeding.

True, but...

[daveo0331]

The real point of these laws isn't to stop people from abusing camera phones. The real purpose is to give the lawmakers the appearance of "doing something" about the problem. Next time they're up for reelection, watch for ads saying "I protected families and children by making it harder for pedophiles and perverts to use camera phones to hurt children. Vote for me." They're hoping most people don't stop to think about whether what they did had any real effect (and they're probably right).

Re:True, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't overreact just because someone wants legislation to fix something with technology involved - this isn't the impossible problem of copy-protection-while-copying. I can very easily see this not only fix the problem, but also help protect your rights and comfort in relation to the very same technology.

Sure, the changes could be circumvented, even if it was done with a piezo beep which would effectively catch attention and use a negligible amount of battery (at least compared to the cam). The thing is, most people wouldn't do this, and this isn't a copy-protection issue: "illicit" photography doesn't spread, so any success really counts. Add to this that most people probably don't plan ahead for how to take photos with their phone, and that many don't even know how to make it not beep for any action which can be set in the menus, let alone "hardwarehack" it silent.

It also isn't an issue of stopping silent photography altogether: you can still buy a normal camera. The problem with camera phones is that they aren't suspicious like normal cameras, since you can pretend to do something else with the phone easily. Beeping negates this, but still allows you to take photos: what these measures would do would essentially mean giving camera phones the same status as cameras.

Now, why does this protect your comfort and even possibly rights? Because of banning of devices. In the current situation, organizations have started banning camera phones because of fears of misuse. With safeguards like this, you could carry your new phone around with less problems, since the beeping would probably make abuse hard enough in most places. Making it easy to know which phones photograph and which don't also makes the situation for conventional cellphones better: right now they can be perceived as suspicious even without a cam, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a ban on normal phones for this reason.

The clear option for many organizations to using these safeguards is banning camera phones altogether. This can't be circumvented: no camera, no photography. Surely we don't want this? A "beeping" camera gives you a strong tool for defending your rights and comfort when using a camera cell phone!

Finally, why are you talking about lawmakers? This is a privacy group asking for change here. I'm pretty sure they have privacy in mind when suggesting this. Dragging the lawmakers into this seems like quite a populist tactic.

Luddites

[Chembryl]

From TFA:

"Fears grow amid the ever improving resolution of picture phone" replace with: "Fears grow amid the never ending march of technological improvement"

Public Privacy?

[kwiqsilver]

Do we have an expectation of privacy in public? Somebody with a telescopic lens can snap photos of you from hundreds of yards away, and shotgun microphones can record your conversations.
And (in the USA at least) the police can record what you do in public without any warrant. I'm as big of a civil liberties backer as any slashdotter, but I really don't think you have much of a right to privacy in public. And common sense says if you don't want it to be public knowledge, don't do it in public.
Also, with those tiny button-sized spy cameras and so forth, which are designed to be even less noticeable than somebody pointing a phone at you, is a cell phone a covert enough form of photography to even worry about it?

Re:Silly initiative?

[Zarks]

Any regulation like that would be completely unenforceable. They have tried to ban camera phones at my school but everyone just ignores the rule. Soon almost all phones will have a camera in them so people won't even be able to go along with the rule if they want to.

Why just camera phones?

[maokh]

I dont understand how a camera phone is *any* different than a traditional camera or digital camera.

I can find very small, compact, quiet digital cameras in the shape of watches and pens at the local Walmart. Some film cameras are also very small. I'd much rather do this than the ass 320x240 blurromatic I have on my Sanyo 8100.

Re:And this solves what?

[Kenja]

"Guns are legal in america and the problem of people shooting one another was 'solved' by making this practise illegal."

Boy, thank God no one ever got shot in the US since they passed that law.

In truth what your talking about would be leaving the phones alone and passign a law saying that you cant take peoples pictures without their permission. Which in fact we allready have.

Symbolic legislation

[gcaseye6677]

This is symbolic legislation at it's best. It is not designed to actually solve a problem, but to have the appearance of a solution. This way, some group of do-gooders can feel like they have accomplished something. Their opinion of the law would not change even if they were informed of how easy this "solution" would be to defeat. In otherwords, it's to save the children.

Isn't this the same country...

[nebaz]

that has video cameras everywhere? If it is ok for the government, why not the everyday citizen?

Misleading

[BarryNorton]

If the apostrophe were placed correctly we'd just be left with poor grammar suggesting that this is somehow a widely held and significant opinion.

It's actually one small organisation's attempt at getting pulibicity by re-hashing what's already been suggested in other countries as if they've ever had a novel idea.

Just what we need!

[Onimaru]

I had been thinking lately that people using cell phones in public weren't quite annoying enough, so really this legislation is an answer to my prayers.

Hopefully to follow will be something that will make phones emit garbled conversation loudly while they're being used as phones as well. Loud beeps to tell what numbers are being pressed would also be nice.

Seriously, if you go out in public, you run the risk of being seen. Sometimes you might even be recorded being out and about. There are privacy concerns, then there is silliness. Anything that other people are allowed around does not have an expectation of privacy, so invading my privacy further with noise pollution is not only non-productive, but counterproductive.

The British are wanting this?

[mgkimsal2]

The same British who have 10 surveillance cameras on every street corner?

Re:The Gym

[lazy_playboy]

I think that's fair enough - if you don't like the rule don't use the locker room. That's no reason to extend the rule to general public spaces though.

small cams

[torrents]

phone cams are the least of most companies worries... how about spy cams (actually meant for spying) or photocopiers that double as scanners... i would put usb storage devices way above cell cams on the security threat list