Slashdot Mirror
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?"
So you pass a law that makes all phones more anoying by having a manditory flash. Then do you outlaw the tape people will put over the flash?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
...they've had mandatory clicky-clicky noises for ages.
:)
But it's quite a famous problem there - women being felt up on busy trains, the upskirt photos and so on. Here in the UK, if a bloke did that, it'd be prison, pure and simple. People just don't really do that kind of thing.
Groups calling for this are the same kind of idiots who, when all else fails, will simply wail "Won't somebody please think of the children!"
iqu
Funny how everyone has the same idea to defeat the ideas these folks have.
Funnier still is that they're all getting modded up.
Anyway, I had a slightly different idea. How about making the cameras broadcast an RF signal to make nearby tornado warning sirens go off or something.
I called the salesman over and explained that my work location is a military/government location where classified work is done, and cameras are prohibited on the premises. Only two phones did not have a camera. I told him that if all their cell phones had a camera, then it was pointless to subscribe to their services as I would not be able to use it at work.
He happened to be an ex-marine and understood my point, and would pass that on to his superiors.
Cell phones have way too many gadgets that I'll never use (games? text messaging? please), all at the expense of increased consumption of battery power. If I only use it as a phone, the battery only lasts a little over two hours use. This is not an attractive trend.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
... all cell phones make a "shutter" sound, precisely to prevent rouge snappers from taking underskirt shots.
This, of course, can go unnoticed in crowded, noisy areas.
(I should know... I took a DECENT picture of a schoolgirl group one day, they all gave me angry looks... Hey, I was just taking a picutre of a cultural icon!)
Now, if you could just get it to take pictures when it hears a sound ...
John
I think we're all in agreement here about the hilarious idiocy of aforementioned legislation. However as long as we're here I cannot allow this opportunity to discuss nerdly things go unexploited.
The cell phone LED market is really interesting. You basically have the problem of producing a lot of light very quickly with a very limited amount of power available and an even more limited volume of space to fit your electronics (no room for that big capacitor seen in conventional camera flash drive circuits) to drive the flash since cameras these days are tending ever more toward the positively lilliputian. Many cameras include a simple and cheap Cerium:YAG coated 5mm blue led which can be safely overdriven for a very short amount of time, producing a moderate burst of light. Luxeon, the maker of the current most powerful white LEDs recently entered the market with their much improved version of this method. Certain other companies are trying to miniaturize conventional xenon flash units for use in cell phones. Still other companies are eyeing different methods. The story is, interestingly, somewhat analogous to the development of cell phone electronics themselves, a maximization of efficiency in terms of converting power from the battery to the display, processor and transmitter. Except now it's a game of getting the most photons out of a flash using the fewest electrons to do it.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
I recently replaced my handset and went through the exact same problems. Part of my role at work involves audits of physical plant for clients (as part of a larger cost of operation modelling exercise), we frequently enter places where cameras are not permitted, but ideally need to be contactable by the office or even other team members who are auditing other areas of the site.
Ultimately I was given the choice of 2 or 3 handsets to pick from, once I added the requirement of bluetooth for a wireless headset there were none available through our preferred supplier. I ended up wth a Nokia 5100, no bluetooth but no camera.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Phones with cameras are illegal in Saudia Arabia. The intersting part is that the law cannot be inforced, almost every body has one, and they are using abusively.
That said, i dont have one of those, and am not planning to get one, I consider it to be quite disturbing to have the feeling that someone might take a pic of me unkowingly what whether position i am in.
But i have to admit that the law is stupid though, so i consider it like spam, there is a law against it, but i keep on getting them, and there is nothing i can do about it currently.
Actually, my cousin has a Motorola V400 sans camera.
Her husband works for a company that does lenses. They buy phones, take them apart to verify their lenses are being used. After that, they toss the phones.
Sure it doesn't have a camera, but every other aspect of the phone works.
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
I cant think of a single contract I have been on in the last decade where a personal cell phone was not allowed. Perhaps retail pulls that kind of thing, but I haven't seen it in industry or government yet. The reality of the matter is that many contracts are on short notice and do not last long enough to justify issuing a cell phone. This does not change the fact that a cell phone is still very much needed on these contracts.
Just to note: as a wedding videographer I learned early to either cover or turn off the little red light that lets people know they are being recorded. It wasn't for nefarious reasons, it was to help make people comfortable and get saleable content on tape. When there's a little red light they clam up, when there's not they speak freely (even in both cases knowing they are being recorded).
I think some country in the Far East already requires an audiable sound when you take a picture on a camera phone.
A more reasonable approach is to say that when you are not in a public place, you have an limited expectation of privacy that includes not being photographed without notice. If someone does violate your privacy and takes your photograph, you have a right to enjoin them from distributing it and a right to recover damages if it has already been distributed.
Personally, I like the idea of cameras giving off some kind of warning before they take a picture. It's polite. Everything being equal, I'd buy a phone with that feature before buying one without it. However, this should be "disableable" on a per-picture basis, when the warning itself would ruin the picture. You don't want your camera-phone picture of a cute furry animal ruined because it flashed or beeped before it snapped.
Should this be regulated?
I'd prefer the industry to come to a standard "warning" rather than have it be a government mandate.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Usually, turn away, if I'm not interested in being photographed. It depends on where it is. In the gym locker room, it is likely to result in a broken camera phone.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This is a great example of moral panic, for which UK is notorious. Have you personally witnessed a situation where a camera phone was used for illicit purpose? May be any of your friends or relatives fell fictim to camera-equipped voyeurs, who posted their gym pics on the web? Personally I think this is really blown out of proportions.
There's always been voyeur porn, much of which was "professionally" done with willing models. And there has never been a significant number of incidents with camera phones - may be a few tens, a few hundreds worldwide, hardly a reason to legislate (but of course, who needs reason today...).
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
God, I'm so tired of reading this sort of uninformed bullshit on Slashdot from people who have little or no experience of the typical British town or city.
Let's just sprinkle in some facts:
1. There aren't CCTV surveillance cameras every 50 metres in Britain. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying through their teeth or delusional.
2. The majority of the cameras that are installed are privately owned, in shops, etc to deter shoplifters, etc.
3. A great deal of the "publicly operated" cameras are in places like train stations, airports and major roads to monitor things like passenger and traffic flow, and around sensitive government buildings like police stations to improve security.
Most of the latter were installed at a time when organisations like the IRA were hell-bent on blowing up everything from Christmas shoppers to military barracks to politicians to financial institutions, and the images that they output are almost always recorded to nothing more advanced than video tape at poor (black and white) quality.
4. There is no all-seeing "Enemy Of The State"-type network of cameras that can track your every movement. (Think about it: if there was, wouldn't it be used to totally eradicate crime?)
5. If you want to see what footage of you someone might have, then the law says that they must provide it to you. All you have to do is ask for it in writing, providing details of when and where you believe you may have been caught on camera. Oh, and you might have to pay a nominal fee (around £10, if I remember correctly) to cover the cost of the exercise.
6. Big Brother isn't watching you. Watching the every move of an entire population undetected isn't feasibly possible. Even trying to do so is prohibitively expensive, both financially and logistically, and is doomed to failure, as the failed experiment that was East Germany proved.
7. Lastly - and I realise this may come as a shock to some of the tin foil hat brigade - when you're out in public you don't suddenly become invisible. A CCTV isn't any more pervasive than any pair of eyes that happen to glance at you as you go about your business.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
But what good would a little red light do? Are you going to be taking pictures of 'secret documents' while a bunch of people stand around you? Or are you going to do it in 'secret' somewhere?
There's no place like
This system is alreay in place in Japan.
When your phone snaps a photo it makes a loud "click" which is pretty recognizable. Not all phones use the same sound, but they're similar.
This system was developed to prevent guys from taking pictures up girls skirts on the subway.
This is just the price of the social contract in Japan. Wanna have 25% of the female population wear a mini-skirt each day? Gotta have cameras that click. Doesn't seem like a bad deal to me at all.
The interesting thing is that this isn't a law or government regulated thing at all. The phone manufacturers just decided that it was the right thing to do. There's a monoculture at work for ya.
P.S.: No, tape will not really muffle the sound at all. It's been tried.