Slashdot Mirror
No Pictures, Thanks
An anonymous reader writes "HP has received a patent on technology that would allow anyone who didn't want their picture taken to remotely instruct cameras to blur their face. While this is being promoted as a privacy measure, does anyone else see the serious rights issues here? What's to prevent this being used by police to block their images when they're beating or otherwise mistreating people? If this tech can be used to blur faces, it can be quite easily adapted to turn cameras off altogether, with deeply troubling implications. And even without these 'what if' scenarios, isn't there an expectation that, if you're in a public area, you're fair game for being photographed?"
Not really - If you're distinct enough to recognize, you can be photographed by anyone, but those photos can't be distributed for profit without your consent for the most part. For instance, no one can snap a picture of you and use that in an ad or commercial without your consent, but a journalist can publish photos of you in a newspaper. I'm not sure about how the law works around it, but I know that it can get pretty complicated if you sell digital photos because you need stacks of waiver forms.