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New Law Will Require Camera Phones To "Click"
An anonymous reader writes "A new bill is being introduced called the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act, which would require any mobile phone containing a digital camera to sound a tone whenever a photograph is taken with the phone's camera. It would also prohibit such a phone from being equipped with a means of disabling or silencing the tone."
Good Grief....with all the problems the country has right now, and THIS is the type of law they try to get passed??!?!?
Man...next election cycle, let us PLEASE fill the Senate and HOR 50/50 with each party. I feel so much safer in my country, and its progress when there is complete gridlock in the federal govt.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
They're only illegal without a license in 38 states. You can get a license by paying a $200 federal tax fee and a thorough criminal background check. In the other 12 states, they're illegal period.
Also, I have to point out that the object in question is actually called a "suppressor," as it does not actually silence the sound of the gun. It also doesn't make the whistling sound you hear in the movies. The actual sound of a gun firing with a suppressor attached is closer to the sound of a staple gun. Suppressors are more effective in disguising the nature of the sound than in actually eliminating it (even 22-calibur rifles still fire at 130-145 decibels with a suppressor attached - see this wiki article for more information on that.)
For the record, I know all of this not because I'm a gun buff, but because I'm a writer, and I like to write about assassins. I find it best if an author knows how something actually works before she goes and writes about it.
What we need is a car analogy. I don't have one. How about a motorcycle analogy?
My step-dad rode an old BSA (British bike, leaked oil) when I was a kid. It had a minor fault -- the required (in California) stoplight button on the rear brake pedal didn't work, and he never bothered to fix it. In those days and that area, cops would randomly pull over bikers ostensibly for safety checks, but actually to check their id and registration, run the plate, and generally look for trouble.
Step-dad would be required to demonstrate that the rear stoplight function worked. So he'd get in the bike, steady himself with his left hand on the handlebars, push the rear brake pedal down while simultaneously squeezing the front brake lever, which did turn on the stoplight. Ran it like that for years, was stopped many times, cops never caught on.
This is a feel-good law. I can't imagine that the people writing it really think it'll work. At most it'll nail a few people on false positives, but the true hard-core perverts, and the geeks who can't resist a challenge, will figure out work-arounds in next to no time. It's just software, after all. If you can jailbreak a phone, you can probably figure out how to temporarily turn off a mandatory feature.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It's safer here."