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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."
And because it's a law, there will be no way to circumvent this.
What does this mean for open source phones? Does this mean that Android would be illegal in the US?
Why not just legislate that every time you take a picture, it bleats out "HEY EVERYBODY, I'M TRYING TO TAKE A PICTURE HERE, DO YOU MIND?"
and anyways, adding a hard-wire normally closed switch to the wire leading to the speaker isn't hard to do.
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Next will have complaints from parents whose children's recitals are marred by clicking cell phones, newlyweds whose vows were interrupted by the same, etc., etc.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
What next, requiring digital camcorders to make that old 8mm sounds while recording?
I was worried that congress had stuff to address that actually matters.
I recall that Japan has a similar law, to prevent photos being taken of. . . things that Japanese men want to take pictures of, I guess.
Ninjas and pirates. How piquant.
May as well pass a low mandating all shoes to have "clicky" heels so that we can't sneak up on anyone. Silent shoes are the highest contributors to predatory actions!
Seriously, this is stupid. And besides, we all know someone will find a way to disable it, so it'll only make the non-bad people have to live with the click, right?
I guess legislators don't know what else to do with their time. You'd think they'd start, I don't know, spending less.... nah.
Does this apply to _all_ cameras? Security cams, webcams, etc? What about cell phones taking videos? Do they now have to play a whirring sound so that people know that the video camera is running (and then back to security cams, web cams, etc)?
So the state can secretly monitor everything we do, but we are not allowed to do it ourselves?
c++;
This requirement is actually already in practice in Japan. In fact, Apple recently had to adjust the Japanese iPhone software to accommodate this. http://cultofmac.com/to-prevent-upskirts-japanese-iphone-3g-always-alerts-when-taking-photos/2356
Expect to see a lot more ads for: "UPSKIRT SHOTS OF DEAF CHIKZ!1one." They should really require a strobe light to go off at the same time as the shutter sound.
Probably a rare occurrence, but this means bystanders won't be able to photograph crimes in progress without alerting criminals.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Since any hacked camera will NOT make a sound ... will the cops randomly demand that people with camera-capable devices "demonstrate" that they click when a picture is taken? Since they will NOT be able to tell if someone was actually taking a picture or just seeing if they could frame the shot.
Excuse me sir. I see you're talking on your cell phone. I will ask you to take a picture of me so that I may ascertain whether your phone is "Camera Phone Predator Alert Act" compliant.
So now, when you take a picture of police shooting a restrained person in the back, they'll be alerted and shoot you!!!
Silent camera phones are an important instrument to keep authorities in check.
Seriously. What. The. Fuck?
That annoying fucken' sound is the fist thing I fucken' disable when I get a new phone, simply because it pisses me off.
I've never taken "candid" photos, for which I'd need complete silence, I just don't like the extra noise. I disable my desktop sounds, as well. I'm just like that.
And at a concert or other public event? I've never heard someone's camera phone making noises (other than ringing) at one, but I know they're being used to take pictures. ... actually, I have been in situations where silence was golden. I have no drawing skills and needed to copy down a diagram my instructor had drawn on the whiteboard. My (instructor approved, so ling as it didn't disrupt the class) answer? Camera phone.
Not anymore, if this law passes!
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
It is not pervs ruining it for the rest of us, it is craven idiotic politicians. Pervs will just use the publicly available hack which will come out less than 12 hours after this is passed into law.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
What the hell is wrong with these people? Is this the one pressing issue at the moment? Don't they have something to do that is really worth their time? And who the hell silently takes photos of people with their phone? This will just inconvenience the innocent and have no next to no effect on anybody who is actually crazy enough to run around taking silent photos of people. They can muffle the speaker, they can get a silent camera without a phone attatched to it. They can RECORD VIDEO on their phones for crying out loud. Will they pass a law requiring the phone to make a screeching or barking noise or something when it records?
Perhaps this law might consider banning Leicas too.
Like most laws of this sort, there is almost no chance of making it work.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm coming to the conclusion now that any legislation that forces changes on technology is a violation of the right to free speech.
Think about it. Source code is speech. It can do what you want, say what you want, be what you want. If you accept that, then legislating that you can't do certain things with technology is restricting the number of possible ideas that you can express.
So then, the question becomes "is this a valid restriction on the free speech of the populace?" There are some that most people agree with, like yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre where no such fire exists. But these are very limited; they generally directly endanger one or more other people by that speech alone (in this case due to trampling, etc).
In this case, we're dealing with a hypothetical: Some people may use their cell phones to stalk other people, putting them in danger. Is it right to restrict everyone due to the actions of a few? Especially when there are valid reasons why someone might want to express an idea (in this case, have their cell phone's sound off), the answer should be no.
Lawmakers get around this because most people don't associate mechanisms and software with speech, but the sooner we all understand that fundamentally it's all the same, the better.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
...now's your chance. It's been referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Please check the membership list to see if your representative is on it. If so, please call them and ask them not to support this bill when it is considered by the committee. Be polite. Try to have a good reason prepared before you call.
TFA even has a link to the bill's page at Thomas (which is the server that Congresspersons use to keep track of legislative business, and is open to the public). Current status is:
Also note that the bill's sole sponsor, Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), does not sit on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
The most likely scenario is that this bill will sit in committee until it quietly dies (a very common fate, I would add).
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
My first project with a clicking cellphone, will be to replace the clicking sound with a 8.0 Richter scale flatulent sound.
"Hey, did you just take a picture of me?"
"Hey, dumb-ass, can't you tell the difference between a camera click and a fart?"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If you click the link, and then click the link on that link to the actual source, it's a bill introduced by Rep Peter T. King [NY-3] introduced 1/9/2009 with no cosponsors; referred to House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Most bills submitted to committees never get out of committee, espercially the ones with no co-sponsors, buried under the press of other stuff that congress can do which they think will actually get them votes. By introducing the bill he can tell the constituants that were lobbying for this "I introduced a bill in Congress to solve that very" and make it sound like he actually did something.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
For one thing, this law would do NOTHING to alert deaf victims they are being photographed! Some of them could be kids!
Well, we know where this is really going. They want to eventually outlaw use of cameras in public.
Leave it to the government to enact stupid laws that takes even more of our freedom away. And of course, the real grit will be found in the complete text of the bill. I'm sure they will not stop at camera phones....
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
How about this link instead? It has the membership of the 111th congress, not the 110th (as is linked by the parent). You have to click on the "Membership" tab. If you didn't read the parent, this is who is on the committee; find out if your representative is on the list and contact them.
Mistress? Look, I've got enough problems maintaining the needs of one woman. Why would I voluntarily adopt the stress of a second woman?
...
Besides, if my mistress was calling me, I'm certain she'd be yammering about how I never bring her flowers or that I'm not serious about our relationship. Leave the tape in place
Godzilla?
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
I guess once we finally have affordable and perfectly silent electric cars, instead of breathing a sight of relief and listen to birds when you walk down the streets, those same asswipes will force them to be just as noisy...
All for your (and your children's) security, of course.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
You can track the bill here on Govtrack. If this gets past committee please write or call your representative and ask them to reject yet another unnecessary regulation.
In addition, if you live in New York's 3rd Congressional District, please remember how your representative wants to waste our tax dollars when you vote next year.
After doing a little more research on him, here's another very good reasons to vote him out. Quoting his campaign website:
Pete was a strong supporter of the PATRIOT Act, creating the Homeland Security Department, profiling for terrorists at airports and allowing the National Security Agency to wiretap foreign terrorists making telephone calls into our country.
Please vote this guy out.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
Is there actually something that Japanese men don't want to take pictures of?
Yes it was.
As an aside, camera-phones have almost completely ruined the Mardi Gras experience. When everyone has a phone taking pictures to be immediately posted onto the internet where they will remain forever, the curtains quickly fell on the lovely era of chicks flashing random strangers in the street.
Western culture is apparently in that ugly teenage phase of the Information Revolution, in which we have the ability to generate ubiquitous data but have not yet matured enough to appreciate the occasional massive value of data impermanence.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
It doesn't have to be 50/50 by any means, simply vote for a non-incumbent. Change is good :)
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
In similar news, lawmakers will require all horseless carriages (we call them "cars") to periodically whinny like a horse. (Ford Escorts do that anyhow after it rains, although I don't know if it's intentional.)
Table-ized A.I.
It's VERY important. In fact, one of the best things we might do to protect against abuse of power is to explicitly PROTECT the use of photographic/video/audio recording devices, because it's obvious that there isn't enough protection right now.
Take the recent case of Oscar Grant. He was fatally shot by a BART officer on New Year's. Witnesses said the man was restrained and essentially helpless when the officer shot him, but of course, the BART spokesman Jim Allison said the victim was not restrained when the gun discharged.
Funny, Mr. Allison, because independent footage taken by a witness with a cellphone showed a different story. And guess what? That footage almost wasn't available because an officer attempted to confiscate the camera (see the cbs5.com article: "[Vargas] also said she resisted an officer's attempt to confiscate her camera") -- she's probably lucky she wasn't shot as well.
And take the recent case of Marilyn Parver who was bullied by Jet Blue staff and threatened with actions from being banned from flying to "$10,000 in fines and 25 years in jail" -- because she videotaped an incident on a Jet Blue plane from her seat and refused to delete the footage. I don't know about you, but my reaction to this is to want to contact Jet Blue and ASKING them to put me on their no-fly list until they apologize to this woman and change their policy.
Overall, I think there needs to be law explicitly stating that in any space (public or private) in which there's no reasonable expectation of privacy, recording devices are not only allowed, the right to use them can't be infringed, and that no private entity or public agency can demand either surrender or destruction of the device or recordings (although it does seem reasonable to let the law compel delivery of unaltered copies).
Tweet, tweet.
Theres this wonderful technology called pants. I'm sure if upskirt photos were that much of a problem then these japanese ladies could employ this technology that men have been using for centuries.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Seriously why isn't this in the article summery?
It would take less than a sentence. Can the mods please wake up and at least require a bare minimum standard?
What if I am robbed and I snap a picture of the perp? Now that he hears the phone he might just decide to kill me....
What if the police are brutally beating someone and I snap a picture to report them later. Now they may decide to brutally beat me...
This is just stupid. I mean yes there are bad uses for the phone. But there are also good uses.
I get your point, but gridlock is not a good thing. Take it from someone living in California, waiting for the state to run out of money because these idiots in the legislature refuse to agree on a budget. We're $43 billion in the hole without a plan to fix it. Gridlock is not the answer.
This isn't interesting, filming is a verb meaning shooting video. You don't get modded interesting for complaining that shooting people ought to leave them dead or maimed.
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."
I've been looking through all these posts and cannot seem to find the one with the obvious in it.
Soon as I read the article title, the first thing through my mind was "Great. Another law for paranoid cops."
Click. Cop now knows he is being photographed.
Fortunately, most people, including cops, know this is a waste of time as anyone that really cared would have disabled the fucking noise already.
There should be a law against idiots trying to make stupid laws like this.