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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.
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.
What does this mean for open source phones? Does this mean that Android would be illegal in the US?
No. But if the police catch you and you're Android doesn't 'click' - even if you don't have anything illegal on the phone - they have something to charge you with.
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.
Nevermind that, you could open up the phone and cut the wire to the speaker! So not only does this leave a large area to interpretation, it's easy to circumvent with a little determination.
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
You know how it goes. The phone will be released with the US OS, which doesn't include the stuff that is illegal here.
But you can go immediately to sites overseas and download a version that has all the good stuff pre-included. Since the phone OS is basically designed for this sort of swapping, it's hard to see how they could prevent this.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I guess it depends on how the law is written.
It would also prohibit such a phone from being equipped with a means of disabling or silencing the tone.
What does it mean to be "equipped with a means" to do something? If I don't include any option in my list of settings, but it's easily hacked to silence the click, is that "equipped with a means of disabling the tone"?
If so, then it seems like a potential engineering problem. How are you going to make a tamper-proof phone? With many phones, the speaker isn't that loud anyway, and you could probably muffle a single clicking sound by taping over the hole in the case in front of the speaker.
If being able to alter the phone in such a way as to disable it doesn't count, then open source software shouldn't be a problem so long as it's distributed without exposing that setting by whomever is distributing it.
And because of all that, I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a dumb law. It's either going to be very hard for manufacturers to comply with it, or else very easy to circumvent for the consumer.
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.
Wait, the "Video Phone Predator Act" is in preparation, it requires all video-capable phones to make a government-mandated "heavy breathing" noise when filming.
Next, the "Spy Glass Predator Act" will make it necessary for any hidden camera to marked with blinking red/blue LEDs and make a "pshooost!" sound each time it takes a frame.
And finally, we have the bi-partisan "Window Predator Act", which requires all Glass Windows to be painted in black. This bill was sponsored by the Ink Manufacturers Association of America (IMAA).
Happily Obama has promised "transparency", so the windows are probably safe.
My blog
It means nothing for open source or anything else because it is not a "New Law".
It is a bill, introduced by single Republican Congressman, and not co-sponsored by anyone. To become law it just needs the support of 215 more congress people, 50 senators and the President...
It means nothing except that Peter T. King (R-NY) is an idiot, a fact already well established, IMO.
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.
Nevermind that, you could open up the phone and cut the wire to the speaker! So not only does this leave a large area to interpretation, it's easy to circumvent with a little determination.
And then I could also cut the wire to the earpiece speaker, and then my phone also wouldn't have to play those annoying "mother/wife/boss talking" sounds.
They'll require it make the sound of a movie reel being played in a theater.
*Click click click clickclickclick*
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
Like many other bills die a quiet death, but nonetheless expending taxpayer dollars and making sure there is no time to read the earmarks of major bills.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
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.
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.
Godzilla?
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
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. -
The accuracy of this post depresses me.
Is there actually something that Japanese men don't want to take pictures of?
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?
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.
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."