Group Says Camera Phones Should Flash Brightly

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

Tue, Nov 16th 2004 4:50pm — Mike Masnick

A year ago, the South Korean government decided that all camera phones in the country should make a completely useless shutter noise when photos were taken to alert people what was happening. Over in the UK, they're afraid that a shutter noise won't work in noisy environments, so a concerned group is suggesting all camera phones flash a bright light whenever a camera phone photo is snapped. Just like the shutter noise, should this idea gain traction, it will be laughed at in the future -- and will be considered on par with early laws that required any automobile to be preceded by a person walking along, waving red flags warning that a car was approaching. Already, in Korea, there's software that takes the clicking noise away. How hard is it to cover up a flashing light with a piece of tape? The people who are actually going to abuse camera phones this way will quickly get around these "precautionary measures," but the rest of us will have to pay extra to get these non-features into our phones. Besides, how long will it be until some other group starts complaining that the flash of light is distracting or something along those lines? Just imagine, someone could take a camera phone photo of a car and it could scare the driver! Maybe we should ban cars too. Or at least make sure that they have people with flags walking in front of them to keep them safe.

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7 Comments

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Thomas, 16 Nov 2004 @ 6:42pm

Privacy Issue
Is this not so much an issue of safety, but of privacy. The ubiquity of cellphones has numbed us to them, so much so that I rarely think twice about someone with one. Now, if I don't notice that someone is snapping a picture of my credit card, or whatever else, then shouldn't I be worried?
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Mike (profile), 16 Nov 2004 @ 7:07pm

Re: Privacy Issue
So... because you can't be bothered to stay aware of what's happening, every one else has to pay extra? As I pointed out in the article, anyone planning to steal your credit card this way (and most camera phones aren't nearly good enough to do this) would simply cover up the flash or disable the click.

If anything, this makes you LESS secure -- because you wouldn't pay attention, assuming any camera phone would make a noise or flash a light. This makes it even easier for real criminals to invade your privacy.
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Thomas, 16 Nov 2004 @ 8:27pm

Re: Privacy Issue
I think that my ultimate point is that in the future, I'm afraid that this is going to be a bad thing, that bad people can take advantage of the new technology (that will only get better); I'm not saying that they should needlessly increase the price due to only possible or improbable threats, but that this issue shouldn't simply be written off. It rather should be investigated to produce some compromise with privacy in mind. Even the most alert person can be swindled. There is a fundamental difference between leaving your door open at night, because the robber can break in anyway, and locking it.
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xman, 17 Nov 2004 @ 4:13am

Re: Privacy Issue
Sorry, but if everyone is walking round with cameras there is *NOTHING* you can do to maintain your privacy. There is *NO* compromise that will restore your privacy - any technological solution you come up with will be broken. Just like copy protection. The only way to deal with things like this is to get some kind of social consensus going that makes people behave in reasoonableways and that will take a long time and it may even be too late for that.
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Chomper, 17 Nov 2004 @ 7:59am

Re: Privacy Issue
Or just use a lot more common sense. I see people waving credit cards around or just leaving them on a table for a waiter to grab or at the checkout line, they leave it there while they sign something.

I don't think phones are as much the problem as people are just dumb/careless.
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RJD, 17 Nov 2004 @ 8:09am

A better approach
Starting to feel like a movie star with the photographers hidden in bushes waiting to jump out and snap your picture ?

Take the Sean Penn approach and if you see someone including you in a picture, destroy their phone and threaten to do the same to them.

Can you see 'phone rage' being the next big social syndrome ?

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Jim Harper, 17 Nov 2004 @ 8:58am

No Subject Given
Kudos to Mike here.
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