San Francisco Chronicle examines implications of camera phones

An article today in the San Francisco Chronicle looks at the implications of the explosion of the use of camera phones and potential (and real) threats to privacy.

Scott Duke Harris, the author, includes a range of opinions about wireless imaging.  The good news, the article says, “Broad awareness of camera phones may serve to deter some bad behavior, lest the perpetrators be caught in the act.

“In South Korea last summer, for example, a camera phone was used to shame a woman who failed to clean up after her small dog defecated in a subway car.  Images of Dog Poop Girl, as bloggers called her, appeared on the Internet.”

Bad news

The bad news is “the encroachment on personal privacy: the prospect of being secretly watched and videotaped.”

Chris Jay Hoofnagle, the director of the West Coast office for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, notes that individuals largely forfeit their expectation of privacy when they are in public and typically will ask people not to take their photo or photos of their children.

However, Hoofnagle is quoted as also saying, “Now the traditional social control no longer works.  You don’t know if someone is taking your picture.”

Harris interviewed me for the article (I’m quoted briefly) and spent time looking at my “Camera Phone Report” weblog.  I also suggested some people to interview.

Study the implications

I’ve written previously and will continue to write that wireless imaging will affect consumers, businesses and society in general — far more than many other technologies, especially the other hot wireless businesses of music and games.

Wireless imaging has significant implications for personal privacy and security as well as having, I believe, many positive effects. 

A world where hundreds of millions of people — perhaps a billion sometime soon after 2010 — will have the ability to shoot photos and videos (and watch live television) on their cellular phones will affect society.

Wireless Imaging Institute

I’d like to see a university establish a “wireless imaging” department to examine the effects.  Perhaps Kodak should create a “Kodak Wireless Imaging Institute”or pony up some money to establish a new university department.

Of course Nokia, Samsung and other handset vendors also could endow a university.  The point is wireless imaging is a society-changing technology and there’s a lot of merit in examining the changes.

Comments

[tychocat]

There appears to be a sizable group of people who believe they have some expectation of privacy when they appear on a public street, doing things out in the open. This is silly on its face, like you could walk down Main Street screaming at everyone else, ""Don't look at me!"

Which points out to me the real problem of everyone having a camera - it's not the invasion of privacy, which you shouldn't have an expectation of in a public area, but the fair rights use of your image thereof. I suspect the real remedy for the "privacy issue" here is that everyone's image or likeness should be assumed to be automatically copyrighted by themselves, and therefore no use of the image can be made without permission.

I would also prefer to think the people who want to carry concealed firearms are wrong, and that the ubiquity of camera phones would lead to a more polite and law-abiding society.