Camera Phones

Ok, first gripe.
I thought it was going to be about speed cameras (dammit, took me 3 tries just to spell 'cameras' right), but not this time. Don't worry, I'm still goint to have a BIG whinge about them, but not today.

No, this is about camera phones?

Why camera phones? What have they ever done to me?

Well, nothing....yet

I was doing my philosophy (Business and Professional Ethics) journal(due 3 days ago), and I'm up to the bit on privacy issues. I did a search for 'privacy' on 'The Bulletin', and on article that came up was this:

http://www.bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/site/
articleIDs/2139102A06378B0ACA256E3D001C5E4B

(copy and paste that entire lot into your browser if you can be bothered reading the article - i don't have time to learn how to link it properly, and the URL is so long it screwes up the blog layout)

In all honesty, it isn't surprising that people use these phones for sick and perverted reasons. Some people go to incredible lengths for their perversions - on the news months ago they were trying to talk to a bloke who walks around with mirrors on his shoes so he can film up ladies' skirts. So when you've got sick fucks (am I allowed to swear on here? who knows) like that, it's not surprising that people are abusing camera phones.

Hmm....you know, it's probably because I keep procrastinating like this that my journal is 3 days late, soon to be 4.

Anyway, as I was saying, recently there was an article in the news about somebody who got caught taking photos of girls on the beach...let me see if I can find it.....nope...oh well (why on earth doesn't news.com.au have an internal search engine?). Anyway, this guy was walking down the beach, taking photos of girls sunbaking topless (apparently. I don't think I've ever seen anybody sunbake topless...I'm obviously going to the wrong beach), and just your typical photos of girls at the beach, when the idiot actually leaned over one girl to get a photo. Her boyfriend noticed and grabbed him by the throat (as is appropriate). Police were called and he was charged (can't remember the outcome). While guys taking suspicios photos of girls using cameras with zoom lenses has come up, this is the first time those surf life savers have ever come up with the camera phone issue (that they know of), although they do keep an eye out for it.

Ok, one problem that springs to mind - the idea of using a camera phone to secretly photograph girls at the beach has just been publicised. I bet lots of guys with camera phones never thought of that before.

But, this IS a legitimate issue. Nightclubs are another spot - guys have been found to be taking photos of girls arses, or cleavage shots, at clubs and niteclubs. Jeez, can you imagine if you happened to stand there texting, and some drunk tool decided you were trying to take photos of his girlfriend? Could get messy. Although, it would be understandable - I don't think anybody would appreciate such photos of their female friends - if anybody tried that shit with my girl I'd stick that phone so far up his arse that every time he farts his girlfriend will be getting a text message.

That's assuming he'd get caught. The biggest problem with the phone cameras are:
1)They're small.
2)the phone is tiny. Pointing the back of the phone at somebody is a lot les noticeable than pointing a camera at somebody
3)You can do this but pretend you're actually texting somebody
4)They're silent

As camera phones increase, this problem will get worse. We're already seeing phones with 3MP sensors and 3x optical zoom - that's going to make some decent sized upskirt or cleavage shots.

So what can we do about it?

The bulleting is against regulation ,but I think that's bullshit.

As mentioned before, not only is a privacy violation involved, but there is also the concern of violence if people get caught, or merely suspected of being caught. Furthermore, once the image reaches the computer it can find it's way across the net, and it will be impossible to destroy.

I think that there needs to be laws specific to the use of camera phones - this will prevent possible loopholes in current laws.

Anybody caught with these sorts of images should be banned from using or possessing a mobile (or perhaps just a camera phone).

Certain places, such as changerooms, should be able to be equipeed with a device that activates a chip built in to these phones which would mean that the camera can not possible be used - this would mean the producstion standards for australian models would have to change. Although admittedly this would be a small measure - wouldn't work in shopping centres (escalators are one possible place for these perverts), bars, niteclubs, beaches, etc. So, not a great idea.

One problem mentioned before is the fact that these things are silent. Why not make it compulsory for all camera phones to have an audible shutter sound - one that can not possibly be turned off. This would mean slight changes to the camera firmware (however, that CAN be hacked), but I doubt there would be any need for a hardware change. This would make it a lot harder for these to be discrete.

Another possibility is for all camera flash phones to be equipped so that the flash goes off every single photo. Again, this would have to be a firmware modification meaning it can't be turned off. A very weak burst would mean it would make very little difference to exposure. However, it would help make it noticeable when somebody who's pretending to text has actually taken a photo of your arse.

These are all sorts of things that should be brought in NOW, while camera phones are just getting popular.

The governments, and phone companies, need to take responsibility for the problems their products may cause.

Yes, it's only a minority that's doing it, but a few minor tweaks, and ones that would make very little difference to the rest of us, would go along way towards eliminating this.

Then we just have to sort out the problem of people taking the same images the old fashioned way.