No covert pictures please – removing sound from your PDA when you take a picture
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/3318166499/
At work we have this white board which has a up-to-date list of a particular project my team is working on. It is nice in that you can just look up at it while in the office or anyone can walk over and get current information. One of the guys on the team likes to see the list get shorter. For these reasons we keep it on the white board. The problem is when you are working remote as I often do, how do you get or obtain the current status? My solution is to take a picture of it with my PDA before I leave at the end of each day. Besides keeping a time chronology of the project with the pictures, it allows me to pull it up on my laptop when I am not in the office and work.
This morning, I am sitting in Starbucks working away and I get my PDA out to download the latest task list picture to my laptop. In the process of getting to the application, I accidentally took a picture of my table. The mouse was on the the ‘take a picture’ selection by default and I must have pressed the enter key. Two people heard the ‘click’ noise and immediately looked over. No big deal, but I found their reactions interesting and amusing. The next thought was to ask myself the question how does one disable the sound? Turns out you cannot.
A quick look around the web and I discovered a few things on the topic of PDAs and the sound of the picture taking. RIM, the makers of Blackberry do not provide the option to disable the noise. Some speculate this is because RIM doesn’t want you covertly taking pictures, but maybe they just forgot or dropped it from the design due to time pressures. Regardless it seemed kind of silly.
It is well accepted now a days that there is no expectation of privacy in public. Stores, businesses, and places of employment have cameras both overt and covert that constantly record and store the people and activities. Street cameras downtown constantly record and store traffic and the movements of people. If this is acceptable, why is it not acceptable for a individual to take a picture? I find the assumption that there is more risk to individuals taking pictures or video than a registered business or government entity very naive. Turns out there is even an attempt somewhere in the world to put a law in place that would ‘require’ the noise on all digital devices.
No matter, like all things there are ways around it. A quick search led me to this application. Downloaded it to my blackberry and problem solved. No technical wizardry required. I can now take silent pictures of my table and I won’t disturb the people sitting over on the couch. These laws are just silly. If someone really wants to take covert pictures they will always be able to do it and regulating the technology will not help.
The question is not about technology it is about the expectation of privacy. If there is an expectation of privacy in public, then change the laws to support that and enforce it. However, based on the court decisions I have read over the years, there is never an expectation of privacy in public. I am not a lawyer, but I believe that precident has been set. If you query most people on this topic, they will assume they are being phtographed and recorded on video regularly, and they would be silly not to.
