Loved by Vigilantes and Perverts...the Ubiquitous Camera Phone

[mandy]

In glorious retrospect, it seems like a terrifically bad idea to give the world a spy camera that looks and functions like a cell phone. Peeping Toms quickly realized the potential for upskirt pics and shower-room souvenirs. Chicago tried to block cell phones from gyms, and a California legislator has proposed a law requiring the cell phone to make a shutter snapping sound or flash a light when a picture is taken. We have trained ourselves to be wary when a cell phone is pointed at us, but the device's relative inconspicuousness still creates problems. In Saudi Arabia, women have been taking pictures of other women unveiled at weddings and e-mailing them to matchmakers, a practice that has caused uproar in a culture in which any sort of image can be cause for loss of honor.

The cell phone camera, constant companion, has also been championed as an anti-crime device...

full article: http://www.slate.com/id/2157736/nav/tap1/

[meeleend]

Camera phones have had a broad social impact over the past decade. In a recent radio interview, Philippe Kahn discusses the social impact of the camera phone.
While camera phones have been found useful by tourists and for other common civilian purposes, as they are cheap, convenient, and portable; they have also posed controversy, as they enable surreptitious photography. A user may pretend to be simply talking on the phone or browsing the internet, drawing no suspicion, and be able to photograph a person or place illegally or against that person's wishes.