Hacker News Reader

> if I take a photo of someone else (not myself)

This is were you draw the line. Taking pictures of people without their consent (and a good reason) is a big no-no in most parts of the world.

This is either because it's not considered appropriate or because it's condemnable [1] or both. It is also nothing new and not some effect of GDPR, but deeply rooted in culture. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy long had strong laws regarding the right of persons to their own likeness. There is also a big rift, not only legally but primarily culturally, between Anglo-Saxon culture and mostly the rest of the world.

GDPR and other laws concerning informational self-determination[2] never can be interpreted without context. They are always limited by other rights and freedoms, like the right of artistic freedom. So a lot depends on your intent and if you can justify what you do.

I'm not saying this is all well and good. As kind of a street photographer wannabe I'm very sympathetic to the position that the UK and the USA take on this. I'm just saying that the rest of the world has very different ideas about this and this has consequences if you operate globally.

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informational_self-determinati...

The link you referenced counters your point that its a big no-no in most parts of the world to take a photo of someone without their consent. In the majority of the countries listed on that wiki page no consent is required with certain exceptions.

I'd personally say taking pictures of people without their consent is a big no-no in some parts of the world, but not all.

I have never personally had any issues with my street photography in the UK, it boils down to being respectful and not behaving in a harassing manor. If there is a reasonable expectation of privacy then one should consider taking an unsolicited photo as an invasion of privacy.

> The link you referenced counters your point that its a big no-no in most parts of the world to take a photo of someone without their consent. In the majority of the countries listed on that wiki page no consent is required with certain exceptions.

I added the reference to the list as support for my thesis that it can have legal consequences, a fact that in my experience people from the USA or the UK are often oblivious about. Just because it is not forbidden doesn't mean it is acceptable though. I think it is no coincidence that we see strictest regulation in central Europe because these countries are around the border line between the different attitudes. Go farther east and there is no need to regulate the culturally obvious.

> I have never personally had any issues with my street photography in the UK,

Of course not, UK is one of the best countries for shooting street.

> it boils down to being respectful and not behaving in a harassing manor. If there is a reasonable expectation of privacy then one should consider taking an unsolicited photo as an invasion of privacy.

Absolutely.

AS far as I can tell, the law usually permits public photography simply because it is quite difficult to tell whether you are searching for a frame, using wide or zoom lens, etc.. So the "take photo" as in "press the shutter button" action is probably legal in most parts of the world, as you say. One will face consequences when they publish photos or transfer them to third party - more or less self incriminate.

I strongly agree with the "spirit" thing.

I guess the "relax, bro, as long as you're thinking good thoughts you have nothing to worry about" crowd have all recently awoken from 60-year comas.

A photo itself is not a violation. An identifying photo on the other hand could be.

But that's the rub. The system doesn't identify the photo, the user does. Imagine a photo service with Gmail-like filters, and I create a filter which says "If Photo Longitude/Latitude within this bounds, then photo is #GrangarsHouse". I've now turned a system with a general purpose EXIF metadata filter function into a system which can categorize locations that identify people's dwellings with high probability.

"Identifying" a purpose could range from simply clustering visually similar photos using any number of non-machine-learning, non-biometrically-aware image processing algorithms, to using DNNs like FaceNet, or using the old eigenvector facial recognition algorithms of the 90s.

As soon as I upload a photo I took of you to a photo hosting system that has any kind of search functionality at all, the risk is raised that you can be categorized and identified somehow. Really, "consent" was broken not by the company, but by the uploader.

I really think the genie's out of the bottle on photos now. So many people are constantly photographing on their phones, and so many are uploading them to publicly accessible feeds all over the internet, that a federated crawler could already be built to track you, in fact, I think there's already some social media monitoring services that offer this.

If you're out in public, you should pretty much assume you have no privacy with regards to your imagery, GDPR isn't gonna save you. You can control your own photos, but you can't control what other people do of photos taken of you.

I see people on this thread suggesting that it's the culture in many countries in continental Europe, for example, against having identifiable photos of them posted without permission. I'd suggest that there are probably billions of such photos online on Facebook, Flickr, and countless news sites, blogs, etc. I know I've posted plenty of them even just myself.

I suppose you can object and campaign for the EU to setup its own Great Firewall or something along those lines and only allow companies to operate within its borders which adhere to stringent rules around posted imagery. Good luck with that.

> I suppose you can object and campaign for the EU to setup its own Great Firewall or something along those lines and only allow companies to operate within its borders which adhere to stringent rules around posted imagery. Good luck with that.

Europe isn't China, and the distribution of those photos isn't an existential threat to the government, so a Great Firewall is overkill.

Facebook has assets, operations, and revenue that originates in Europe that could be easily targeted with little controversy to gain compliance. If that doesn't work, Europle could always try to make the executive decision-makers personally liable. I'm sure Zuckerberg wants to be able to visit Europe in the future without being arrested.

I actually tend to agree. At this point, I don't think there's so much space between the US and the EU's positions on privacy issues that large corporations can't find ways to reconcile.

That said, I don't take it as a given that will always be the case. I can imagine future US companies offering services that run sufficiently afoul of current or future regulations in the EU and other jurisdictions that it makes sense to just not offer them there.