1880s photography triggered a right-to-privacy movement that holds lessons today
truthdig.com
truthdig.com
It's pretty much resolved. There's no right to privacy in public. I'm always surprised at the number of people who think it's illegal to photograph or film them without their permission while in pubic spaces. There are youtubers who make their living capturing people on camera who freak out and call the police on the photographer, and it usually ends with the police explaining that people have every right to take photos/video of what's going on around them in public. When it doesn't go that way and the police interfere with the photographer the youtuber can get some large payouts from the taxpayers for the violation of his/her rights.
Personally, I'm glad the right to photograph and record in public exists. It's given us some pretty cool insight into the life of people who died long before us (for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXRnGwbrnOo) and it allows citizen journalists to capture abuses of power, mistreatment by public officials, violations of our rights by police, etc.
I feel for people who don't like the idea that they can be recorded everywhere they go, but the truth is, all of us are already recorded everywhere we go. It doesn't make much sense to stand directly under a CCTV/surveillance camera and yell at person recording on a cell phone, but it happens all the time. If only people applied that level of outrage to the rest of the constant surveillance around us we might have better protections against the worst invasions of our privacy.
Recordings captured by CCTV aren't typically being made with the intent to publish them for entertainment (yes, some CCTV footage shows up on YouTube and so on, but it's not the normal case). Being unwillingly turned into a subject to entertain the masses - perhaps even in a way that involves being made to look foolish or being harassed by the group making the video - is a very different thing to being captured on a security camera as part of normal public life. The law could treat them differently. Similarly, the law could have specific protections for recording public officials and officers of the law while they're acting in their official capacity
It's not crazy to want a legal approach to recording in public that is more sophisticated than a boolean it's-allowed-or-it's-not.
This means you have to behave in public in a way you might not behave in private.
The problem we have is not that people are posting recordings made in public, it's that social media platforms are incentivizing the exploitation of those recordings, surfacing them in ways that maximize engagement, such that it's usually some of the worst moments of a person's life being broadcast to the world just so that some people can materialize some pennies.
Maybe we should regulate adtech and enforce existing privacy norms, and if we don't have incentives that normalize exploitative recording in public, maybe we can normalize a sense of shame and decorum around public recording.
You can't legislate or regulate public recording beyond where it's at, because the enforcement of it eliminates an immensely valuable governmental and social tool of accountability. Free press and journalism matter a helluva lot more than comfort in public.
You can legislate and regulate better adtech and social media platform laws, and there are a million other reasons this must be done. If it weren't for the fact that all the politicians are funded by the companies dependent on the adtech situation staying the way it is, or even getting worse.
I'd argue that most photographs/recordings made by individuals while in public aren't taken with the intent to publish them for entertainment either. There are some notable social media accounts that do it, but even as more of our personal photos/videos end up on social media that's not the normal case and shouldn't be the assumption. Generally, I'm not a big fan of people harassing others or acting like assholes in public no matter what they're doing and there are some youtubers who do try to antagonize people to get a rise out of them for entertainment/views which I think is shameful.
When it comes to the cameras found in public buildings (like a DMV, court house, city hall, etc) those recordings are public records and that footage can be requested by anyone through FOIA and similar open records laws. While I wouldn't expect that I will end up on youtube just for doing something like renewing my drivers license, I should be aware that it is possible and legal. Corporations and data brokers can also request that footage to mine for personal data to sell.
For privately installed/operated cameras that footage can also be published and used for entertainment or any number of other things depending on the whims of the owner and the terms of any third parties managing that footage (amazon, google, etc). For example, someone caught in view of a ring camera while walking their dog on a public sidewalk might find themselves on youtube with a title like "Terrible person doesn't clean up their dog's poop" if the camera owner is tired of them not picking up after their pet and wants to shame them publicly for it.
Or, perhaps amazon will use facial ID to identify them, note when and where they were detected, what kind of clothes they were wearing, who they were with, what they were doing, how healthy/fit they appear, what kind of pet they have, how often they are seen there, etc. The information Amazon gathered this way could be used to push dog food ads at the dog walker weeks later, or used in almost any way that Amazon thinks might benefit Amazon including selling that data/footage to police (with or without the camera owner's knowledge or consent) or other third parties. I'd like to think that I can walk my dog without worrying about being misidentified as a wanted criminal, or being publicly shamed, or being scrutinized by companies who want to take advantage of me, but that's not the world we live in.
I sure don't think this is an ideal situation and I'd love to see some protections for people's privacy so long as they don't interfere with people's right to take photographs/videos for personal use, educational use, limited commercial use, citizen journalism, personal protection, etc. I think it would be hard to create those protections though and even harder to police violations. Especially when multiple parties get involved. My suspicion is that we're more likely to see laws that restrict private individuals from filming/photographing for legitimate uses while exceptions get carved out for the corporations and governments that are a much larger threat to our privacy/security rather than the other way around.
Or at least websites like this make that claim: https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/photography-laws-germany#t...