Aiee... Global Surveillance by network... Each phone revealing where you were, each photo time and location-stamped... Like the satellite-governed toll system for major roads currently being proposed, once such a network existed, surely police and other agencies would want automatic rights to use the information... Yuck.

→ Posted by: Nick at June 16, 2003 10:55 AM

Isn't this a bit like those devices for dating in Japan? Where you set your device to a level of "interest", and then when someone of a similar level of interest is around, it beeps or something? I forget the specifics, but it's basically the same.

→ Posted by: Tom at June 16, 2003 11:25 AM

I think there was a Virtual Pet concept at one stage that would beep if someone else owned a pet and was in your vicinity... Cellphones would have to either become implanted or alot smaller, because not many people carry them absolutely EVRYWHERE at all times, and how many major companies would use the principles of this new network for Protection of Digital Rights Management, i.e. No Sharing of Music, Videos, Pictures etc, unless your phone/pda is set to a certain frequency/mode.

→ Posted by: Andrew at June 16, 2003 1:45 PM

Can I take it one step further. I want to 'recruit' every camera in range to take simultaneous photos of my subject (at my cost, of course) and transmit them back to my camera/server/repository. Now I can assemble a full 3-D view, or see around the corner, or just make use of the different features on different cameras.

→ Posted by: Ian at June 16, 2003 5:13 PM

And completely destroy the fun of candids? Oh well, have fun - I'm sticking with film!

→ Posted by: Tom Morris at June 16, 2003 7:48 PM

Perhaps the camera can also contain pre-set photoshop settings, like, "I prefer to appear 2 inches taller," "Set my transparency to 20%", or the sure-to-be-popular "nictating eyelids."

→ Posted by: Tim at June 17, 2003 9:03 AM

Would there be a "don't take photos of me when I'm naked and don't know you're spying on me" mode? Oh wait... if I'm naked, then I presumably wouldn't have my cell phone to tell yours to sod off...

→ Posted by: Bryan at June 18, 2003 12:42 AM

Antipopper's post raises a good point, though -- a strong extension of the idea, I think. I doubt anyone should worry about being seen by some global network of cameras (after all, we're already in public), and if we're in public, we should assume we're being seen. I don't like having my picture taken without my knowledge, but dammit, how else would we ever have been able to get such wonderful pictures of our beloved president picking his nose or falling off a Segway? Priceless! And alas, captured in what would surely have been Rude Mode.

→ Posted by: Chris at June 18, 2003 3:02 PM

what a concept, a camera being used to 'stop' someone taking your picture. I know you could embbed the 'intelligence' into pretty much any device, but the idea that it is the camera that would tell other cameras if it was ok to take their picture or not is kinda interesting.
also what if i had an agent, suppose my camera sent yours a message, saying that you could take the picture but here are the details of my agent and here is my image usage agreement...

→ Posted by: mark at June 18, 2003 3:29 PM

The idea reminds me a bit of Pox -- a toy that, after a bit of research, seems extinct.

The idea was brilliant, however. The toys were a next-gen digipet one trained and grew from a digital cocoon. Then the trainer simply carried his pet about town. The toys recognized other Pox and entered into battle.

Pox on Amazon

→ Posted by: Bryan B. at June 18, 2003 4:25 PM

Hm. To me this sounds like the live version of "plugging the analog hole" that the music industry was so enthusiastic about a while ago. You know, embedding DRM circuitry on every A/D converter, so that anything that you were not allowed to take a picture of, or to record, would be recognized and the camera/recording device would not work.

Isn't this like treating your own public image as a copyrighted work? :-)

→ Posted by: Janne at June 18, 2003 9:51 PM

Ok. This is interesting. Yes - to some extent, this is exactly like treating your appearance as a copyrighted work. Totally. So it gets difficult and maybe wrong (unnecessary control built into technology to stop people doing things) if the rules are unbreakable. It's supposed to be a thing to help people determine appropriate social behaviour but code is more powerful than social moray - it's just as easy to make something binding as to make it optional. So all I can say is that it would be in the best interests of everyone to make it vaguely like DRM only functionally unenforceable, but that once created I couldn't legitimately predict with 100% certainty whether or not it would stay optional...

→ Posted by: Tom Coates at June 18, 2003 10:14 PM

It's a weird paradigm isn't it? I don't want my photo taken by anyone, especially if it's unsolicited. And the 'gaydar' for phones system you mention seems like a great solution. But as in the case here in the UK, of the woman who had her rape recorded via camera phone, when does my requested invasion of privacy stop, and the need for my attackers to be captured on 'camera' take over...?

I actually find this quite depressing.

→ Posted by: Steve Hunt at June 19, 2003 2:58 PM

And there would be a way to hack it within days. =]

→ Posted by: Tarsh at November 25, 2004 11:30 AM

"Gaydar"? Um... not to get into a semantic debate here, but intrusive voyeurism has nothing to do with homosexuality.

I can imagine this DRM-esque technology getting to be very annoying however. Just like Cory Doctorow's example of the "honest-user" mother wanting to tape a DVD for her kids, and not being able to for the sake of piracy protection.

Similarly, there is no legal protection (in the United States) for the privacy of certain personal items, for instance smell. A police dog who happens to smell an illegal substance on casual passing in a train station is probably cause for detaining you.

On the flipside, television and movie production companies are required to post large disclaimers when filming in a public area, so you can choose to avoid being filmed inadvertantly.

→ Posted by: andrew at November 26, 2004 4:53 AM

Sounds like a rubbish idea to me, even though there's news now of it perhaps being implemented. The big flaw is that people who want to be able to take pictures of anyone (like the paparazzi), will simply buy alternative equipment. It'd also need collaboration between manufactorers and huge critical mass in order for it to work.

Aside from that though, I don't think that it's the job of technology to stop people doing bad things. That's what the law is for. Besides, is simply taking a photo of a stranger and publishing it illegal?

→ Posted by: Frankie Roberto at November 26, 2004 1:01 PM

That's a big flaw if you think the idea is to legally forbid people from doing this stuff. Basically there's nothing to stop someone using a different camera if they're not interested in being polite, this idea was about making it easier for people to be polite if they wanted to be. That's why I talked a lot about people having to turn over to a 'rude' mode if they wanted to take pictures of people who didn't want to have their picture taken. I wasn't suggesting that any camera that takes an illicit photography should explode in the hands of the miscreant using it.

With regards to technology not being there to stop people doing bad things - well I think that's a ludicrous thing to say. We have appliances that are designed to stop you hurting yourself and other people, safety equipment everywhere. Seatbelts. We have traffic lights to help people stop crashing into each other at junctions. We use firewalls to stop us accidentally downloading viruses. Seems to me technology has a major role in helping people to avoid doing damaging things, just as it has a major role in helping them do lots of other non-damaging things. But that's a completely different debate.

→ Posted by: Tom Coates at November 26, 2004 5:11 PM