Photography
Something that has been bubbling round in my mind for a while now has been brought to my attention by sightings of the evil privacy-invading car, namely the slightly uneasy feeling I get having my photograph taken. The impact of being photographed has changed dramaticly in recent times, five years ago, digital cameras were relatively rare, all that was likely to happen was that your picture would sit in someone's album, seen by a few family and friends; a couple of years ago someone may email a photo of me to a dozen contacts. Now, however, photo sharing websites are common, technology can and does recognise you. Trawling large numbers of photos for your face (or even easier, number plate) is trivial for those with the resources, with most pictures posted with some details about where they were taken, or indeed GPS coordinates, along with a date taken, a remarkably large amount of information is suddenly potentially available. I must confess I find this unease very hard to reconcile with my desire to take photographs (other than the fact that I rarely put photos of people in my Flickr photostream). How do you feel about having your photograph taken? Do you find it hard to balance that with a desire to take photos?
I suppose I should mention *why* this bothers me. I'm not entirely sure. After all, it's all very well to complain that photos were published of me carrying out some wrong-doing, but rather like speed cameras you have to have been doing something "wrong" to be caught. I suppose sloppy policing is what frightens me the most, a friend of mine was a prime suspect in a serious police investigation when he happened to drive his van (which matched the description of the van in which the crime took place) to the wrong town at the wrong time.
Having said that, the risk of being spotted on Flickr is probably trivial compared to being recorded on one of the countless CCTV cameras that pepper every town these days.
[update] I mentioned this in passing to a friend and recieved this rather valid point...
> i think the state was the biggest culprit and now they've figured a clever way to manipulate people into monitoring one another even further for them
> what annoys me most about these things is that even if one chooses to opt out of them and is careful not to appear in the background of shots, etc., the fragile semblance of "community" that we have treats said individual as a non-entity.. we become unperson, to use the Orwellian parlance
> wow i used some dodgy vocab there, sorry!
I tend to agree that the pressure to opt-into the social networking norm does rather perpetuate this situation.
Thoughts? Tell me I'm a paranoid nutter? Tell me you've been thinking this for years?
I suppose I should mention *why* this bothers me. I'm not entirely sure. After all, it's all very well to complain that photos were published of me carrying out some wrong-doing, but rather like speed cameras you have to have been doing something "wrong" to be caught. I suppose sloppy policing is what frightens me the most, a friend of mine was a prime suspect in a serious police investigation when he happened to drive his van (which matched the description of the van in which the crime took place) to the wrong town at the wrong time.
Having said that, the risk of being spotted on Flickr is probably trivial compared to being recorded on one of the countless CCTV cameras that pepper every town these days.
[update] I mentioned this in passing to a friend and recieved this rather valid point...
> i think the state was the biggest culprit and now they've figured a clever way to manipulate people into monitoring one another even further for them
> what annoys me most about these things is that even if one chooses to opt out of them and is careful not to appear in the background of shots, etc., the fragile semblance of "community" that we have treats said individual as a non-entity.. we become unperson, to use the Orwellian parlance
> wow i used some dodgy vocab there, sorry!
I tend to agree that the pressure to opt-into the social networking norm does rather perpetuate this situation.
Thoughts? Tell me I'm a paranoid nutter? Tell me you've been thinking this for years?