Fears of child exploitation have spawned a bill that would legally mandate all cell phone cameras to make a shutter noise when taking pictures.
When cell phones aren’t being used by terrorists to remotely detonate bombs, by school kids to cheat on exams, and by careless drivers as distractions that cause accidents, Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) apparently believes they’re being used by predators to take pictures of your children. The Congressman sponsored a bill earlier this month that would make a “shutter” sound on camera phones mandatory.
The bill, known as the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act, would require all cell phones manufactured a year after the date it passes to produce an audible click “within a reasonable radius of the phone whenever a photograph is taken.” Unlike existing phones, which make sound alerts optional, users would not be able to disable them, and the government would enforce the rule as a consumer product safety standard
According to the bill, silent camera phones have enabled child predators to discretely snap inappropriate photos of youngsters. “Congress finds that children and adolescents have been exploited by photographs taken in dressing rooms and public places with the use of a camera phone,” the draft reads.
Currently, the bill has only been assigned to a house subcommittee since it was introduced on Jan. 9, with no further progress being made. If past bills are any indication, the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act won’t make it far. Rep. King introduced a similar bill, H.R.3488, back in September 2007, which stagnated shortly after.
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RSSDear Representative King,
With respect to your proposed cell phone camera-click bill: I can only wonder if it has occurred to you that ANY technology can be defeated with relative ease. I live in the tech world and, even if I am not a bona fide 'cellphone expert', I can certainly tell you that your bill will be rendered absolutely meaningless and totally ineffective mere moments after its passage if it ever gets that far. The only thing your bill will succeed in doing is making tech-savvy people 'out there' anxious and determined to come up with a way around it and they WILL in very little time. Not only that, but any 'crack' that emerges as a result of your bill will be immediately and readily available on the Internet to anyone who wants it and those who will want it the most are the very same people your bill is supposedly 'designed' to stop. Your effort is a wsate of taxpayers' time and, therefore, money and, if you happen to think this will be some kind of 'feather in your cap', you are sorely mistaken. I am taking the time to write this to you for your own good such that you can avoid the embarrassment that will certainly follow you if your bill passes. Please, either leave technology to the techies, take the time to learn it or hire someone that knows it; but do not journey on your own into areas you clearly do not understand.
You will be acosted if they hear the click!