Mandatory Click Sounds Coming Soon?
Posted in: Law, Today's ChiliI doubt it, but one representative from New York would like to see it. Pete King, R-N.Y., has introduced a bill that proposes making the annoying click sound a required feature on all camera phones. The ability to switch it off would be disabled. Enter a whole new realm of phone hacks. From the E-Week article:
Designed to protect children and adolescents who “have been exploited by photographs taken in dressing rooms and public places with the use of a camera phone,” the bill requires any camera phone manufactured in the United States to “sound a tone or other sound audible within a reasonable radius of the phone whenever a photograph is taken.”
If it passes, any mobile phone or handset manufactured a year after the bill passes would be required to have a clicking sound. Any silencing option would go the way of the dinosaurs: Extinction.
Yet another micromanaging bill written under the guise of child protection. While I am hardly condoning misconduct against children, I think this bill is way out of line. Will this really prevent crimes from occurring? No. What about digital cameras? Would they be silenced as well? What if I witness a murder and have a clear shot at the perpetrator, but the sound of my camera phone gives me away? What if I’m trying to photograph wildlife? One shot and they’re gone.
I certainly hope this bill is dumped for something more worthwhile. If child protection is really the issue, then silencing camera phones is not going to improve anything. Stiffer penalties for abusers might be a better place to start.
Camera Phone Predator Alert Act (HR 414)
