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The sticky issue of consent in street photography

dinalitovsky.bulletin.com

231–240 of 292 posts

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#231

One thing I've found is that photographing strangers is a lot more widely accepted in places around the world with more community oriented culture, and less accepted in very individualistic cultures like in the West. I think this individualism considers the act of someone taking a photo of you as a transaction, where people stand to gain or lose from it, and quite frankly oversensitivity over how it could affect you…

I think you'll find that even in those "community oriented" cultures, many people don't like random strangers taking photographs of them, although unlike Westerners they may not be as forthcoming about it, especially to a foreigner.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#232
post #62

This made me think - and I've still not managed to produce a coherent viewpoint. Closest I can come up with is that there's some sort of asymmetric 'value' that sometimes appears from nowhere and this throws us off a bit. As people have mentioned, security cameras are filming me all the time - and I've no issue with that. My image has no value. It's one amongst billions of frames taken, that will be ultimately wiped,…

The problem with surveillance is that law enforcement is not acting in your interests as an individual. Your image, captured on camera near a crime scene, becomes evidence of your guilt. It puts the onus on you to prove your innocence, and if law enforcement is lazy, fallible, stupid, or you just get unlucky, you're going to prison for a crime you didn't commit. Or you're going to get tangled up in a legal defense th…

> Your image, captured on camera near a crime scene, becomes evidence of your guilt. It puts the onus on you to prove your innocence, and if law enforcement is lazy, fallible, stupid, or you just get unlucky, you're going to prison for a crime you didn't commit. Or you're going to get tangled up in a legal defense that could cost you years worth of paychecks to prove your innocence.

This is literally just FUD, albeit you're as much a victim of it as you are a vector.

As someone who was recently on a jury for a criminal trial that was based almost entirely on copious video camera surveillance footage (no, not that trial), a jury that acquitted the defendant of all charges (almost immediately, save for a few hangers on, including myself), your fears seem largely unfounded. Both the law and the judgement of humans heavily emphasize intent and motivation, and camera footage is neutral in that regard.

Admittedly, it's no picnic being subject to state-sponsored prosecution. But that was always the case, and despite all the FUD rooted in an unhealthily extreme anti-authoritarian sentiment (partially a product of our victim culture) that leaves little room for civil society to function, there's still conspicuously few claims, let alone evidence, that camera footage will result in a greater prevalence of false prosecutions, particularly for non-traffic offenses.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand correctly, the reason why public photography is considered protected speech is because we want citizens to be able to capture public events of interest. That is, protests, riots, cops using excessive force, or more happy events like celebrations, etc. When it comes to someone taking photos in those situations I have no problem with it. However I really dislike the commercial street photographers as a…

The difference between a model and a random stranger is night and day. The reason the model gets paid is because they are professional and contribute roughly equally to the process. With [good] street photography, it's almost entirely the story that is told that brings the value, the subject just happens to be living their relatively ordinary life.

Every time I hear someone talk like you do, I think about this photo:

https://i.imgur.com/1p0GS9R.png

Street photographers are universally terrible people, and people who defend them are defending some of the more mundane scum of the earth.

This is made worse by their worship of people like Mark Cohen, who was an absolute creep: https://www.reddit.com/r/AnalogCommunity/comments/qxmjb4/

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#234
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between surveillance cameras (whose footage is not distributed publicly unless it is footage of a crime taking place) and photographers who sell this work for profit.

I wouldn't make that assumption at all. First, not all cameras are public and second, what makes you think people with access can be trusted?

It's not so much trust as incentive. I have a camera at my door, facing the street, but I have no reason to give anyone footage unless I get a request for a specific timeframe from someone trustworthy (eg. a known neighbor, or the cops)

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking about the security-cameras vs photographer thing: - Security cameras: At least in theory, security camera footage is mostly private, and recorded with a specific, 'good' goal: if something happens, they have the security footage. It can be useful to me if someone robs me and they can get identified because they were filmed. - Photographer: absolutely no use to me, and possibly going to share that picture on…

Are we talking about rights or your convenience? Does a person has a right to freely express himself in any art form including photography?

This is a response to the parent, which said:

> As people have mentioned, security cameras are filming me all the time - and I've no issue with that.

> If one of these frames was taken by a photographer deliberately - then suddenly I care more. Why did he take it? What was I doing? Where will it be shown? To whom will it be shown? What will they think of me, based upon it etc etc.

I was just expanding on that. But go ahead and read my reply without thinking about what I was replying to

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#236

I’m willing to be swayed on this issue but to me the word “consent” implies permission, and the word permission implies some type of authority. In the case of photography in public there is no authority so no consent is needed. I personally believe that, for the most part, ethics and legality align here. I don’t think it is unethical to photograph and publish a picture of someone in public. However, I think there may…

> “consent” implies permission, and the word permission implies some type of authority. In the case of photography in public there is no authority so no consent is needed. The authority is over their own person. If I'm in public you don't get to touch grab my ass because "in the case of ass-grabbing in public there is no authority so no consent is needed." > However, I think there may be an ethical dilemma if the pic…

Does my authority over my own person extend to denying you permission to transmit photons into my retina?

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#237
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's very surprising that exposing oneself to the public ... warrants a loss of freedom to privacy. Again, I understand your personal desire for privacy (and even share it), but this argument doesn't make sense. "Public" is literally an antonym of "Private" - the reason one loses privacy in public is baked into the very definition of the words we're using to describe the situation.

It makes total sense. To live any kind of livable life you need to go into the public space now and then. That shouldn't mean you have to give up any rights or freedoms.

Should I be allowed to walk around naked in public? Play my music as loud as I want? Set up a tent and live there forever in public?

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#238
post #62

This made me think - and I've still not managed to produce a coherent viewpoint. Closest I can come up with is that there's some sort of asymmetric 'value' that sometimes appears from nowhere and this throws us off a bit. As people have mentioned, security cameras are filming me all the time - and I've no issue with that. My image has no value. It's one amongst billions of frames taken, that will be ultimately wiped,…

I'm MUCH more comfortable with street photography than CCTV.

I don't care if my image is taken in public, I have no expectation of privacy in the moment.

But I do care about subsequent analysis of, and storage of linked metadata about those images.

A random street photographer or member of the public is unlikely to be connected to a permanent, secret, and searchable database of facial recognition, gait analysis, or whatever else linked to bluetooth/phone signals to identify people in the images.

I cannot say that about the many, many CCTV cameras that seem to be everywhere.

Some people may think that's paranoid, but that's exactly what they would have said about mass surveillance pre-Snowden, and when you look at how much data they were storing and analyzing back then, think about what they're probably doing now...

Such scary things are possible now that couldn't have been imagined even 20 years ago.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#239
post #62

This made me think - and I've still not managed to produce a coherent viewpoint. Closest I can come up with is that there's some sort of asymmetric 'value' that sometimes appears from nowhere and this throws us off a bit. As people have mentioned, security cameras are filming me all the time - and I've no issue with that. My image has no value. It's one amongst billions of frames taken, that will be ultimately wiped,…

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I'm in the same boat as em-bee - I am not ok with security cameras in public[1], or with public-facing doorbell cameras, either. My thought is basically: if a camera is recording the public, the public should have access to the recording. That isn't generally the case, so I'm not ok with it. [1] Note that by "public" I mean cameras facing streets, sidewalks, etc. I can alway…

> Note that by "public" I mean cameras facing streets, sidewalks, etc. I can always choose not to go into a store if I don't want to be on its cameras.

Given how cheap and ubiquitous internet-connected security cams are now, this seems like a distinction without a difference. Unless you expect the “free market” to deliver a brand of “proudly webcam-free” businesses (don’t hold your breath), this is just going to mean that you can’t go in any stores.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#240
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this. I consider the human eye a camera. It also saves videos in a storage medium that doesn't permit deletion. I don't distinguish between a silicon-based camera and a carbon-based camera. To me they're just different rows of the periodic table. In fact I even hope to think that one day silicon-based cameras can be used to restore vision to carbon-based beings that have non-functioning carbon-based c…

> I consider the human eye a camera. It also saves videos in a storage medium that doesn't permit deletion The key distinction is that the human eye and its storage system doesn't meaningfully support duplication and distribution of the picture. What someone saw is not going to show up in Clearview's biometric surveillance database years later, and while this one human may remember me, the inherent limitations of hum…

I don’t know. I’d be roughly as uncomfortable with someone tweeting to a large audience that they saw me at a certain location at a certain time as I would be with someone posting a photo of me to a large audience.
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