Proposed bill would require all cameraphones to make themselves heard

by Donald Melanson, posted Jan 26th 2009 at 7:14PM
There's already similar laws in place in Japan and South Korea, and New York Representative Pete King is hoping that the US will soon have a law requiring that all cameraphones make a noise when they snap a picture as well. To that end, King has re-introduced the so-called "Camera Phone Predator Alert Act," which was actually first introduced in 2007 but went nowhere at the time. The bill, as the name not-so-subtly suggests, aims to prevent folks from taking cameraphone pictures without others people's knowledge by forcing the phones to make a sound that's "audible within a reasonable radius" and not able to be disabled. Somewhat curiously, however, the bill apparently wouldn't apply to digital cameras and, as blogger Thomas Hawk points out, it also doesn't take video into account, or do anything to address the millions of camera-equipped phones currently in use that are able to snap pictures silently. No word on any movement of the bill just yet, but it has picked up one co-sponsor and, on the odd chance it actually becomes law, it'd be enforced by the Consumer Products Safety Commission.

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