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Comment by nfoz | Hacker News Reader

Here's a weird request: any video-recording device, when activated (shooting or ready to shoot), should be required to emit a low-power radio signal. So your own device (e.g. cellphone) can listen for that signal and let you know what is recording you and from where.

Maybe it's silly or infeasible but I'd be curious where that could lead. Consider that in some cultures you're not allowed to film/photograph people in public without their consent. So this is a small step toward a technological infrastructure that could enable that social convention.

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>Consider that in some cultures you're not allowed to film/photograph people in public without their consent.

That's the exact case in Austria and it's not always a good thing though as most of the times it ends up protecting the wrong doers.

For example as a cyclist you're not allowed to use a dash/action camera because you'd be taping people without their consent so if you get hit by a car and have no witnesses then it's your word against his in court and who can afford the more expensive lawyers.

If you did use an action cam to tape the accident then the driver's lawyers could have the footage dismissed as it was obtained without his consent and he could even sue you and ask compensation for it. Sad world.

Austria just got Google Street View last year as the previous strict privacy laws that were blocking this were relaxed.

Wow, Austrian law is really different!

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_...

https://law.photography/law/street-photography-laws-in-austr...

> If you did use an action cam to tape the accident then the driver's lawyers could have the footage dismissed as it was obtained without his consent and he could even sue you and ask compensation for it. Sad world.

That's not the case. It still can be used, but compensation is also possible.

I believe if that were the case, in any significant sized city, you would simply always get the "someone is recording you" signal.

Which would normalize it even further, as it becomes unavoidable.

The signal could give you an identification for who/what it is that's recording.

I'd rather normalize knowing who's tracking me than normalize the tracking without me even having a chance to know.

You could imagine extending the mechanism to where users can emit a "don't record me" beacon.

But what of the billions of already existing non-compliance recording devices, plus the ability to easily roll your own without including an emitter?

Even if it was successfully implemented it wouldn't actually at all tell you whether you're being recorded or not. Then what's the point?

Identification can be either fuzzed or resold to aggregators and become effectively useless.

There's precendent for the emission signal in Do Not Track, but I don't think the result is what you want.

I'm talking about a legal mechanism relevant for the sale of hardware devices. Do Not Track was useless, but GDPR was not.

You don't get to put that genie back in the bottle. If you normalize tracking, by giving it even tacit approval, then any "tacked on" privacy laws or regulations simply become a cost of doing business.

The GDPR has serious teeth - by there are still a large number of companies that flaunt the regulations. Like OATH.

Anything the user says to try and opt-out will be used as nothing more than an identifier to continue to track them.

We've already seen all this play out in the websphere. We do not want this to happen the same way in the real world.

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