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Comment by wang_li | Hacker News Reader

>>Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me

If you don't want someone to make a record of the photons that arrive at a particular place because those photons bounced off you, then don't let them go out into the world far beyond your private space.

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Why are you trying to dehumanize the idea of taking a picture of someone and possibly posting it publicly by referring to it as photons? Yes we are all just atoms moving around in 3D space but it doesn't take away the fact that people should be allowed to exist outside their house without some random person recording them and possibly posting it to the internet. You don't care and that is totally fine but some people do.

I'm not dehumanizing it, I'm making it clear that photography is generally a passive activity. Where's the line between "don't record me" and "don't look at me"? If it's ok you look at you, but not record you, where's the line? Can someone use a telescope to look at you? Can a store have a camera and a live TV view of all the people who walk in? Can there be a live camera that captures the people on a sidewalk and display it on a giant billboard on the side of a building? If you're at a sporting event can they aim a camera at you in the crowd and put you on the jumbotron? These are all amplifications of visibility, which ones are allowed and which are not. And why should you be able to insist on the absolute bare minimum of noticeability when you are out in public?

How is it passive? You are literally choosing to use a camera by pointing it in a specific direction and press a button to make it record. The problem is how people who record videos of others are perfectly fine with it while other people might not be. It's not other people seeing me or noticing me that is the problem. It's random people I don't know recording me because I don't get to choose how the video/recording stored on their device will be seen or distributed in the future.

Businesses recording security footage is different because there is some type of social contract that they won't publicly release it. If I knew for example that the grocery store I shop at was posting security videos to youtube I would go spend money at another grocery store. I can choose not to go to a sporting event concert because I don't want to be on a jumbo tron. I have way to choose whether or not some random person will record me while I'm working out or taking my dog out.

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