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How does the first amendment protect your right to photograph others, and even if it does somehow, how does it protect your doing whatever you want with that ph
by alex_young 6y ago
How does the first amendment protect your right to photograph others, and even if it does somehow, how does it protect your doing whatever you want with that photo?
If you take a photo of someone and don’t obtain their permission to use it aren’t you violating their right to privacy, which is clearly secured by the forth amendment?
- jMyles 6y ago> How does the first amendment protect your right to photograph others I'll leave you to read the numerous SCOTUS rulings (and, for the purposes of freedom in other jurisdictions, analogous court rulings) instead of trying to explain myself. In short: the fact that a photon bounces off of your face does not entitle you to control every person who might capture it, in perpetuity, throughout time and space. I was born with eyes capable of a materially identical task as a CMOS sensor: must I look away any time you I see you in public? Must I refrain from remembering that I saw you? If I testify that you shot my friends and neighbors with impact munitions - a nightly occurrence in this city - will it be as reliable as if I had photographed you and compared your face to an index of known violent repressive forces in Portland? I find this logic to be the maximal case for ego: to believe it, you have to believe that light itself is made for you alone. > how does it protect your doing whatever you want with that photo Do you generally dispute that people have a right to think about and process data however they wish? Must I cover my ears if a state secret is uttered by a journalist or friend? Must I refrain from thinking critically about whether it implicates a powerful person in criminal activity? Well, isn't it the same if we, the people of Portland, seek to compile photographs of police officers who have been repeatedly abusing and terrorizing us and use them to recognize their faces? > their right to privacy, which is clearly secured by the forth amendment? I know of no such plausible argument being made about the faces of people appearing in public, and certainly no actual jurisprudence in the Western legal tradition. When in public, you can be reported on. You can be photographed and recorded. If you decide to spray chemical weapons at people, you can be held accountable.
- michaelmrose 6y agoJust because your eyes are sort of like a cmos sensor and your brain sort of like a recording device doesn't mean its exactly the same they very clearly banned a process on an external computer. You are free to run your brains built in facial recognition on anything you photograph and write them down in pen. What you aren't allowed to do is feed a stream of data to a computer and run facial recognition over the stream. It's pointless to pretend these activities are legally or literally equivalent when this just isn't so. Additionally the first amendment seems to only apply in this context if it pertains to freedom of the press. Presumably you would have to argue that the inability to ask the computer to guess the identity of all and sundry materially impaired your ability to report on current events. Most of the people likely targeted by this law are apt to be neither professional press nor citizen journalists and wont be able to take advantage of this argument. Whereas citizens photographing cops would likely be able to make this argument.
- Reelin 6y ago> Additionally the first amendment seems to only apply in this context if it pertains to freedom of the press. That wasn't my understanding. I thought that SCOTUS had repeatedly ruled that you had absolutely no expectation of privacy when in a public location? It seems weird to me to have a legally protected right to make recordings that doesn't extend to their use (at least for personal purposes). Even so, I suppose the ordinance might be legal because I've never heard of a "right to use of facial recognition technology" or anything that would otherwise imply that. That being said, I find the idea a bit disquieting. I value privacy highly and have serious concerns about the current state of affairs, but specific algorithms being disallowed on the level of an individual person is highly concerning to me. Isn't it only large actors (ie corporations and governments) where abuse becomes a serious concern due to their geographic reach and available resources?
- ghaff 6y agoIt's not that there's a right to facial recognition technology but that there's an implied right that, if I take a photo, that I can use that photo. (Except in some specific ways, e.g. using it in some libelous way to misrepresent the subject, certain types of commercial use like ads, etc.) Certainly if I take a picture of a person there can't be a blanket prohibition on trying to figure out who that person is. In the US I have pretty wide rights to take a photo in a public place for editorial purposes and to publish it (which is a variant of freedom of the press).
- jjcon 6y ago> If you take a photo of someone and don’t obtain their permission to use it aren’t you violating their right to privacy, which is clearly secured by the forth amendment? If you are in a public place you do not have a right to privacy. You are in public and a photographer has a right to photograph and publish your photo without permission (with certain exceptions like accidental nudity). Any pictures taken in public can be used without permission, even for most commercial activities.