With cell phone cameras everywhere, here is one proposal for how to balance freedom to record and the right to privacy

John Bredehoft ponders Striking the balance between freedom and privacy, and the other Empoprise rule

With almost everyone having a cell phone that can record video and audio, we need to work through the issue of balancing privacy right to *not* be recorded and the freedom to record things of interest.

As a society, we haven’t come to terms with that issue.

John has a suggestion:

So let me present my Empoprises Rule Regarding Recording Freedom and Privacy:

I am allowed to record anything that I want.

No one, however, is allowed to record me unless I say that it’s OK.

I think he is serious, but there is also a distinct possibility he may be joking. In any event, I think there may be a few little implementation issues if he ever is around another person who has also adopted his rule.

3 thoughts on “With cell phone cameras everywhere, here is one proposal for how to balance freedom to record and the right to privacy”

  1. One of my online friends, Tad Donaghe, is fond of saying that privacy as we know it is dead. I’m not sure if I’m willing to go that far yet.

    Of course, threats to privacy are nothing new – I was growing up in the Washington, DC area during the Watergate era, and Nixon was not the first President to secretly tape conversations (and probably not the first one to illegally access someone’s medical records). I’m not sure if the digital nature of information has resulted in a profound change in privacy, or just a change in the tools that we have.

    1. John:

      I’m not sure if it is dead. Since we are talking medical analogies, perhaps we need to talking about whether privacy is on home hospice care, or in the ICU, or on life support with no brain wave. It is almost gone.

      I want to comment soon on an article I read about what a person could do to hide their identity when talking to a reporter. The steps are extreme.

      Jim

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