In Paulsgrove near Portsmouth where I grew up an angry mob demonstrated outside and threw missiles at the house of a paediatrician... - Alex Gawley
Gawd! Those parents need to lighten up! - Peter Simard
It's even got to the point where you can't take photos of your kids in a school event because of the potential issues. The school say they would have to get permission from all parents to do it etc. and it's not worth the hassle. - Colin Walker via fftogo
my favorite comment is "In the words of John McEnroe - 'you can't be serious?'." - guess the guy made an impression over their in england if they're still referring to him years after his retirement ;) - mike "glemak" dunn
"What is the world coming to when anybody seen with a camera is assumed to be doing things that they should not? " - Clare Dibble
"The woman running the slide at Wolverhampton Show asked him what he was doing and other families waiting in the queue demanded that he stop." Other families? Love the mob mentality that took hold. - Hutch Carpenter
Remember this is the Daily Mail, you couldn't get a more knee-jerk, newspaper if you tried. I'm suprised they didn't contact the slide owner for some quotes and spin it to make the bloke look like the pervert they accused him of being, with the headline "WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN" (This time attached to the right story :-) - Stuart Grimshaw
there is also another side of coin - while in paper photo era that photo of your kid by someone else most probably will be shelved in dusty album; in digital era, with all its huge botnets reality, likelyhood that your photo archive will be stolen and scanned for purposes of sale are _relatively_ higher... - silpol
The irony of the situation is that if the father were a newspaper photographer, the parents would be queueing up to get their kid on the front page -- where it would be seen by everybody in the city, and end up on the Internet where the whole world would be able to see their precious snowflake! - Gabe Schaffer
If you have a serious telephoto, people REALLY get weirded out. Especially if you're in full camo and hiding in a tree. Sheesh. Parents. - Matthew Davidson via twhirl
My mother better get rid of those baby pictures she took of me. That's *hardcore* stuff, I tell you! *grin* - Rodrigo Jaroszewski
personally, I am getting next to ballistic when asian tourists turn their cameras on my kids - and most of them don't even want to realise that concept of privacy _is_ different here, and also we are not here for their entertainment. One of those tourists learned it _hard_ way. - silpol
Isn't this sort of thing going to teach children that society is dangerous? - Robin Barooah
@ajbatac what do you mean? "mean" is photographing not yours kids "on the street" while parent shows you NO, or what ? - silpol
In Brazil, you can take pictures of children, but you must have parental consent to show their faces in it, if you're talking about a somewhat serious subject and picturing them in a somewhat serious situation. Otherwise you must mask their faces. - Rodrigo Jaroszewski
Rodrigo: wow, that's awful. I like freedom of expression, and don't agree with putting limits on what we can/can not photograph. lame-O - Susan Beebe
@susan it is matter of culture - yes I know that in US privacy is taken light heart, and very sparse. In Finland you can find yourself in police precinct, if you do that (kids photo without parent permit): Europe is much more stringent and consistent about privacy, and kids are priority #1 in this sense too. And, yes, to the hell self-expression when it comes to kids privacy. - silpol
Silpol what does police have to say about people beating up tourists? :) - Philipp Lenssen
@silpol, Don't know exactly what you meant by "learned it _hard_ way" but it sounded mean from here. Photography is not a crime. You can politely ask them not to take pictures. I also find targeting "asian tourists" a bit offensive. Not everyone carries a camera, takes photos of kids without permission, and continues to do so when being told not to. - AJ Batac
If you READ the post, you will see that he showed the morons that it was photos of HIS children. He was not taking photos of everybody else. @silpol How do you feel about children being photographed by surveillance and security cameras without your permission and without any assurance of how the photos are used, while you do not have the right to do the same? - Jeremy Brooks
@ajbatac he has seen my hand raised with palm up way before, heard laud NO and even after I had turned pram with daughter to another angle (to try passive protection), he jumped in to try it anyway - do you think I have a grain respect for such arsehole? camera dragged from his hand, SD card pulled out from and formatted in my tablet, returned. - silpol
In the US the law says you can photograph anything you want as long as you are on public property even if people ask/tell you to stop you are perfectly within your rights to photograph children / dogs whatever. - gregory
@gregory: That is correct; and what is more, you SHOULD stand up for your rights when you are confronted. - Jeremy Brooks
Have you ever noticed that the parents who make the biggest stink about this have the ugliest kids? - Matthew Davidson via twhirl
@silpol: What does the law there say about what you did? I hope the person knew that he could recover the photos with simple software tools. - Jeremy Brooks
@silpol, you failed to mention all of those details on your 1st comment. anyway, that SD card might have contained proofs or evidence leading to the arrest of _. just saying. - AJ Batac
@gregory that's one of reasons why I avoid US in first place, even at inconvenience for me - country which treats personal privacy below other rights can easily "survive" my absence :) and I am not alone in that notion ;) - silpol
@silpol: I am curious how you rationalize your perception of lack of personal privacy in the U.S. with your lack of personal privacy when you are being photographed and videotaped by security cameras.... - Jeremy Brooks
@jeremy Finnish law gives me next to infinite rights to protect my kid rights - the only thing I may NOT do is "stop court order execution" or "counter-attacking other kids". As for card recovery - I know how to do that true formatting with 99,999% guarantee. - silpol
talk about out of control, someone needs to talk to the parents making the acusations. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? My son just *graduated* grade 5 and at the start of the ceremony the principal asked that parents only take pictures of their own children. In a gym filled with kids no less. - Chris Jones via twhirl
@sam no, enjoy local habits, being a 100% foreigner :) local joke says when Finn learns that neighbour appears in 20 km radius, he takes axe and goes to solve *issue* :) - silpol
Here in the US, you as a photographer have rights and you should stand up for them. Here's a couple of memos that's worth reading if you have ever been confronted by angry wifes/parents/stupid people: http://www.kantor.com/blog/Leg...http://www.krages.com/ThePhoto... The irony of this is that I have never photographed children without parents permission, still I've been confronted twice for simply holding camera in public place. - andrei_c
@silpol, a public place is just that - public - if your privacy is that important just never go outside :) - gregory
@gregory: you can't photograph most military objects, also rights to photograph on private property is solely at discretion of the owner. There's also bunch of post-9/11 extensions to that. That said, in most public places you can photograph anything or anybody you like. Privacy is no concern here because one cannot reasonably expect privacy in public place. - andrei_c
@gregory public place in US is not public place in Europe - if your freedom at other's expense is that important, stay at home ;) - silpol
I gotta say, the way parents are these days is a reason why I stay away from children anywhere. Let alone take pictures anywhere near their vicinity. Those people in that article were stupid for giving that guy a hard time for shooting pictures of his own children. That said, I think silpol was right for protecting her child from unwanted cameras. Just as people should have the right to take pictures whenever, wherever and whomever they want, there's the right to NOT have pictures of us/our kids taken. - Helen Is SOOO Not Of Troy
When I'm in a new town or city taking pictures or videotaping, I go out of my way NOT to have persons (or if it can't be helped, recognizable faces) in my pictures or videos. Saves me the trouble of asking. And I still had one guy, who accidentally got into one of my outdoor videoshots wearing a motorcycle helmet, come up and joke about getting a royalty for getting his likeness used. I, of course, assured him that his image was not going to be in the video...GRRRR.... - Helen Is SOOO Not Of Troy
I guess I'm just unable to comprehend the cognitive dissonance required to be outraged over a person I can see taking photos but think that I'm being protected by a person I can't see taking photos (i.e. security camers). - Gabe Schaffer
@bigstarlet a.k.a. Helen: I've been taking pictures of strangers and exhibiting those images for about 20 years now in 4 countries (Russia, Italy, France, U.S.), and I don't agree with silpol: it's not "your freedom at other's expense": as soon as I'm not making profit out of someone's recognizable likeness taken at a public place, I don't really care what they think about _my_art_. And "a tourist" approach (think of it as being a visitor on a planet Earth) makes those images even more interesting. - earlyadopter
@bigstarlet: here "privacy" and "intellectual property" are intertwined in an interesting way. sometimes proponents of "privacy" bash "IP"; here it is not easy to do. - 9000
Can't wait until consumer cameras become so compact as to be worn on sunglasses or such, with pupil and eyelid control — just to see what privacy advocates will say :) - 9000
@9000 Then crazy parents will attack anybody who looks suspicious, with or without camera :) - andrei_c
@earlyadopter that's cool and all, but not everyone thinks like that. At least in my neck of the woods, folks here don't think of picture taking by strangers as art, they think of it as invasion of privacy, especially since their kids are hooked into the internet, and there's the liability of whatever images you take ending up on Flickr or wherever. I'm sure you ask before shooting, right? - Helen Is SOOO Not Of Troy
The fear of the "paedo" is nothing new in the UK. Parents have been whipped up into a frenzy by newspapers. I actually think that the fact that this story has appeared in The Mail is a sign that things may be changing. This type of behaviour is no longer acceptable in our society. There was a time when normal parents would be guilty of this. Now it just seems to be nutters. - Chris Nixon
@earlyadopter your logic is clear but... it has several problematic areas. I have no time for whole analysis, but your worst "gap in logic" is that you substitute impersonated analysis with wishful thinking. In particular, you take as granted your past experience and your cultural background. But you are just don't care hence you go try-and-see way -- welcome to Darwin Awards championship http://www.darwinawards.com/ :) - silpol
