People need to quit freaking out about the misuses of cameraphones. We’re getting tired of all these alarmist articles that keep popping up, it’s not like the ability to surreptitiously take a photograph is something revolutionary or new. It’s been possible to secretly videotape, photograph, or tape record another person without their knowledge for years now; the average person is captured by surveillance and security cameras several times a day. No one reading these words right now can be absolutely, 100% certain that someone isn’t videotaping them right now. And when it comes down to it, the only difference between a cameraphone and, say, Casio’s superslim Exilim digital camera, is that a cameraphone can instantly transmit the picture you’ve taken over the Web, and that doesn t seem to be playing much of a part, if any, in people s paranoia. Most of this hysteria seems to be just about the fact that cameraphones are new and unusual and that it’s easier to demonize a piece of technology than it is to reign in some people s socially aberrant behavior.
