Once I was standing outside of a bar in Boston. A guy next to me was smoking a cigarette and admiring a woman who was standing near us. She was talking on her cell phone with her back was turned to us, so she never saw that this guy was checking her out.
And what did the guy do? He took a quick picture of her with his cell phone, and she never knew that her picture was taken. For all we know, that guy could have put her picture on the Internet, where she will be forever.
Like most Americans, I strongly oppose the Patriot Act and all of its infringements on civil liberties. But sometimes I think George Orwell had it wrong: Big Brother will not be the one always watching you; it will be your neighbor, the guy on the street, your work colleagues, everyone. Now anyone with a cell phone can take a picture of you and put it on the Internet permanently.
As this Slate article describes, perhaps the camera phone did kill privacy (for better and for worse). But, this time, the government didn’t kill it. We did.
