Windows Phone Thoughts: Bill Introduced To Require Camera Phones Make Noise When Snapping Pictures

"Camera Phone Predator Alert Act - Requires any mobile phone containing a digital camera to sound a tone whenever a photograph is taken with the camera's phone. Prohibits such a phone from being equipped with a means of disabling or silencing the tone. Treats the requirement as a consumer product safety standard and requires enforcement by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)."

I can understand what this law is trying to accomplish. I suspect there are lots of sex offenders that get images of their prey covertly by snapping pics from their silenced cell phone camera. Initially I thought people would just find another way to do the same thing, and to be sure, some will be determined enough to do so, but not everyone would be willing to carry a separate digital camera that could be silenced in the settings. I don't really see the harm this bill could cause. Will it stop everyone? Certainly not, but it may stop a few. I don't give a lot of marks to sexual predators for being too high up on the intelligence scale, and it may be just enough to prevent some meaningful percentage of secret pics being taken.

I suspect for some phone makers, this would be harder to implement than you might think. The speaker settings are universal. Once you mute the speaker on the phone itself, no app can make noise. You'd have to rewrite the driver to allow an exception for the phone's camera. I think it would be worth it though. It would take a few years for existing phones to cycle out of use to be replaced by new ones.

The bill was introduced in the US House of Representatives on January 9, 2009. I have no idea how long it will stay there before it has a chance to get voted on.