Forget privacy. These prescient words came from a Sun Microsystems executive in the late 1990s, when commenting on the social impact of emerging communications technologies. But all is not lost. While recent patent applications show new types of digital camera will indeed make it easier to invade privacy, some firms are dreaming up ways to offer a degree of protection.
Hewlett-Packard is developing a camera that you wear like a badge and which can take a picture of someone without their knowledge (US 2004/0208496). The user wears a clip-on earring or stud containing an accelerometer that detects a flick of the head and sends a wireless trigger signal to the camera to take a picture.
HP is at the same time patenting a privacy protection system (US 2004/0202382). Publicity-shy people will be able to wear a badge which transmits a 鈥渄on鈥檛 take my picture鈥� infrared or Bluetooth signal to any nearby compatible camera. The camera鈥檚 software then finds the face of the person wearing the badge, and automatically fuzzes it out.
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Of course, celebrities rely on getting their picture in the paper regularly. So Nokia is developing new GPS-equipped phonecams that celebs can use to invite the paparazzi to snap them (US 2004/0152485). By clicking a 鈥渃elebrity mode鈥� button, the camera sends out a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth signal that invites anyone nearby with a compatible camera to take a photo.
But it is not only portable cameras that can invade privacy, remote-controlled webcams now transmit such clear pictures of street scenes that Japanese inventors Hiromi Someya and Toshiki Ishino of Kanagawa see a need for a camera that fuzzes out the faces of anyone caught in shot (US 2004/0145659). As a web surfer zooms in on a scene, intelligent face recognition software identifies faces coming into shot. The picture resolution on the faces is progressively reduced, so that individual mugshots are never clearly captured. When the lens zooms back out, the clarity returns.
