06-14-2004, 02:00 PM
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Swami
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 4,303
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Embedded Camera Backlash Begins
"The booming popularity of camera phones which can snap and instantly send photos - and, with some models, short video clips - have piqued fears about workplace security. The prospect of sensitive information being snapped and sent to other phones, copied to websites or e-mailed to others has prompted the likes of Intel, the phone maker Samsung, the UK's Foreign Office and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in the United States to go as far as banning camera phones from their buildings."
The BBC story that the quote above was taken from, hits the nail on the head. There are a lot of firms that are tightening up their security procedures with the increasing availability of devices with embedded cameras. Due to customer demand Sprint have released a version of the Treo 600 smartphone without a camera, but isn't that the wrong way around? Surely phones and PDAs should come without a camera, unless there is specific customer demand for such a toy?
"Although convictions for the misuse of camera phones have so far involved invasion of privacy rather than corporate espionage, those with secrets worth stealing worry that it is a matter of if, not when. Tim Donahue, of Sprint, says those in the fields of finance, government, hi-tech manufacturing, and research and development are most concerned. "They're just scared to death someone might take a photograph of something.""
Quite apart from those problems, there are privacy and child protection issues as well. My local fitness centres has banned cameras on the premises and I understand that the same thing goes for the local schools. The BBC article concludes that embedded cameras are soon going to become ubiquitous. If this is the case it is important for those who want/need their PDAs with them at all times, to let the manufacturers know that they don't want cameras embedded.
So, what are your thoughts on the issue? :dilemma: I will put a poll up tomorrow to get some hard numbers and to see what the general consensus about PDAs and embedded cameras is.
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