GDPR and Street Photography
Slightly off topic, but my other alter ego is having dealings with GDPR, the new replacement for the now out dated Data Protection Act 1998. Anyone familiar with the Y2K bug will understand that there is a ‘Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic!’ element here but it did get me asking myself some questions.
I love to take photos of people in the streets without them knowing it. And then subsequently I share some of them on shared social media sites. Do I have to stop all that nonsense now?
GDPR hasn’t been designed by Nazis, it’s there to give more rights to data subjects on how their data gets used. It should prevent us from getting less unwanted spam email. It gives the ICO a bigger bat to hit offenders with. It stops organisations keeping our information forever and selling it on. It’s not there to prevent photographers taking non-compromising photos of people in public places, and I for one will be continuing to do so in the future. (And I won’t be making any profit from them either!)
I was once in a piazza in Rome when a very drunk and shouty girl came into the piazza. She sat by a fountain shouting at restaurant goers, one of them being me, and then proceeded to have a pee whilst she continued to shout at people. My camera was sat on the table and it was calling me to pick it up and take a photo, but I didn’t, that would have been compromising and not right.
But occasionally it will get remarked on that I’m doing something illegal by taking photo’s without people’s permission. Imagine what photography would be like if that was and had been the case since photography began? Mental! I hope that Google street maps has an unedited version of their images that they will release in a hundred years' time.
I love to take photos of people in the streets without them knowing it. And then subsequently I share some of them on shared social media sites. Do I have to stop all that nonsense now?
GDPR hasn’t been designed by Nazis, it’s there to give more rights to data subjects on how their data gets used. It should prevent us from getting less unwanted spam email. It gives the ICO a bigger bat to hit offenders with. It stops organisations keeping our information forever and selling it on. It’s not there to prevent photographers taking non-compromising photos of people in public places, and I for one will be continuing to do so in the future. (And I won’t be making any profit from them either!)
I was once in a piazza in Rome when a very drunk and shouty girl came into the piazza. She sat by a fountain shouting at restaurant goers, one of them being me, and then proceeded to have a pee whilst she continued to shout at people. My camera was sat on the table and it was calling me to pick it up and take a photo, but I didn’t, that would have been compromising and not right.
But occasionally it will get remarked on that I’m doing something illegal by taking photo’s without people’s permission. Imagine what photography would be like if that was and had been the case since photography began? Mental! I hope that Google street maps has an unedited version of their images that they will release in a hundred years' time.
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