New EU Data Protection Law Could Affect People Who Take Pictures

What I find strange is that over here for about 110 years publishing photos without consent has been a criminal offence, even with a possible 2 year sentence and hardly any photographer was concerned but just now photographers are in havoc.

I'll await the first case to be prosecuted before I worry about this.
And I expect to wait a loooooooooooong time ...

The Internet, once imagined to become a democratizing force, quickly was overrun by malevolent quasi-owners and gatekeepers, like Google. Europe see this, America doesn't.

ReginaldSMith said:

The Internet, once imagined to become a democratizing force, quickly was overrun by malevolent quasi-owners and gatekeepers, like Google. Europe see this, America doesn't.

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Americans are blissfully ignorant of privacy and privacy rights.

slackercrurster said:

The European Union's new data protection law is intended to strengthen privacy rights and stop abuses by social media giants. But the law also forbids people from posting anyone's picture online without their permission — and that includes tourist vacation photos.

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/24/6141...fect-people-who-take-pictures-with-their-phon

...sounds bad for street photogs in the EU.

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With regards to the GDPR it is important to know that it doesn’t apply to photos that you take for your own enjoyment. If you do not plan on publishing the pictures you don’t have to worry about it. There may however be other national laws that apply but not the GDPR (Article 2.2c)

If you plan on exhibiting your pictures, the regulation makes an exception for artistic and journalistic purposes, for these to be regulated under national law (Article 85.2). If you have an exhibition again the GDPR does not apply but national laws will.

The GDPR is not as scary as many people think (unless you plan on making a living selling personal information).

Who determines who is a journalist? An artist?

Of course EU subjects (to call then citizens would be a misuse of the word since they have no say about EU regulations ) must follow the rules established by those who know more than they do, ie “their betters”. Perhaps Britain, Italy and a few Eastern Europe countries can save Europe from itself. But it’s a long shot.
Now the propensity for third world street photography by Europeans makes sense.
Probably a variety of street photography, most of this kind of photography I take is in bars and restaurants. One of my current projects is “gluttony “, one of the 7 deadly sins now softened by using the euphemism “obesity “. Nonetheless, I take great pains not to be obvious so as not to embarrass my subjects. None have ever noticed me yet. Needless to say I purposely avoid taking a lot of otherwise interesting pictures. Obviously a good share of pictures are taken in various eating places where I sometimes use a Minox w right angle finder...aptly named because all too frequently gluttons are on my left and so finder is useless. There is not enough space on a Minox negative to guess framing.
While reading the contributions to this thread I finally realized a way to print resulting gluttony pictures that will hide identity of subjects from embarrassment and yet emphasize their sinfulness.

Jesper said:

If you plan on exhibiting your pictures, the regulation makes an exception for artistic and journalistic for these to be regulated under national law (Article 85.2). If you have an exhibition again the GDPR does not apply but national laws will.

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Are you sure about that? here the mantra has been in previous legislation "information in the public interest". In other words journalists uncovering misdeeds committed by persons or organisations. Its very hard to see how this line of reasoning could be extended to street photography.

Ultimately it is enforced here through the rather toothless, slow and understaffed ICO, you know that organisation that didn't get in to Cambridge Analytica until about a week after the story had gone round the world. For this reason and those debated in this thread I don't expect anything much different to happen for sometime yet.

guangong said:

Who determines who is a journalist? An artist?

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However, this issue already prevailed with old, national legislation.

NJH said:

Are you sure about that? here the mantra has been in previous legislation "information in the public interest". In other words journalists uncovering misdeeds committed by persons or organisations. Its very hard to see how this line of reasoning could be extended to street photography.

Ultimately it is enforced here through the rather toothless, slow and understaffed ICO, you know that organisation that didn't get in to Cambridge Analytica until about a week after the story had gone round the world. For this reason and those debated in this thread I don't expect anything much different to happen for sometime yet.

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I'm quite sure about this (this is my job) but please note that although the GDPR does not apply in these instances, national legislation may have an impact.

The more doubt and conflict the better. Doubt and conflict are at the heart of both art and theology.