What do you think of this? Privacy issue or not?

[Laurie4b]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20130517/DA6AU8FG3.html

 

A photographer who lives across the street from a luxury condo where the walls are glass took photos of people in their homes. The faces are obscured, but are now being shown in an art gallery and are for sale.

 

Do people who live in glass houses deserve more privacy than people in public? Are they in public even while they are at home because they chose a home with glass walls and left the shades up? Do they have an expectation of privacy because they were so high up (even though surely they can see across the street to see that there is a building with windows...)?

 

Photographers took photos of people at the Boston marathon, some of whom were traumatized. They had no right to privacy. Neither do celebs.

 

So if you walk around in your bathrobe in a glass house, do you have a right to privacy from photographers?

[happi duck]

Can photographers shoot through a normal sized window? If they can't then the size of the window shouldn't matter. (Even if it acts as a wall it's a window, imho)

[Rebecca VA]

Huge privacy issue. That's creepy. People should have an expectation of privacy in their own home.

 

This reminds me of the wife of an employer I had, long ago. She would often come into the office to do bookkeeping. She kept a pair of binoculars handy so that she could look over at the apartment building across the street to see what the residents were up to. She didn't know them or anything; she was just a nosy person. Ick.

[Laurie4b]

I just thought of another news story from quite a while ago. A man stood naked in front of his glass door in his home early one morning drinking coffee or something. A girl on the way to school saw it. There was a question as to whether he could be charged with indecent exposure. She felt that he did it on purpose. He said he was just in his own home, not thinking about the effects on passersby. (I didn't believe that) Didn't he have an obligation not to stand naked where someone could see him?

 

I'm trying to wrap my mind around this, partly because there is no way on earth I would live in a glass house precisely because I would always feel on display. I would guess, from the architect's point of view, that this is part of the point of the architecture. So if you choose a home in which you are inherently on display, do you have an expectation of privacy?

[NorthwestMom]

Just coming from a common sense perspective, my gut says you can't have an expectation of privacy in theory if there is no privacy in reality. The desire to be unobserved does not matter if you then choose to put yourself in a transparent place in public view. However, the fact that permanent images were taken and displayed adds a dimension that feels unethical and exploitative. I have to think about this some more......

[Mrs Mungo]

http://apps.americanbar.org/forums/communication/comlawyer/summer99/sum99boese.html

 

A key element to the "constructive invasion" provision is that the person photographed or recorded must have had a "reasonable expectation of privacy," a phrase familiar to the analysis of whether police searches are constitutional under the Fourth Amendment. If the principles developed under Fourth Amendment analysis are applied to the anti-paparazzi law, photojournalists should have some guidance and protection. Courts have held that "o long as that which is viewed or heard is perceptible to the naked eye or unaided ear], the person seen or heard has no reasonable expectation of privacy in what occurs."13 Thus, courts have held that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in "open fields" outside the curtilage of a home;14 in a yard enclosed by a chain link fence;15 or in a condominium-complex garage that was open to the public, used for access to the units, and contained no warning signs prohibiting entry.16 On the other hand, courts have held that there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in an enclosed backyard patio17 and behind a six-foot fence surrounding a backyard, even though activities inside the backyard could be seen through knotholes and gaps in the fence.18

 

He used a strong telephoto lens, therefore I think this fits into invasion of privacy. The fact that the people are not recognizable to the general public? Or that their faces are partially obscured? I am not sure how that would play in court.