A new bill that Congress will consider this session would require all cell phone cameras to make that shutter click noise, or something similar and just as noisy, when a cell phone user takes a picture.  The bill is the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act (H.R. 414), introduced by Republican Representative Peter King from New York.  

          Bill supporters say the legislation is needed because (as the bill reads) "children and adolescents have been exploited by photographs taken in dressing rooms and public places with the use of a camera phone."  The bill’s solution is to require all cell phone cameras made in the U.S. to emit a “tone or other sound audible within a reasonable radius of the phone.”  Furthermore, the sound should not be able to be turned off.  Today, some cell phone cameras do make a fake sound when a photo is taken, but the phones also have the option to turn the sound off.

          Already some states and local governments have passed laws against taking those so-called “up-skirt” photos, in which people snap shots of what unsuspecting women are wearing underneath their skirts as they do such things as ride up an escalator or get out of a car.  However, many of the laws have been struck down by judges who say that citizens should not expect privacy protection for actions they make in public.  On the other hand, laws regarding photos taken in dressing rooms or bathrooms have been upheld since a right to privacy is expected in those places.

          Right now King's bill has no co-sponsors and some say little chance of passing.  There was a similar bill, as far as the “sound” issue goes, that was introduced and shot down last year.  That bill would have required electric and hybrid gasoline-electric cars to have some sort of an artificial engine noise so that blind and other visually impaired people could hear them coming.