Camera Click! sound could become legally required

With the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act being prepared to protect individuals from being illegally photographed without their knowledge and permission, the way we utilize our cell phone cameras could soon change.

This has been a topic of discussion by users for many years, but now our government seems ready to deliver its citizens some legislation designed to force an audible camera click sound when a picture is captured. Many cell phone manufactures already have compliant devices as user's like that audio feedback, but there are others which allow photographers to turn their cameras to silent mode so that their picture snapping then becomes undetectable. Even in many phones where the camera click sound is not able to be silenced, sneaky individuals have figured out methods to hack into the firmware in effort to remove to the sound.

In other countries such as Korea and Japan, for example, similar laws are already in place. And so far, the device manufactures have had no issues complying with laws such as these.

The proposed act would fall under the Consumer Product Safety Commission's domain, and would provide the status of a "safety requirement". The current draft of the legislation also demands that the camera click would have to be audible from a "reasonable distance", though the legal definition of "reasonable distance" has not yet been laid out or determined.