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51 minutes ago, Chris Nash said:

It all sounds a bit concerning. 

The video is alarmist garbage at best. If he hasn't read, or been able to properly assess or interpret the law's impact on photographers, which he basically admitted, why make a scare video about it? It all does sound a bit concerning if you don't understand it. The law has more to do with photographer's mailing lists and data security than it does some random person showing up in one of your group photos. If he had actually read the new law, he would have seen that it pretty much doesn't apply to him at all.

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The video is alarmist maybe right, but remember the German situation where they couldn't show the face of the wanted person due to personal privacy issue and data protection. The concept in France that need permission to photograph anyone. Maybe we do need to keep a watchful eye on this legislation.

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I don't have time to read the whole legislation so I'm making no claims of a definitive response, but I think this is alarmist and misleading.

 

It is not necessary to obtain consent in order to process data. The processing has to be done on one of six lawful bases, of which consent is only one. The following basis appears relevant to photographers:

 

Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for your legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party unless there is a good reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those legitimate interests.

 

In relation to this:

You may prefer to consider legitimate interests as your lawful basis if you wish to keep control over the processing and take responsibility for demonstrating that it is in line with people’s reasonable expectations and wouldn’t have an unwarranted impact on them.

 

In my view, photos of a person going about normal business in public view would class as "reasonable expectation". Also, because it is perfectly legal to photograph people in public view, it is also perfectly reasonable for the photographer to assume that it would not have an unwarranted impact.

 

It would be useful to have a view on this from a lawyer, but my reading of this suggests that simply taking photographs of people in public and processing them (which may involve making them available for publication) does not contravene the GDPR in any way. Of course, a member of the public can always object to their photo appearing in a publication, but that is no different from the situation now without any regard to the GDPR.

 

Alan

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I doubt if you would get a lawyer to comment at this stage on the impact on photography.  It will take a number of legal cases before the interpretation of the GDPR in relation to photography becomes clear.  Currently journalists and news photographers have a specific exemption under the Data Protection Act (Section 32 of the top of my head) from DP provisions.  This specific exemption is not contained within the GDPR – but it is likely to have application until the UK Government publishes specific enabling legislation – which is unlikely anytime soon given Brexit.

It should not be forgotten that freedom of the press in enshrined in the Human Rights regulations and in most recent court cases there has been a careful balancing of the rights of the individual against the rights of freedom of the press.

The issue of stock photography is a different issue and I would expect this to be an even more difficult area.  This is particularly the case for the photography of children where it appears that the regulations say that children under 16 (or perhaps 13) cannot give consent to having their photography taken.  On a similar theme, implied consent, may, in some photographic situations, not be enough.  Interesting times.

Having said the above I am aware of only a very small number of cases where photographs and photography have had specific issues over data protection.  Of course the caveat with this statement is the subject of super injections where we do not know if photography/photographers have been subject to injections as revealing the existence of these injections is contempt of court.     A few years ago I was served with an order under an Act of Parliament and it was a criminal act to reveal that I have been served with that order.

I see the GDPR photographic issues as a fairly low probability– although perhaps with a high impact….  In fairness the judicial system, at least in the UK, has been good in keeping a balance between legitimate journalism and individual rights.

 

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46 minutes ago, IanDavidson said:

The issue of stock photography is a different issue and I would expect this to be an even more difficult area.  This is particularly the case for the photography of children where it appears that the regulations say that children under 16 (or perhaps 13) cannot give consent to having their photography taken.  On a similar theme, implied consent, may, in some photographic situations, not be enough.  Interesting times.

 

 

As I said above, my reading of it is that consent is not required by the legislation provided one of the alternative legal bases applies. In my view Legitimate Interests should be sufficient for a photographer to comply with the law in normal circumstances.

 

Alan

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