Taking Photographic Liberties

One of the problems with digital cameras, mobiles, tablets is that they have removed the element of cost. Once upon a time, in the days of everyone using film, a fair degree of discretion was required. Don't go wasting a shot, because you've not only paid to take it, you will also have to pay to print it. There was also the limited number of shots per reel. That little counter would click ominously towards zero. Digital has thus dispensed with discretion, as storage has multiplied astronomically the number of shots at the photographer's disposal. What did it used to be? Typically thirty, something like that?

While there are clearly enormous advantages from digital, there are also the downsides. One of these is if you happen to be unfortunate enough to be the victim of someone who insists on showing you the entire catalogue of snaps of their holiday or simply their day out.

Yes, it's happened to me, as it has no doubt happened to you. Visitor X pitches up, produces the digital device and hotfoots it to the nearest seaside location. On return, there are hundreds of items of evidence of the excursion. How many times can one person take roughly the same photo of, say, Puerto Pollensa's pinewalk or boats in the Alcudiamar? Hundreds indeed. It's not a case so much of familiarity with the subject breeding contempt as of ennui. For God's sake, whatever you do, don't show me another damn snap of part of a pine tree hanging in the foreground against the backdrop of Pollensa Bay.

Among this mountainous archive of the repetitious can occasionally be the unfamiliar. "Look at the composition with the bougainvillea," announces Visitor X with a passion that is sadly difficult to reciprocate. "Oh yes, lovely." It's not the bougainvillea which is unfamiliar - there's enough of that around to fill the entire digital storage capacity of all devices for sale in a large electronics retail outlet. It's what the bougainvillea belongs to. Someone's house.

Although never having been so uncharitable as to say so, my reaction to photos of people's property is always the same: is it not just a little bit intrusive? Often has been the time when I've seen a tourist stop and snap a villa, its garden, its bougainvillea. I have also seen tourists help themselves to conveniently unlocked gates. Getting nearer does so help with composition, doesn't it.

A former neighbour of mine once grew so sick and tired of her property being invaded that she had a wall built. I never found out, but the town hall probably eventually latched onto this and slapped a fine for not having got permission; that's the sort of thing town halls do. But the obstacle of a wall became necessary in the quest for privacy and indeed non-trespass.

While I suppose I can understand the impulse to photograph houses, villas, gardens and what have you - there are, after all, some fabulous properties knocking around - I'm not one of those inclined to do so. It can seem like taking a bit of a liberty, and an even greater one if the photographing involves wandering across somebody's lawn.

It can seem that everything is fair game for the digital snapper, who then decides to take advantage of another great digital downside: the sheer inability to not then share the photo on social networks. Which brings me to Wikiloc.

If you are unfamiliar with Wikiloc, I should explain that it is a social network community for those who wish to share routes (walking, cycling, what have you) and geolocate them for digital devices. Which is all fair enough. Part of this route-sharing frenzy can be and is the use of photos. Well, of course, if you want to show a route, it's not much use if you can't actually see it.

But lurking within this route-sharing is potential intrusiveness, and so into this story enters the case of the Fartàrix finca in Pollensa. The administrator of this finca insisted that an image of the actual building be removed from Wikiloc. A hiker had uploaded it, and the administrator said that it was a violation of data protection law and of privacy. The hiker responded by pointing out that the landscape belongs to everyone and so can be photographed, which wasn't what the administrator was driving at. The photo in question couldn't have been taken from the public way. It could only have been taken from the garden.

I don't know that photographing a property can constitute a breach of data protection law, but sharing it may do; m'learned friends would know better than me. Trespass is another matter. So all in all, good on the finca administrator. The only trouble is of course that people now know about the finca; I, for one, had never previously heard of it.

Visiting Hours: Inca hospital and patient information

You're in hospital. You are suffering all manner of indignities. Pointing Percy at the potty thing and missing. Being woken by the interrogation-like strip lighting at six in the morning in order to take the pill that is delivered in its little plastic cup.

Bad enough. But there is worse to come. Someone from the local council decides to pay you a visit. Nice of them to think of you? Possibly, and they would say that they were. Being nice, that is. The only problem is that they might have some ulterior motive. Or they've got hold of your details when they shouldn't have.

If you happen to be admitted to Inca hospital, then you can count yourself lucky if you don't actually live in Inca. If you don't, then the council won't bother with you. Not that they would ask you where you live. Oh no, because they already know. How? Because they've got the gen. Name, address, telephone number, hospital room and some medical detail - the particular care unit and nature of the admission. They pick it up in a sealed envelope left at reception every week or so. Or they did. Ever since the story broke a week or so ago as to what has allegedly been going on with patient information at the hospital, the visits would seem to have stopped. And the foregoing is what is alleged to have been happening.

The apparent breach of data protection at the hospital is being taken seriously enough that the national data protection agency (AEPD - Agencia Española de Protección de Datos) is saying that it will act even if there is no specific "denuncia" forthcoming.

The basics of the case are these. Patient information has allegedly been passed to Inca town hall and specifically to the Partido Popular ruling party. This has then been used as the basis for visits to patients by representatives of the town hall. In a way it could all be innocent enough. Just saying hello, how are you. Being nice, in other words. But the suggestion is that the visits are intended as a bit of an electioneering exercise. Patients not resident in Inca have been ignored.

Since the rumpus kicked off there have been all manner of denials and explanations from the town hall. One reason given for the visits is that they seek to establish if social services help might be required. Fair enough perhaps. But involving social services, be they from Inca or any other town, should surely be the domain of the hospital's welfare department. Or am I missing something here?

Regardless of the purpose to which the information has been used and regardless of whether the information was asked for or not (and there have been conflicting reports regarding this), the town hall has no right to have the information. Assuming it has ever had it. The town hall is denying that it has patient lists.

One has to consider this case in the context of data protection law in Spain. At the First European Congress on Data Protection that was held in Madrid in March 2006 the then Spanish Minister of Justice, Juan Fernando López Aguilar, said: "The country is a pioneer in fulfilling its commitments to the guarantee and protection of rights and individuals, and in the tools to manage data. In Spain we have not made it easy for dealers in personal data who attempt to violate the law."

This wasn't bluster. Spain does take data protection very seriously. You only have to remember your history to understand why Spain, along with Germany and the individual German "Länder", are among the strictest of adherents to the principle of data protection. So the apparent flouting of this principle is something which the data protection agency is right to take seriously.

The story has taken a number of twists and turns. The town hall, in the person of the former mayor, Pere Rotger, admits that visits have been made for some time. But that lists of patients have never been used. He says that no one has complained; on the contrary, they are thankful for the visit. The current mayor, Rafel Torres, says that town hall representatives, such as the head of health, do make visits and quite openly so. Again without the aid of information. The Partido Popular is challenging the opposition PSOE socialists to prove that its representatives have used information, adding that the PSOE has also made visits to patients.

The town hall is mounting a strong defence. As you would expect, especially as a contravention of the law could land someone in choky. This though would be an over-reaction, if it is proven that the law has indeed been broken. The case smacks of, at worst, naïvity. What seems to have started out with the best of intentions and has probably continued to be so has backfired. But a question remains. Why would patients from other towns be ignored and seemingly knowingly be ignored?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Watching You, Watching Me - Webcams and surveillance in Mallorca

The surveillance society. It is said that the UK has the highest level of surveillance in Europe. Much of it can be deemed necessary or beneficial, much of it isn't. And so it is in Mallorca. Or rather, it isn't quite the same, as in Mallorca - and in Spain - there is a greater level of concern for the invasion of privacy.

Video surveillance was late to catch on in Mallorca. This was not a failure of technology but a legal issue. Police cameras, such as those for traffic and speeding, were also late on the scene, for a similar reason. Officially in Mallorca, there are even now only some 7000 video cameras of different sorts that are used by the police and by security companies. As "The Diario" has reported, there are many, many more cameras, most of them unregulated. A combination of the agency responsible for data protection and the police ensures that cameras used for security purposes are correctly registered. Video surveillance of property, for example, is a matter of registration by the security company that has to comply with the need to ensure that posters, informing of such surveillance, are clearly visible and also with ensuring that the cameras do not show the "public way". In other words, they "guard" properties, their access points and grounds.

When you take into account government buildings, banks and some of the property in Mallorca, the 7000 cameras are not really so many, and for the most part they are activated only when an alarm goes off. The officially registered cameras that are on more or less permanently are those controlled by the police. Some concern has been raised about these, for example where they are used to monitor "deliquency". These are directed at the "public way". Yet one can accept their role in policing and in maybe acting as a deterrent.

Another concern relates to all those other cameras. And here one is mainly talking webcams. The paper makes it clear that much webcam use is private, but much is not. Anything pointing at a street, a park, a beach is showing the public way. Hardly any of these webcams are registered. In Palma, some twenty webcams are sanctioned by the town hall. But generally, webcams are put up, pointed and there is no registration. The law may well be being broken as a result, if there is no authorisation by the data protection agency.

One has to understand that the strictness with which privacy and data protection are controlled has a historical background. In Germany, there was also a similar anxiety about cameras. If you want to know why the Germans - or at least some of the Länder - have been rather more tardy than other countries in introducing anti-smoking legislation, you have to go back to the Nazis who frowned on smoking. And for smoking, read also the surveillance and intrusiveness of an authoritarian state. It's the same in Spain, because of Franco.

Webcams that show a resort's promenade or beach may seem innocent enough, and in truth they are. Many, many people access them via the internet; many, many people who would consider this a purely innocent activity. A not infrequent question one may come across on a forum is - are there any webcams of such and such a resort? Not for one moment would the person asking the question think this is anything other than innocent. But that would be to miss the point - the invasion of privacy.

A webcam that shows public places, it can be argued, is being used under conditions of freedom of speech or information. Similar justification can be used for the altogether more intrusive use of cameras by Google. It's a disingenuous argument. It may all seem just like a bit of fun, but the public webcam operates under a similar principle of intrusion, the main difference - usually - being the more fleeting and temporary nature of the privacy being intruded into.

There is the possibility that there are some unwitting double standards applied to public webcams and by those who access them. Stick a cam outside your house, down your street, and would you be quite so happy? When Google come filming, would you be quite so happy?

One can make too much of this. Personally, I am rarely in favour of anything that limits freedom of speech or information. Public webcams are rarely so intrusive as to be potentially invasive of an individual's freedom, but I can understand the sensitivities, as they exist in Mallorca. Innocent enough the webcam may be, but it may not be quite so innocent under law.


QUIZ
Yesterday: Jonathan Meades. Today: "Watching You, Watching Me"; pretty sure we've had this song before. Think Tintin.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.