Taking pictures of cars in a public place.

JumpShivers

Is it legal to take pictures of a car in a public place?

Does a Supermarket Car Park (which is accessible to the general public) considered a public place?
My boyfriend and I are toying with the idea of taking pictures of cars (along with the reg plate) that are wrongfully occupying disabled bays and posting them on a facebook page. My worries are that it might be illegal to photograph a car (particularly a registration plate), and we might get done for slander if we photograph the person and the car and post it in case they actually do have a permit or a disability and the card is simply not displayed.

Little CuChulainn

It would be defamation, not slander

TonyStark

JumpShivers wrote: »

Is it legal to take pictures of a car in a public place?

Does a Supermarket Car Park (which is accessible to the general public) considered a public place?
My boyfriend and I are toying with the idea of taking pictures of cars (along with the reg plate) that are wrongfully occupying disabled bays and posting them on a facebook page. My worries are that it might be illegal to photograph a car (particularly a registration plate), and we might get done for slander if we photograph the person and the car and post it in case they actually do have a permit or a disability and the card is simply not displayed.

Slander is spoken libel is when it's published. I think you have answered your own question there.

Question is why would you want to do this in the first place!?

koriko

Personally I don't agree with people parking in disabled spots and wouldn't dream of doing it myself. However, I think it's the traffic wardens job to fine people or the Gaurds can be called also. I have an issue with lay people photographing cars (and sometimes the driver) with the purpose of publically shaming them online. It's almost as bad as the parking offence and I feel that way because I strongly believe you can never know another persons situation. Be it why they parked there or what their mental health is like- ie could they suffer mentally from the public shaming on Facebook.
I also believe in karma- so what goes around comes around and you may not need to get involved by photographing them!
A Facebook page already exists by the way for bad driving and parking- u probably saw it already- I think it's called 'careless driving'. Don't follow the page myself though.

hullaballoo

TonyStark wrote: »

Slander is spoken libel is when it's published.

Neither slander nor libel have existed in this country for over five-and-a-half years now.

brian_t

JumpShivers wrote: »

Is it legal to take pictures of a car in a public place?
.

It's not an original idea.

Posting people's registrations online / pictures of their cars

Bayberry

JumpShivers wrote: »

Is it legal to take pictures of a car in a public place?

I think that you're asking the wrong question. What you really want to know is if there are any legal repercussions for posting photos on line, and accusing the car owner of parking in a handicapped spot that they shouldn't be in.

I'm pretty sure that you can take any photos you want in a public place.

Mr. Incognito

Why in God's name would you want to bring this hassle down on yourself.

This isn't Gotham city and you're not Batman. Leave the crime fighting to the actual professionals.

People are mental

Victor

koriko wrote: »

I feel that way because I strongly believe you can never know another persons situation. Be it why they parked there or what their mental health is like- ie could they suffer mentally from the public shaming on Facebook.

The main mental health issue with such drivers is the pre-existing personality disorder / character faults along the sociopathy / psychopathy spectrum.

koriko

Victor wrote: »

The main mental health issue with such drivers is the pre-existing personality disorder / character faults along the sociopathy / psychopathy spectrum.

Don't agree- clearly it appears to you that I'm defending the bad behaviour of parking in a disabled spot but I'm not.
A lot of people doing so are plain ignorant doing so. Public shaming on social media I find hard to digest personally. I don't think trial by social media is a good move for society- That's just my opinion.

MarkAnthony

Del2005

JumpShivers wrote: »

Is it legal to take pictures of a car in a public place?

Does a Supermarket Car Park (which is accessible to the general public) considered a public place?
My boyfriend and I are toying with the idea of taking pictures of cars (along with the reg plate) that are wrongfully occupying disabled bays and posting them on a facebook page. My worries are that it might be illegal to photograph a car (particularly a registration plate), and we might get done for slander if we photograph the person and the car and post it in case they actually do have a permit or a disability and the card is simply not displayed.

If I parked in a disabled place and you posted a picture of me on Facebook I wouldn't know as I don't have Facebook and even when I did I ignored most of it. Since my details aren't on it I can't get tagged so apart from you spending a bit of your time taking the picture and posting it I wouldn't be affected, so what have you done?

The only way to stop people parking in disabled spaces is when the relevant authorities start enforcing the law.

I think you'd need to ask permission of the Management of the private property you want to take pictures on, IIRC you can only take pictures on public property anywhere else you need permission.

Bayberry

Del2005 wrote: »

If I parked in a disabled place and you posted a picture of me on Facebook I wouldn't know as I don't have Facebook and even when I did I ignored most of it. Since my details aren't on it I can't get tagged so apart from you spending a bit of your time taking the picture and posting it I wouldn't be affected, so what have you done?

The picture isn't for you - you already know that you parked in a disabled space. The idea is that your mates might see the picture, and give you a hard time about being pig-ignorant.

But if you don't care about what your friends and family think, it won't make any difference to you one way or another, so why do you care whether someone else wastes their time posting the picture on FB?

Victor

Del2005 wrote: »

I think you'd need to ask permission of the Management of the private property you want to take pictures on, IIRC you can only take pictures on public property anywhere else you need permission.

Not quite - you don't need to ask permission. Provided you aren't breaching someone's privacy, e.g. photographing them in the toilets, changing rooms, etc., you can generally take photographs, however, if you are on private property, you can be told to stop by the occupier and ejected if you don't stop.

Del2005

Bayberry wrote: »

The picture isn't for you - you already know that you parked in a disabled space. The idea is that your mates might see the picture, and give you a hard time about being pig-ignorant.

But if you don't care about what your friends and family think, it won't make any difference to you one way or another, so why do you care whether someone else wastes their time posting the picture on FB?

But how would my friends know? I can't be tagged so unless you have some other way to identify me it won't show on any of my friends or family pages.

To answer your question, OP;

You can photograph whatever you like if you're in a public place. A privately owned place may have different policies (ie; supermarkets, shopping centres, etc.) but they must be made painfully obviously known and even then, if you take a photo on private property that specifically rules against photography, you are still allowed to keep your photo (ie; a security guard can never ask you to delete a photo), however, when asked, you must stop actually taking photographs.


A privately owned publicly accessible space is generally just considered a public place. For example, Tesco may own their own car park, and the land it's on, but as it's so easily accessible by the public, it's considered a public space (unless, as above, they have made the effort to make it overly obvious that you are in a private area and photography is not permitted). In day to day life, a person would have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a publicly accessible car park.


If someone's bathroom overlooks a main road and they decide to have a shower with the curtains open, you can absolutely snap away. That person has no reasonable expectation to privacy.

However, if that same person has made an effort to close the curtains, but you can, by standing at a very specific angle, see through a crack in the curtain, then you are not allowed to photograph as that person has made a reasonable effort to have an expectation of privacy.


So... If a person openly parks their car in a public space, they have no reasonable expectation to privacy. You can fire away to your hearts content.


Just make sure you post the stuff anonymously on Facebook. I think it's good to call people up on this kinda thing, but at the same time, you'll get a bit of hassle, I'm sure.

Del2005

Del2005 wrote: »

But how would my friends know? I can't be tagged so unless you have some other way to identify me it won't show on any of my friends or family pages.

These things grow legs. Everyone's a voyeur. people see it and 'like' the page itself, and then get updates on what is posted.

Bayberry

Del2005 wrote: »

But how would my friends know? I can't be tagged so unless you have some other way to identify me it won't show on any of my friends or family pages.

People track people half way round the world on FB all the time. Someone sees the photo and says "I saw that car outside the pub in X last week, and shares it with a friend who drinks there and asks him if he knows who drives it, and he passes it on to some other friends and so on. Probably won't work most of the time, but if the page gets a couple of successes, more people will start following the page, and more eyeballs will start looking for culprits.

Shep_Dog

Could such the taking of such photographs be considered as harassment?

Peregrinus

Shep_Dog wrote: »

Could such the taking of such photographs be considered as harassment?

Hard to see that it could, absent some fairly unusual facts. Under Irish law, the offence of harassing a person involves "persistently following, watching, pestering, besetting or communicating with him or her". If you follow them around, with a view to photographing their car every time they park in way that might embarrass them and publishing the photographs, that might be harassment. But if you simply photograph the cars that you see improperly parked in disabled bays, most people will have their cars photographed only once, and there's nothing "persistent" about that.

In any event, there's a "reasonable excuse" defence, and I think you might argue that you weren't targetting anybody in particular (and in fact had no idea who owned the cars you photographed); you were merely attempting to promote awareness of the frequency with which disabled spaces are abused, to the disadvantage of those who actually need to use them.

eldamo

http://m.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/teachers-parking-incident-claims-dismissed-26781348.html

You just wind up looking like an eejit.

Leave well enough alone.

nuac

Deleted User wrote: »

To answer your question, OP;

You can photograph whatever you like if you're in a public place. A privately owned place may have different policies (ie; supermarkets, shopping centres, etc.) but they must be made painfully obviously known and even then, if you take a photo on private property that specifically rules against photography, you are still allowed to keep your photo (ie; a security guard can never ask you to delete a photo), however, when asked, you must stop actually taking photographs.


A privately owned publicly accessible space is generally just considered a public place. For example, Tesco may own their own car park, and the land it's on, but as it's so easily accessible by the public, it's considered a public space (unless, as above, they have made the effort to make it overly obvious that you are in a private area and photography is not permitted). In day to day life, a person would have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a publicly accessible car park.


If someone's bathroom overlooks a main road and they decide to have a shower with the curtains open, you can absolutely snap away. That person has no reasonable expectation to privacy.

However, if that same person has made an effort to close the curtains, but you can, by standing at a very specific angle, see through a crack in the curtain, then you are not allowed to photograph as that person has made a reasonable effort to have an expectation of privacy.


So... If a person openly parks their car in a public space, they have no reasonable expectation to privacy. You can fire away to your hearts content.


Just make sure you post the stuff anonymously on Facebook. I think it's good to call people up on this kinda thing, but at the same time, you'll get a bit of hassle, I'm sure.

No, imho, you should not take photos thru a window into a private house, much less a bathroom.

Gardaí might take a serious view of that, depending on age and / or sex of person being photographed
pe

Little CuChulainn

Deleted User wrote: »

So... If a person openly parks their car in a public space, they have no reasonable expectation to privacy. You can fire away to your hearts content.

I always find this argument interesting. It basically suggests that a person must give up their right to privacy if they want to leave their home, which is a necessity in life.

234

Little CuChulainn wrote: »

I always find this argument interesting. It basically suggests that a person must give up their right to privacy if they want to leave their home, which is a necessity in life.

Yes. Absolute rights to privacy are fundamentally incompatible with the necessary public interaction any society demands.