Picture Policy

I put up pictures on this website of myself and my family. I blur the faces. In this day and age, you can never be too careful, and I share A LOT of information about myself and my life here. Too much, in fact. I've already been tracked down once by one determined soul to whom I gave too much information, and I'm trying to be even more careful these days.
I also put up pictures that include other people, and I don't always blur their faces. I have a policy for this: There are two categories of picture of other people. The first is pictures of public places where I cannot be responsible for who is captured in the picture and I cannot be made to ask every single person in a public place for their permission to use their photo on my website. I do this both in America, when taking pictures inside a desi restaurant, and in Pakistan when taking pictures outside a flower shop. This is pretty common - you have the right to protect yourself from having your picture taken and published, but not in public places where you can't have any expectation of privacy. That's why it's fine to publish photos of people who've caught a ball at a World Series baseball game even though there may be lots of people in the picture behind the lucky catcher. That's also why I have a 1984 edition of my then-local newspaper with me in the front page picture  - I was in a public place, at a local parade, so they could publish whatever pictures they want.

The second category is everything else, any pictures of people in non-public places such as their homes, or any one-on-one pictures such as at the bottom of this post about shopping for mehendi supplies. In these cases, M or I tell the person why I am taking their photo. (Like he did in this video as well.) We say that the picture is for  "reporting" or that it will be in the newspaper. Three times the person has asked for more information about where and M has tried to tell them how they can find it. On two of those occasions, the people didn't have a computer and on the third the guy didn't know what Google was, but that his son would know. M told him to tell his son to go to google and the search terms he could use.

There have been many instances where people didn't want their picture taken at all, and still others where people said they did not want to be part of any "reporting." You don't hear about those, of course, because I respect people's wishes and don't put them up here. So far I've thought it to be a fine balance, but of course I am open to constructive criticism.