Smile, you're on candid cell phone: with millions of cell-phone snapshots being beamed into cyberspace, are people's privacy rights at risk?

• Author: Harmon, Amy
• Position: Technology

As the man in front of him at the grocery store began yelling at a cashier who could not process his credit card, Gary Dann flipped open his camera phone and pressed a few buttons, pretending to look up a number. Moments later, as the man paid in cash, his snarling picture appeared on Dann's Web site (fotolog.net/garydann), complete with an unflattering caption. Dann, 23, who lives in Philadelphia, keeps an online journal of his cell-phone snapshots.

Dann's was one of millions of candid photos that have been phoned into cyberspace recently, the product of cell phones with built-in cameras that suddenly seem to be everywhere. Wielding mass-produced James Bond technology, an army of amateurs is quietly redrawing the limits of privacy in public spaces.

The devices have been banned from some federal buildings, Hollywood movie screenings, health-club locker rooms and business offices. But the more potent threat posed by the phonecams, privacy experts say, may not be in the settings where people are already protective of their privacy, but in those where they have never thought to care.

"We're moving into an era where there will be almost nothing that's not captured by somebody's camera, mad that has...