Do children have human rights? Specifically, a right to privacy? France says yes.

French parents could be sued or jailed for posting photos of their kids, once the kids grow up and achieve adulthood, according to an article in The Telegraph. This is a very interesting conundrum for society as a whole – do minors have human rights, specifically a right to privacy, and if so, do their parents have a right to breach that right toward the public? There’s arguably a world of difference between a photo labeled “look at this delicious dinner” and “look how funny my kid looks trying to learn to swim”.

We’re in a transitional time right now where everybody posts photos of everything without much concern for privacy. In particular, this hits children who can’t even object to being registered and identifiable for life – and it’s only going to be a few years before automated facial recognition is good enough to not just declare a match or a nonmatch between two photos, but to identify people in photos out of very large face databases, databases which will eventually reach the full human population.

Now, it turns out that this story was a bit mistranslated and/or overblown and/or clickbaitified by The Telegraph, but that doesn’t make the argument and discussion point invalid. Do children have human rights? Specifically, do children have a right to privacy vs the world at large? It’s important to remember that a lot of parents are already putting GPS trackers on their children and using third-party services for this tracking. Once grown up, how would those children react to a demand for GPS tracking by authorities?

“What we put up with as temporary bullshit from authorities, our children will see as the natural state of the world.”

We’re in a time of transition and a time of rapid change right now. I would argue a lot of parents are just posting happy family moment photos onto Facebook and wherever, without understanding the civil liberty consequences down the road of doing so today. But the discussion needs to take place.

Privacy remains your own responsibility.