alt Hacker NewsFormer freelance camera operator who worked in Germany here: you are misrepresenting the legal situation. It is not automatically forbidden to take or even publish pictures of strangers, but the circumstances matter. Merely taking an identifiable person's picture can already infringe their personality rights, even without any intention to publish it. A request to delete it does not automatically settle the matter, but "we are in public" does not settle it either. See BGH, VI ZR 272/94 .
Publishing such a picture generally requires consent under § 22 KunstUrhG , with exceptions under § 23 . "There is no right to privacy in the public sphere" is simply not an accurate description of German law. And "not a crime" does not mean something cannot violate someone's rights.
The comparison with memory ignores what makes a recording different: it can be copied, distributed and matched against other records. Someone remembering my face does not give them the same capabilities as having a photograph of it.
And protecting personal information is hardly some recent corruption of hacker culture. The CCC's own ethics say "Make public data available, protect private data", an addition they date to the 1980s: CCC hacker ethics .
I think you will find that our opinions are in alignment actually. I never take pictures of strangers - in all cases where I have been asked to review such public pictures, the individuals have been incidental to the subject in focus.
CCC is a private event, though. They have every right to the policies they enforce, and I am perfectly fine with adhering to these policies when I attend - after all, I also do not want my photo in some spook database.
But, on the bus? In the park? On a sidewalk in a public street? It is unreasonable to censor these environments.
The law very stringently allows for public photography - it does not allow for weaponization or commercialization of that photography against an individual.