When you take a photo with an iPhone, and even with most popular smartphone cameras, the device usually produces an audible shutter sound. In the US, shutter noise is a minor factor and you can turn it off quite easily. However, for iPhones sold in Japan, the shutter sound is a strict requirement that cannot be disabled. The reason is privacy requirements set by the Japanese mobile phone industry around the time phone cameras were first introduced and then strengthened in the 2010s.
A shutter sound isn’t just a cute little detail to help an iPhone mimic a traditional camera. This is an audible warning that you are taking a photo to those around you. In an age where privacy is increasingly becoming a concern, including iPhone apps that spy on you, people want every means possible to protect themselves from unsolicited filming or photography, and Japanese citizens are especially aware of this. This is why smartphones sold in Japan have the shutter sound enabled by default, and at least as long as the phone is operating on Japanese soil it cannot be disabled.
Required audio is rooted in Japanese privacy mandates
In the early 2000s, the very first Japanese cell phone with a built-in camera, the Kyocera VP-210, was released to the public. This phone did not have an audible shutter sound and as a result, covert and non-consensual photography became an emerging problem. Perhaps the final straw was when a celebrity named Masashi Tashiro used his phone camera to take an illicit photo of a woman at a train station, for which he was arrested. To combat this problem, Japanese cell phone providers and manufacturers teamed up to make a collective pact: all of their devices would now emit an audible shutter sound and none of them could be turned off.
Originally, this was just an unofficial wish, but in 2015 the Japanese government made it official with an amendment to the Healthy Development of Minors Ordinance that completely banned disabling the shutter button on smartphones. All phones sold and used in Japan are subject to these laws, even if the manufacturer is international like Apple (although Apple includes several privacy features on its devices of its own accord anyway). Taking a photo without the sound of the shutter button is not only against Japanese law, but it’s also a major social no-no, as modern Japanese citizens take their privacy very seriously.
Unfortunately, these mandates have not prevented the emergence of bad actors. Non-Japanese phones entering the country can still have their shutters disabled, and an entire gray market of third-party photo apps with shutter sounds that can be disabled has also emerged. Users say it’s also possible to change the SIM settings on a Japanese iPhone to allow the shutter to be turned off, although this would only work if you left Japan as a whole.
