good article;

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/paris-city-of-rights/

Nick Turpin has run dozens of street photography workshops in Europe,but nothing compares to Paris, where his students are often confronted
by furious pedestrians who don’t want to be in anyone’s picture

.“To some extent, French people now have a sense that they own the right of their image,” Mr. Turpin said

Although the law hasn’t been tightened in Britain, at least not yet, there is nervousness among photographers like Martin Parr, who has made
his career taking candid pictures of people in public spaces. “We canstill take a picture on the street and, technically, do whatever we want
with it,” he said. “People might have a moral right” to object, “but they don’t have a legal right.”

The same is true in the United States,

The Click programme on BBC covered LifeBlogging,
the idea of sharing all your photos with everyone.

They featured a walk around tour somewhere, with the aim that everyone
on the tour was taking photos including all the others, then sharing them.

Quite the opposite approach

It brings up visions of being asked to look at friends holiday snaps or movies.

However I do value the photos my father took of me over the years

and try to do the same for my family

That photo walk was in Austin,TX a few weeks ago.

I think I would get miffed if someone was taking photos of me as I walk down Sukhumvit. I would also be miffed if someone posted an image of me walking down Sukhumvit. I would be even more miffed if someone was selling an image of me walking down Sukhumvit.

This is the way it works from a legal point of view

When you are in a public space, anybody take a picture of you and publish it without asking for permission.

BUT it cant be used for commercial purposes. So as long as its a 'reportage' picture you are fine.

You are also not allowed to put captions which may be misleading. So if you take a picture of someone lying in a park you cant put a caption like

'local drunk' or similar.

The rest is ok. I work a s photographer and Im fine with it.

I think there must be some balance between freedom of taking pictures and right to privacy.

I think in this day & age of social media/narcassistic tendencies people have very little to complain about when they are almost forcing their images/twitter feeds on the world.