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At Google Conference, Cameras Even in the Bathroom

• ignostic 13y ago
  We should never have had any expectation of privacy in public places. I think what scares most people is that they're going to end up on the internet for some reason. Perhaps this shows how self-obsessed we are: to think that anyone is going to care about us walking down the street minding our own business. Maybe it's the uncertainty that makes people uneasy. I can walk down the street recording everyone with my smartphone, but at least they know they're being filmed.
  • kvb 13y ago
    I don't think it's just that. I don't have any fear that any individual will film me, since this probably happens frequently anyway (how many strangers have me in the background of their pictures somewhere?). Nonetheless, the idea that there will eventually be cameras everywhere putting videos online, combined with technologies such as location-tagging and ever-better face recognition, means that in the not-too-distant future it may be possible for someone to retroactively stalk me by splicing together bits of lots of different videos, determining exactly where I was throughout my day. While it's possible that the benefits of these technologies outweigh the costs, it's not too hard to dream up dystopian scenarios.
    • pavel_lishin 13y ago
      Not only will someone be able to retroactively stalk you, they'll be able to cut together their own version of reality. Imagine someone having every snapshot of you while you're having a bad day - scowling at a slow elderly person ahead of you on the stairs, flipping someone off while driving, a really bad photo of you with a bunch of drinks around you. Nevermind that you were trying to hurry to get up the stairs to help your pregnant wife, or that someone threw a brick at your car, or that you're just watching your friends' drinks while they play pool.
      • jonkelly 13y ago
        Exactly, the "Mark Burnett problem" (producer of Survivor). I heard him claim in an interview that with enough footage he could create any perception of a person that he wanted (hero, jerk, brilliant, idiot, etc.). It seemed obvious after hearing it, but not something I had considered.
        • seren 13y ago
          This can be seen as a modern incarnation of the famous (apocryphal?) Cardinal Richelieu's quote : "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
    • seren 13y ago
      "We informed you that under the new Citizen Bill of July,2040 we have revoked your right to vote, and travel without permit because you have been identified as a participant of the antisocial demonstrations of May, 2018." I know this sounds paranoid, but given past behaviour of totalitarian government, I don't see why any future techno-totalitarian society would not use that kind of tools. And my example is rather mild, it could be something much more sinister that travel restrictions... This is one the reason I find the "Right to be Forgotten" a sane idea.
      • maxerickson 13y ago
        I really, really hope that if the world becomes a totalitarian hell hole I am not left fretting over my right to travel.
  • sixbrx 13y ago
    Until you do something in a moment of distraction or half-thought that would strike a lot of people as humiliating or ridiculous in some way. Like the kid who smiled so big in his school picture, now the butt of countless internet jokes and his picture is everywhere. Nobody wants to be made fun of that way.
  • lotharbot 13y ago
    > "to think that anyone is going to care about us walking down the street minding our own business" If your worst fear is having your photo show up on one of those "poorly dressed and out of shape" websites, this is easy to brush off. If you're an attractive woman (or girl) walking down the street minding your own business, there is already a real possibility to end up on some sort of voyeur/jailbait website and become a target of sexualized comments. It is completely reasonable to be concerned about sexual predators having an even easier time taking those photos.
  • probably_wrong 13y ago
    > We should never have had any expectation of privacy in public places. I don't think I agree with this point. I know most countries have some kind of laws saying more or less this, but I think there is an implicit agreement regarding how much of what I do every day is public or not, and the lack of security cameras in bathrooms is a reflection of this. I might be wrong, but I think that if we were to write privacy laws today, knowing that we (almost) have the technology to monitor everyone everywhere, we wouldn't write something as simple-minded as "you don't have any right to privacy in public places at all" - I think we would probably throw a "reasonable right to privacy" in there somehow.
  • zaptheimpaler 13y ago
    >We should never have had any expectation of privacy in public places. Privacy, no. But we expect some stupid thing we do in public to have a localized, temporary effect. Maybe you get a few dirty looks, maybe some people laugh at you, thats it. But once its on the internet its there 1. forever 2. easily discoverable by people you know. That's pretty scary to me. I can walk home drunk and silly and a few people in college might find out. With glass, everyone on my facebook, including employers/co-workers find out and see a video of it. On the flip side, it would be liberating to see this happen on such a large scale that we come to accept these things and give people a break for having a bad day or doing something silly in public.
  • potatolicious 13y ago
    It's not as irrational a fear as you're making it out to be. Check out any number of tumblr blogs. People of Wal-Mart. Look at That Fucking Hipster, etc. Or a very, very large section of /r/pics or /r/funny on Reddit. Even ignoring the extreme cases like /r/creepshots, the Internet has already proven that it greatly enjoys taking pictures of strangers in everyday life and mocking them mercilessly. People would like to go around with their fly accidentally undone and not have a bunch of armchair comedians commenting on their junk. People would like to go around on a bad hair day without it being picked apart by screeching Internet fashionistas. Our fear of being spread all around the internet is grounded in past instances of nobodies being spread all around the internet.
    • artificialidiot 13y ago
      If only there would be something that detects the moment of snark forming in their head and snaps a picture of the commentator at that instant. Surely, there will be enough comedy material right there for everyone involved.
    • ignostic 13y ago
      I probably didn't clarify the core point well enough. Even if you're right - if the fear is rational - what is your alternative? Banning filming in public? Some of the more corrupt police forces would love nothing more than to have evidence of police brutality tossed out on those grounds. To answer the tangent, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representativeness_heuristic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representativeness_heuristic
      • potatolicious 13y ago
        Vigilance and self-policing, because you're right, regulation on this front has a highly chilling effect on expression. This particular topic is near and dear to me - I do a lot of street photography which is, at least partially, defined as taking pictures of strangers in a documentary manner, and almost always takes place in public. Countries with strong privacy laws, such as France and Japan, do suffer from this. The photographic community in the UK has been hit hard in the past few years as even innocuous picture-taking of popular landmarks has been hit with intense police scrutiny if your gear is too "good". We do not want the heavy hand of government in here, because inevitably this will mean throwing the baby out with the bath water. Expression and art is usually at the boundaries of what society currently finds palatable, and activities along this border needs to be regulated by people, not immutable and slow-changing laws. The only solution I can think of (and it's not a particularly good one) is to slam the door shut on people who would abuse their freedom of expression and whose actions will lead to the loss of freedom by inviting regulation. I'd rather oppose people rather than technology, though.
  • _ak 13y ago
    > We should never have had any expectation of privacy in public places. I fully agree, but I see this from another perspective. In the past, people in public didn't care so much when they were photographed or filmed in public. Nowadays, so many people in public will claim privacy or their personal rights. This change in attitude has brought the art form of street photography nearly to extinction. In the past, people often ignored photographers, while nowadays, some people will demand you delete pictures, try to take your camera to smash it, or even threaten to call the police even though they just accidentally ran into your view finder. In Germany, some privacy fundamentalists have already threatened that are going to destroy Google Glasses when they meet people who use them, and call that "digital self-defense".
  • simonw 13y ago
    Your abusive ex-spouse who's trying to find out where you moved to may care very much about which street you are walking down.
    • pseut 13y ago
      This is exactly what bothers me about the constant nudges to share more information online. It's like no one's ever been stalked by an ex, been abused, etc...
  • vor_ 13y ago
    I don't think it's self-obsessed to care about your privacy, and I don't think there shouldn't a reasonable expectation of privacy in public places. For example, if you're a woman and you bend over, and someone snaps a photo down your blouse, and that ends up on a creepshot website, are we supposed to cross our arms and say, "Deal with it, lady--you were in a public place"? To what degree does being in a public place negate civility and privacy?
  • pfortuny 13y ago
    Not being secret != being public. They are very different concepts and trying to force secrecy for privacy is against normal behaviour. Go ask any old Russian about this.
• mtgx 13y ago
  I assume people think this is a problem because they are afraid someone will film them "down there". But you have to actually look down there to do that with Glass, and last I checked that was already frowned upon, and it's something people know they shouldn't do. So why would Glass make this situation much worse?
  • pavel_lishin 13y ago
    > So why would Glass make this situation much worse? Because prior to Google Glass, I could just be mad that the guy next to me is getting a free show. After Google Glass, everyone potentially gets tickets.
    • betterunix 13y ago
      Then punch him? What would you do if he pulled out a cell phone at the urinal?
  • freehunter 13y ago
    Yes, if someone winked at my exposed genitals while I was in the bathroom, they would get a fist to the face whether they were wearing Glass or not. The rules of society have not become extinct just because someone is wearing a head-mounted camera.
    • pavel_lishin 13y ago
      The rules of the society I live in certainly don't include sudden violence at anyone who's checking out my junk. I might be upset or angry, and I'd probably let them know it, but I'm not getting into a bathroom brawl over it.
      • Nrsolis 13y ago
        It doesn't take a genius to see how cameras in a bathroom could be abused. I wouldn't expect every person who potentially faces Internet-scale humiliation that might come from the prospect of their private parts ending up on someone's FB page to simply shrug it off. I'm counting the days till some Glass-wearing hipster gets his head shoved in a toilet for crap like this. When it happens, I expect THAT will be filmed as well.
• cs702 13y ago
  This is a well-written piece, simultaneously praising and mocking Google Glass, with lots of memorable passages that made me smile or laugh. Let me quote just one of them: "At one point as I climbed the stairs and approached the second floor, I saw a group of five people wearing Google Glass, all silently staring off into space. I couldn’t tell if they were wirelessly having a conversation through their eyeballs, or just bored by the presence of real humans in front of them." The entire article is filled with similarly funny tidbits.
  • Cthulhu_ 13y ago
    The thing with the people standing in a group staring blankly into space is a vision of the future; the reality nowadays is that they're holding something and looking down at it, doing roughly the same thing, but at least you can see clearly they're doing something. Haven't seen Glass in this country yet, but I can imagine it's something as disturbing as people talking on hands-free sets to phantom people.
    • DanBC 13y ago
      Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror, Series one episode three, "The Entire History of You" is pretty good television sf version of this kind of thing.
      • kruhft 13y ago
        Seconded, all 3 episodes of Black Mirror are excellent stories about an imminent future that I'm not sure we really want to come about (except for the art project ;-).
        • glomph 13y ago
          There are 6 now!
        • CrazedGeek 13y ago
          (Good news: they made three more episodes :) )
• deleted 13y ago
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• freehunter 13y ago
  >There they were, a handful of people wearing Google Glass, now standing next to me at their own urinals, peering their head from side to side, blinking or winking, as they relieved themselves. I wasn't there so I have to take his word for it, but... I really doubt that. Blinking, of course. People blink. But why, I cannot fathom, would everyone at a urinal be peering side to side and taking pictures of other people using the restroom? No one does that with the camera they carry with them everywhere. Why would Glass change that? What would it be about Glass that would suddenly make everyone want to take pictures of other men in the restroom? Was this story just made up to be hyperbolic? I seriously can't figure out why Glass would cause such a huge cultural shift that would make people start photographing each other in the bathroom not only acceptable but common.
  • lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    simply add another accelerometer - two shakes to download, three shakes to delete.
  • Nrsolis 13y ago
    Because it's happened. Pervasive surveillance has already caused shifts in behavior that wouldn't exist without them. For one thing, teenage fights are filmed by bystanders and replayed/posted on the Internet. Pictures of women in compromised positions (children even) are passed around schools. Cyberbullying (even though I hate that term) is easier and more anonymous because of these tools. If you're the victim, it can feel as if you are fighting the entire world. THAT's why I think someone would be well within their rights to take swift action to halt something like that in its tracks. BTW, I'm certain it's the reason why police risk the backlash associated with taking cameras away from third-parties vs. having their actions armchair-quarterbacked by legions of second-guessers.
    • freehunter 13y ago
      >Pervasive surveillance has already caused shifts in behavior that wouldn't exist without them. But all of those things existed even before the means to record them. People would fight. Women would be spied on. Children would be bullied. But taking pictures of people in a bathroom is not something that was common or accepted before, apparently, yesterday. We've had the means to record the bathrooms for quite a long time now, and it doesn't happen. When it does happen, it makes the news. The author wasn't describing a demented pervert hiding in the shadows to see you naked, he was describing many people at a tech conference not hiding the fact that they were taking pictures of each other in the bathroom. That doesn't happen.
• hkmurakami 13y ago
  Then I met the man who excitedly told me about his power to snap pictures with his eyelid. He explained that he uses the wink-to-take-a-picture feature so much that a few days ago he was not wearing his Google Glass and was confused when he blinked his eye and nothing happened. His mind had played a trick on him, he said. Well this itself isn't new, since I often reach to adjust my glasses even when I'm not wearing them.
  • T-hawk 13y ago
    Yeah. I sometimes reach to adjust my glasses too -- six years after LASIK correction. Muscle memory is _really_ hard to break without conscious effort.
  • NegativeK 13y ago
    I suspect the story was more about how often he's taking pictures than learned behavior.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• marknutter 13y ago
  > Many were using their cellphones while wearing the glasses — defeating a declared purpose of the new gadget, to free you from having to look at your phone. Another man continually looked at his watch to check the time, even through the glasses display a clock right above your eye. I get that the author is trying to be humorous but I fear that some people may take some of his criticisms seriously. AFAIK nobody has declared that the purpose of Glass is to "free us from having to look at [oure] phone[s]". It simply makes certain functions more convenient than using a phone, in certain situations. Let's also not forget that Glass' functionality is pretty limited at this point, so people using their phones while using Glass were most likely using an app with functionality that isn't offered by Glass yet.. like browsing the web. Glass is going to take off with the active crowd. It's perfect for people who either have jobs or hobbies that require the extended use of their hands. Think cyclists, police officers, postal workers, construction foremen, taxi drivers, etc. I feel like it's journalistically sloppy to criticize Glass for the (I feel) false premise that everybody is going to be wearing Glass all the time. The OP was at Google IO for crying out loud, of course you're going to have a bunch of early adopters walking around with Glass' on their face.
  • robterrell 13y ago
    > AFAIK nobody has declared that the purpose of Glass is to "free us from having to look at [oure] phone[s]" As I recall, there was at least one guy: http://blog.ted.com/2013/02/27/sergey-brin-with-google-glass-at-ted2013/ http://blog.ted.com/2013/02/27/sergey-brin-with-google-glass... Brin asks: “Is this the way you’re meant to interact with other people?” Is the future of connection just people walking around hunched up, looking down, rubbing a featureless piece of glass?
  • kanamekun 13y ago
    > AFAIK nobody has declared that the purpose of Glass is to "free us from having to look at [oure] phone[s]". Here's a quote on that topic from Isabelle Olsson, lead industrial designer for Google Glass: "One day, I went to work — I live in SF and I have to commute to Mountain View and there are these shuttles — I went to the shuttle stop and I saw a line of not 10 people but 15 people standing in a row like this," she puts her head down and mimics someone poking at a smartphone. "I don’t want to do that, you know? I don’t want to be that person. That’s when it dawned on me that, OK, we have to make this work. It’s bold. It’s crazy. But we think that we can do something cool with it."
• austenallred 13y ago
  My first response was, "Who cares, we already have cameras everywhere and anywhere, this doesn't change anything," but the idea of no one really knowing when you're filming or taking a picture (unless they notice a wink) is kind of a game-changer.
• marknutter 13y ago
  This actually reminds me of my brief stint at Apple. I went out to the headquarters for a conference right around the time the first iPhone was released. That year all Apple employees were given free iPhones, so of course, everyone at the week long conference were glued to them. I remember very distinctly riding a bus to the campus with my fellow Apple employees and seeing every single solitary face buried in their iphones, all of us sitting in silence. Despite my enthusiasm for the iPhone I do remember having a slight sinking feeling at viewing that. I was seeing a glimpse into the future to come.
  • brador 13y ago
    The difference is Google is paying a lot of famous people a lot of money to wear Google glasses. That is not the sign of a company making an awesome innovative solution people want and have a use for.
    • proexploit 13y ago
      They're paying people to wear glass? Do you have a source for that?
      • brador 13y ago
        No source I can link to.
• kaolinite 13y ago
  In Japan and some other countries, there is a law requiring cameras to make loud noises so pictures cannot be taken discreetly. I wonder if this will apply to Glass and, if so, what Google will do to enable Glass to be sold in Japan. Is there even an external speaker with which they could make the noise? (http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/32442/jurisdictions-where-camera-shutter-sound-is-mandated-by-law http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/32442/jurisdictio...)
  • hkmurakami 13y ago
    I travelled to Japan in February and noticed that my Nexus 4 suddenly started to make shutter sounds when I snapped photos there, after I connected to my friend's wifi hotspot. Something similar will be implemented in Glass for sure. Of course, there are many workarounds around this, including separate camera applications.
    • pseut 13y ago
      recording video is an immediate workaround (I'm assuming that the phone doesn't continuously make shutter noises when it records video; if it does then nevermind).
    • ISL 13y ago
      Anyone know how this might be implemented in Android? Seems like cruft in the code for most users.
• DanBC 13y ago
  Creepers have been creeping for years and years and years. They peer through curtains; they make spyholes in cubicle walls, and with digital cameras they hide cameras in ceilings and books and showers and shoes. Voyeuristic porn is a category. Upskirt is word popular enough to have an understood meaning. I'm a bloke. I'm not worried by those creepers. But I am uneasy about some users of Google Glass. I'd be really uncomfortable if I was standing at a urinal and someone was next to me still wearing Google Glass.
  • marknutter 13y ago
    I have a feeling that when/if Glass becomes popular enough it will become a social faux pas to be wearing Glass while looking at a woman. Can you imagine some guy wearing Glass staring at a pretty girl across the way? It's creepy enough without Glass; it's super creepy with. As such, I'm betting it will be considered polite to prop Glass up on your head when interacting with people.
    • legalbeagle 13y ago
      It is only a social faux pas for certain people to look at a woman while wearing Glass.
    • pseut 13y ago
      Or just take it off. Remember when people kept their bluetooth earpiece in their ear all the time?
      • Blara 13y ago
        except for those people who need glasses to see
        • pseut 13y ago
          Yeah, that's a good point. Maybe Glass will be like prescription sunglasses, and people will have a separate pair? Maybe there will be a way to overtly disable the computer part or remove it entirely? I think it's really unlikely that, aside from early adopters, people will have Glass "in place" when they're not using it, though.
• lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  Memo to Wearable computing engineers: Remember where I have been and what I have done, or tell me where to go and what to do in the future. Just stay out of the way of the now.
• coherentpony 13y ago
  Google Glass, while intriguing at first, is something that deeply troubles me.
• jjsz 13y ago
  If my glasses are prescription and I'm at a yoga class I'll be constantly aware to not stare for too long or go to the first line. It's a huge burden.
• jjsz 13y ago
  If my glasses are prescription and I'm at a yoga class I'll be constantly aware to not stare for too long or go to the first line. It's a huge burden.
• daddy2twin 13y ago
  I fear for my kids. We try to limit who takes pics, still, we find pics of them online. With Google Glass...this task will become almost impossible.
• ck2 13y ago
  If thousands of people had Google Glass on, it's possible some were advertising props and not fully functional - this would explain some of the behaviors the author saw.
• cyanbane 13y ago
  I am just confused as to why taking off your Glass will not be similar to other common social bathroom courtesies like putting away your cell phone, or utilizing family bathrooms, etc. Once a stigma is in place at the social level, it will work itself out. If not, there is always the direct approach of just asking someone to put it away.
  • echohack 13y ago
    Do you take off your normal glasses while using the bathroom?
    • jchan 13y ago
      Do you need your Google Glasses to see?
    • ryanglasgow 13y ago
      Do normal glasses have a camera attached? Bathrooms are a place of privacy.
      • Kuiper 13y ago
        Do normal glasses have a camera attached? If you're talking about prescription lenses, the answer to your question is yes. Glass is designed to be modular, and Glass is intended to accommodate those who wear conventional glasses for vision correction, giving them the option to use glass with their prescription lenses.
  • ditojim 13y ago
    it is proper to remove them or place them atop your head like you do with sunglasses indoors. also, i doubt people were doing anything but staring down or straight ahead in the urinals. it would be weird for someone without glass to be doing what he describes in a bathroom. just saying..
  • jff 13y ago
    I'm just ducking in to take a leak; removing the glasses would double the time it takes, and the dev pair I tried didn't seem to fold up like regular glasses to slip in a pocket, so what, I'm expected to carry around a Glass purse to stash them in? I'd rather they implemented something to make it very clear when Glass is recording--make the big plastic bit that holds the lens glow red, something like that--so everyone would take the signal that I am not recording them, just happen to be wearing it. Also, we already have a social convention in place for this. You don't look at, speak to, or otherwise acknowledge other people in the bathroom, except so as to give them appropriate space. Everyone in there is taking care of private functions; if everyone follows the convention, we all get a maximally private experience. Convention already dictates that you shouldn't be rubbernecking at the other urinals; even talking to someone else while at the urinal gets you labeled as "that guy" among the people I know.
• pyre 13y ago
  | But not me. I tried to duck my head and move | out of the way of these strangers’ sneaky | little cameras. I think this was a bit over the top. Would he be ducking and cowering if someone's cellphone was pointed his way? Probably not. | here they were, a handful of people wearing | Google Glass, now standing next to me at their | own urinals Maybe Google should tout a RateMyPoo.com (NSFW) app for Google Glass!
• Kiro 13y ago
  Everyone wearing a pair sounds wonderful and I can't wait to get my hands on one.
• asciimo 13y ago
  I was irritated by this article for many reasons, but the foremost is its hypocrisy. The author recalled first-hand events from memory, curated them to support a critical narrative, and then shared the results with millions of people on the Internet. Now we sit in judgement of the anonymous people he described. There are plenty of ways in which Glass and conventional blogging differ, but not enough to warrant the author's shock.
• Cushman 13y ago
  "I’ve been a nerd all my life, [but] I felt like a mere mortal among an entirely different class of super-connected humans." This is the most insightful passage in there, though it's probably unintentional. There is a separation taking place between "nerds" who enjoy the practical benefits of new technologies in their day-to-day lives, and those who believe that new technologies should and will alter our species in ways that frighten us. And that's nothing new; many (most?) Baby Boomers implicitly distrust PCs and the Internet, let alone smartphones, but many others realize that they are living in the most interesting time of their lives and wish they'd been born a little later. To be honest, though, I'm a little surprised to see this separation take place so early; Glass is a charmingly inoffensive vision of things to come that really shouldn't be shocking to anyone with an iPhone. If you're worried today that someone might take a picture of your dick, you will be absolutely horrified at what we have become before you die.
  • jt2190 13y ago
    I'm not worried that someone might take a picture of my dick. I'm worried that it's still very hard to explain to a large drunk gentleman that you didn't take a picture of his dick when his fist is smashing into your mouth. ;-)
    • Cushman 13y ago
      On the flip side, I'm excited by the idea that someone won't be able to punch me in the face for any reason without some fairly conclusive evidence testifying to that effect. 'Course that doesn't help me if I really did take a picture of his dick.
  • bostonpete 13y ago
    Baby Boomers implicitly distrust PCs and the Internet, let alone smartphones, but many others realize that they are living in the most interesting time of their lives and wish they'd been born a little later. In the US at least, I have to believe that the 60s were the most interesting times that generation lived through.
    • 13y ago
• dghughes 13y ago
  My concern is people like myself who wear prescription eye glasses who may want to try Google Glass so end up putting the device on prescription glasses. It's one thing to remove your Google Glass glasses to be polite or legal i.e. washroom, locker room, driving a vehicle but for me that wouldn't be an option. Also, I wonder if I could make a pair of infrared LEDs put them on my person somewhere to emit an interference beam pattern to mess up the camera on someone else's Google Glass glasses.
  • microtherion 13y ago
    Yes, that’s my concern as well. I used to think that as a prescription glass wearer, I’d be a natural early adopter of smart glasses, but given the privacy concerns, it’s bound to be socially (and sometimes legally) unacceptable to have smart glasses on all the time.
  • artificialidiot 13y ago
    Unfortunately, that is not practical. Cameras need to filter out IR from sun to get a decent picture. Unlikely your measly head mounted LEDs would amount to an interference.
  • Reedx 13y ago
    And even more so when Google Glass is integrated into contacts - you'll never know when someone has it or not.
• michaelrhansen 13y ago
  The only hope here is that similar to gym rules that do not allow cell phone usage in locker rooms, hopefully we can adopt the policy "Don't be a Glass ass. Remove your glasses before entering restrooms."
  • pohl 13y ago
    Indeed. "Don't be a Glasshole" flows a little better, though.
• petercooper 13y ago
  Give it a year or two, regular looking glasses will have these features too. Then the real problems begin, unless you want to start banning all glasses.
• georgemcbay 13y ago
  I'm a lot more worried about the privacy implications on a macro scale than I am about some random person getting a photo of my private bits. The scary part of Glass-like devices taken to their logical conclusion for me isn't the little individual invasions of privacy (though those are also unfortunate), but the massive amount of real-time, real-world information collected in the aggregate. If Glass-like devices are ever mainstream and controlled by one entity they create the easy possibility for an information mesh network that makes the one shown in "The Dark Knight" look absolutely quaint in comparison. Ubiquitous video + audio + advanced feature detection destroys personal privacy when in public basically across the board, even if you yourself are not a participant. eg: EvilOverlord: "Glass-MCP-10k, where is George McBay?" Glass-MCP-10k: "Scanning... Subject George McBay last seen entering residential building 10.5 seconds ago at 32.925924,-117.227812. Data based on facial recognition match with 96.75% confidence. 5 Gargoyles report seeing him within 1 mile radius of this location within the last 10 minutes." I see the massive benefits of Glass-like-devices but I am also terribly concerned about the possible privacy implications. The potential for abuses could be staggering and given that I think it is a good idea to actually discuss the potential for problems and not just assume everything will be okay because the tech is "neat" (yes, it is!, but...).
  • nooneelse 13y ago
    Another scenario, Google constantly runs a system looking at tweets, texts, and news stories. Anytime something happens that is criminal and significant enough for it to notice, it turns up the logging for all the Glass devices in the area. If it were opt-in to send the resulting log to law enforcement, that would be totally fine. If not, things get worrisome. But what about in between? Say sending the log in is only done when the user clicks ok, but the police subpena Google for who all had their Glass devices in that area, so they can contact them directly. Gets into the area of withholding evidence and such.
  • betterunix 13y ago
    "The scary part of Glass-like devices taken to their logical conclusion for me isn't the little individual invasions of privacy (though those are also unfortunate), but the massive amount of real-time, real-world information collected in the aggregate." As opposed to the world without Google Glass, where people are constantly taking pictures in public and then uploading those pictures to Facebook? Honestly, singling out Google Glass is just a diversion, probably driven by Google's competitors who could not see how a head-mounted display could be useful.
• drucken 13y ago
  Statute books everywhere record the new crime of "lascivious or captive winking"...
• barista 13y ago
  It's funny how title has changed to be a flame bait now. Glass is one of the new things that Google is introducing and at the Google IO where you expect Google enthusiasts, why is it surprising to see a lot of Glass wearers? Glass of course has privacy issues and I will not be comfortable speaking to anybody who is wearing one. It's at least 100 times more nerdy as the Bluetooth headset but those issues aside, you should totally expect to see these at Google conference.
• michaelochurch 13y ago
  Am I the only one who came here for the Perf/Perv jokes?
• coldcode 13y ago
  Once the police recognize a Google Glass user imagine the great shot of a nightstick smashing into their face.