Is there much more to that than what Facebook (and to slightly less degree, Instagram and its ilk) doesn’t have already?
There’s a big difference in perception between a largely disembodied, amorphous entity that has the capacity to see what you do, but is so abstracted to you that it barely even registers as existing, and that guy that’s right there in your face wearing a camera, looking at you. Especially as a person you meet in the flesh is more likely to actually be paying attention to what you are or are not doing in specific in a way that a corporation generally isn’t. In most cases they probably don’t care, but they’re certainly more /likely/ to care.
When you get down to it, it just feels more invasive, and while many people may not consider that feeling very logical, I’ll point out that, our species isn’t hasn’t ever been very good at behaving rationally, so it’s kind of odd for people to keep expecting that from folks.
My first concern about possible surveillance is by whom. People I choose to associate with are those who I trust more than others, so this tends to not be an issue. I had never considered the height from which I am recorded or analyzed to be a significant factor. Thinking about it now, it seems frivolous.
All of this can de done now with mobile phones anyway. I agree that there are worrisome aspects to this, but I don’t find Google’s record for privacy any worse than Verizon or the FBI who already do stuff like this. People keep pointing out possibilities for hating Google Glass, but then questions about similar risks from elsewhere yield shrugs. When people burn surveillance cameras and disable e911 from their phones, maybe I’ll believe they are really trying to do something meaningful about maintaining privacy.
Meanwhile, many of the people here are really pumped to put real-time video recording on police, who have about the worst record of abuse. I think we’ve seen how well it works when cops’ records of events are the only ones people have to defend themselves with.
But, again, the people that I’m having face to face conversations with generally don’t have their phones strapped to their heads with the lens pointing at me, possibly silently recording everything said. You and Shaddack think this doesn’t matter but it very much matters to me and many other people.
I have a friend in my hackerspace with Glass. EVERY time he walks in wearing that or start a conversation with them, people immediately ask him if he’s recording them. I’ve seen people, when he’s said he is, just walk away. People don’t want recording in their face from people they’re talking to and seeing someone wearing this stuff and interacting with them makes folks uncomfortable. You can wave your hands all you want about how it isn’t different but it is the truth.
1 Like
Then you misunderstand me, because I think it does matter, quite a bit. What doesn’t make sense to me is how people are picking their battles here. People do not need their phones strapped to their head to record you. Haven’t you ever used a speakerphone? A person could have their phone inside their pocket and still record all that is said. Plus, as I pointed out, capture of audio requires legal consent, making it more sensitive than pictures. Since the current technologies already do what people claim they are worried about (covert recording, tracking, etc), it seems obvious to ask “how is this any different?” Such as, by extension, how do you know that a person with a mobile phone is not recording their conversations with you? There is no reason to assume that the question of privacy in this context is trivial. Rather, that considering the processes of surveillance consistantly is more likely to do what people want than going after a specific instance while still leaving their backsides exposed.
I wish people could be bothered to overcome their apathy like this with regards to municipal and corporate surveillance. This is where their lives are being destroyed. Not because somebody sees them drinking their damn coffee.
1 Like
You’re confusing “someone recorded my voice from the table or their pocket” with “I have an HD recording from the point of view of my eyeballs of your face with you looking straight at me in crystal visual and audio clarity.”
As to legal consent, no, audio capture does not, depending on the state. There are plenty of states in the US where either party can legally record a conversation without consent or even informing the other party. (California does not happen to be one of these.)
That surveillance isn’t a friend of yours staring straight into your face with a device that records conversations, audio and video, and which you have no guarantee of notification from if it is on.
I care less about a traffic cam at the local intersection than every asshole I know with a camera on his face recording every conversation he has. I think others feel the same way.
Go watch some videos of people guerilla filming when the other party asks “Wait…are you recording this?” followed by them leaving, knocking the camera to the ground, etc. People don’t like it without explicit consent. Google Glass makes people uneasy because they see it when they look in the other party’s face and they think it could always be on.
1 Like
Glass’s privacy issues were overblown.
This is not to say that Google doesn’t have a problem with understanding privacy. (That problem has manifested clearly in the context of the real name policy, in Buzz, in G+ forced integration, in interviews with Schmidt and Brin.)
It’s also not to say that Glass is a good product. Glass was a terrible product, being limited as it was to essentially powerpoint strapped to your face with a four hour battery life.
But, Glass didn’t represent a privacy violation because, hardware-wise, it wasn’t powerful enough to be capable of violating privacy in a meaningful way. The camera wasn’t capable of filming without being quite obvious, could not (without a crack) be set up to be activated by any mechanism other than a combination of speech and interaction with the touchpad, and had a drastically limited recording time due to poor battery life. The microphone, likewise, was not listening for voice commands at all time – the idea that this device could be used purely or primarily by voice is false, again for battery reasons. All in all, Glass is fundamentally less effective for recording people without their knowledge than a smartphone or a $3 novelty spy camera is.
I consider this to be a failure of PR, and I consider the PR failure to be related to Google’s lack of understanding of privacy concerns – after all, they talked up voice and camera integration that’s practically nonexistent, talked up GPS integration that actually depends on your phone, and de-emphasized the handful of actually practical uses the device could have (essentially as a notification machine, like a smartwatch – something to show you your text messages or the currently playing track).
4 Likes
Both hands are still free. That’s true if you’re defensibly racist or not.
Why does that matter to me? None of your business!!!
It is good for insurance purposes on private property, where it is marked or obvious, yes.
Ubiquitous, coordinated, and tied to a company known to want all information in one place, their plase, IS ACTUALLY different from just another camera
This. My daughter is 19 too, and I do exactly what you’ve described. I come from a big family, and I love kids. Babies make me go ‘SQUEEEEE!’. I mean, as an easiest-setting player, it’s a fairly small price to pay, aye, but it makes me have a sad anyway.
1 Like
Shaddackism par excellence 
2 Likes
I used to work in a store that sold tiny cameras and we literally just put them in anything customers wanted them in. We just built it in a room in the back. The battery life issue can be real if you want to hide it in a very small space, but for the kind of recording people are talking about here (i.e., covert body-worn in public) it’s hard to think of why you’d need more than an hour anyway - people mostly ran into battery life issues because they wanted to put it in a room and leave it there for a day.
And we are talking about the cheapest most mass-produced covert cameras imaginable. High end stuff was a lot more impressive, and I can only imagine what’s happened in the last ten years.
3 Likes
One of the best was milling the magnesium frame of a widescreen Thinkpad R61 to be able to take the hinges of a non-widescreen Thinkpad R60. The displays were compatible down to having the same connector in the same position.
You don’t get it, if someone came up to me in a bar with their iphone out and put it in my face and said I’m recording, I wouldn’t want to have a conversation with them either. The rest of your examples are tech-based, not person to person based.
I think it’s not fair to suggest that me not attributing the same significance means I am confused. Is there really a consensus that Gurgle Glub records people “in crystal visual and audio clarity”? This suggests that it is just a small qualitative improvement, rather than, as I was asking about - anything fundamentally different.
I haven’t read up on this for a while, but there are federal laws as well, wiretapping statutes, etc. The legality is still generally more complex than that of capturing images.
Does it matter if others presumably feel the same way? Anyway, we’ll need to agree to disagree on this one. The risks of what individuals can do with such tech is dwarfed by the risks posed by large, organized groups who feel invested in keeping tabs on people.
But that doesn’t mean that it is on. Fussing about what people “could be” doing, without regards for evidence or real risk evaluation is basic paranoia. And people seem to be oddly selective about it. As the old axiom goes, not being paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get you. But much of this strikes me as specious argumentation compared to most privacy debate.
For me, privacy is all about words and actions. The words which issue from my mouth, the text of my correspondence. The comings and goings of my travels. There isn’t much of anything about me to be learned by merely looking. In conversation, I don’t look at people, and wander around too much for them to stare at me. YM(OPUOD)MV
No, I am really not dwelling upon the tech at all. My point is that people’s reactions to it seem starkly inconsistent. I am not saying that they can’t or shouldn’t be - I am trying to understand why. People’s reactions to similar tech, surveillance in general, law, and consent that I have mentioned are very much personal issues rather than technological. That I don’t have a feel for people’s aversion doesn’t change this.
1 Like
This is that semantic game you do about normal English usage. I’m not playing it. I could have easily said “conflating” but then you’d probably find a semantic quibble with that word.
I prefer to have conversations about a topic. You often seem to prefer to have meta conversations about how to converse about a topic or how people are conversing about a topic. For a typical message board, I, at least, don’t have the time, energy, or desire to invest in said meta conversation and find it boring. Based on some of the responses you get from at least a few others, I think I’m not the only one.
Can we talk about the thing or do you want to talk about how we use words in English more?
I was merely responding to a remark you made, as I understood it. At least I was interested enough to read it and have an opinion. Sorry if I misunderstood you.
Like with that name-calling thing?
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
– Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
2 Likes
The fact that you got confused about what I was saying or who I was saying about is not my issue.
Are you still thinking of Silicon Valley engineers as an oppressed minority similar to other minorities?
You under me saying you were confusing two different things as meaning you, personally, were confused?
Notice my response to Shaddack. That is me calling someone “confused” as an actual thing. I have low expectations there though.
