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Comment by Cardeck1 | Hacker News Reader

The biggest problem with Google Glass is privacy.Anyone can record you without you knowing it. And it's not just walking down the street. There are so many bad scenarios. Usually we embrace new tech here but this device would bring privacy to a whole new level. Not to mention that Google is starting to be too powerful for our own good.

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>Anyone can record you without you knowing it.

Isn't this already the case with small cameras?

Well yes, but 95% of those people are buying those small cameras for a specific task (surveillance) and you still have to attach it to a device to make it work but the majority of people will buy Glass because it's cool and innovative thus "stalking" becomes an available option, "just in case" you want to do it.Temptation wins...

For the aver person a small camera is a smartphone, which needs to be obviously held up when filming. Google Glass would be omnipresent so you wouldn't notice when a camera is turned on.

There is a red light glowing when the camera is on. But what happens when you have 10 people with Glass?How will you stop everyone from recording?And 10 is a small number in a fast-paced environment like NYC.

What happens when someone zooms in on sensitive data in a company or home or anywhere you can think of.

The more Glasses you have, the less control you get.

I'm not aware of any mobile phone in the USA that has a light that turns on when recording (not including the flash). Glass won't have any special zoom capabilities. It's the same as a phone. If you're afraid of someone zooming in on sensitive data don't put it near a window where others can see it.

The light turning on when recording will be disabled in no time flat for people who want to record surreptitiously.

You are right.No phone has that but you can see a light in the prism on Glass when the device is recording. I am sure they can add zoom capabilities to the device.

The point is that no matter what alert signals you get, you can't just beat/accuse someone just because he is recording.It's a two-way street.

We will see.

Zooming requires an adjustable lens which will never be added to Glass. Digital zoom isn't real zoom, you can just do that with a photo editor.

Just because Glass' prism is lit doesn't mean someone is recording. They could be looking at something else.

It seems to be an unpopular opinion, but what you see as the biggest problem I see as the most exciting feature (albeit Glass doesn't go far enough for my desires). I can't wait to see how machine learning can be applied to the corpus of audio and video recorded throughout my daily life. The idea that additional value can be "mined" from that data, retroactively, makes me even more excited.

Did you ever read the blog by Stephen Wolfram about his historic personal data collection and analysis?

http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytic...

It offers great insight into how he lives and works, and that is just from the analysis of his historic email, (rigorous!) calendar appointments and phone call metadata, not their actual content!

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