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This isn't about security or privacy. It's about social norms. Most people don't want to offend people, don't want to record people without their consent, and don't want to make people feel uncomfortable because they think they might be recorded. Establishing a social norm that people should outwardly notify others when they're recording will mean fewer people will record people who don't want to be recorded because of social pressure. Certainly, creepers who want to record others secretly will do so, but they will have violated social norms for having done so, and won't have any defense since they will have had to deliberately obfuscate their activities to do so.

Eh, a perfect solution is not at all necessary. That’s just a weird way of approaching this.

It is the polite thing to do to make obvious whenever you are recording other people. Google can and should help with that politeness. Society is perfectly capable of creating and enforcing rules without laws.

There's a big difference between downloading of music and a red light for taking video. In fact one might be able to apply the categorical imperative and see that most people would want the red light viewable by others, but there is no similar desire when it comes to not downloading music.

That is, this is about creating a desired societal norm. You're right, there are people that will violate this regardless. There's always someone who will hide a camera in the girls bathroom, and there's little you can do to stop it, but yet we've been able to get to reasonable place in society that we still assume there aren't hidden cameras in "private" places.

Right? Doesn't HN react negatively to security theater in most contexts? It is interesting that the collective approach is different with this device.

A red 'recording' light or shutter noise are not security theater. They're a feedback mechanism to notify subjects that they are being recorded. Even if 1 or even 10% of google glass users hack their device to remove the light, the other 90% will have the light and that will improve others' awareness of when they're being recorded and enable them to take action.

Incremental improvement is better than nothing, and this is an example of an incredibly cheap, obvious incremental improvement with no downside.

I think you're missing the point. Technology is going to continue to improve, components will continue to shrink, and cameras will become ever-more portable and concealable. These are trends that cannot be stopped. Google Glass is only one point along a continuum, and slapping a red LED on it solves nothing.

It's already the case that you are recorded without your knowledge or consent on a regular basis. Whether you're browsing a department store or planting a bomb at a marathon, there's a chance you'll be caught on tape.

Who knows what the world will be like in 10, 25, 50 years from now? We may be able to download a digital copy of memories from the brain, in which case every pair of eyes will be a video camera.

An extreme example, I know, but the point is simple. We can waste time and money fighting against the inevitable, or we can accept the changes in our world and learn to live with them.

The feedback mechanism can be disabled, via a rooted device or physical disconection, just like tsa scans can be circumvented. It's exactly analogous.

> The feedback mechanism can be disabled

And you can insult random people on the street, or repeatedly fart loudly on a crowded bus.

The article is about etiquette.

The people who have reservations about insulting random people on the street, or farting loudly on a crowded bus, are likely going to have reservations about recording people whether there's a light on or not!

That is absolutely true, which is why the original article was about etiquette, not somehow creating supertechnology that can restrict a Glass user from doing bad things. That is, the LED is about feedback, not restraint.

My comment is about the suggestion of lights as a technical solution in past comment threads. It's not about the etiquette suggestions in this article.

You're completely missing the point. Traditional examples of 'security theater' like TSA screens are called security theater because they DON'T WORK.

A red light that says the camera is active works unless explicitly circumvented. Let me explain this in simple logic to you:

Your initial state is 'no red light when recording', which means 100% of strangers don't know if you're recording them. They will all assume you are an asshole.

If you add a red light that works by default, the new state is this:

Red light when recording, unless modified to remove the light. Most strangers may not know you can disable the light, so they won't worry. Strangers who do know will ask you if you are recording them. In cases where the light is on, then it's obvious - you're recording them.

Do you see how this works? It's almost as if seatbelts and helmets aren't useless just because you can take them off.

> You're missing the point ...

I really don't think I am, but perhaps it's an incompatibility in the way you're sending and I'm receiving.

TSA screenings work when not circumvented. When circumvented, you can bring a wide variety of weapons aboard a plane. Red lights on wearable computing devices work when not circumvented. When circumvented, your can record surreptitiously. They seem quite similar to me.

> If I add a red light that works by default ...

If I add a screening process that works by default ...

> Most strangers may not know you can disable the light ... so they won't worry ...

Like most people don't know that it's possible to get bombs through TSA checkpoints, so they don't worry. You're making the analogy more clear, not less.

TSA screenings DON'T WORK, PERIOD, END SENTENCE. This is why they are called security theater, instead of ineffectual security.

Or to give a more clear example, compare the TSA with customs. Customs does, in fact, do a very effective job of stopping certain kinds of contraband from crossing the border. They don't stop ALL OF IT, but they stop some. So when evaluating Customs, you have to decide whether they are simply inefficient, or not good enough at their jobs, or acceptably effective. In comparison, TSA literally does jack shit. Nothing. Which is why it's called security theater.

Whether or not it's appropriate to call something security theater also depends on the stakes involved; TSA screenings are considered inappropriate and unacceptable because the cost incurred by the screenings is high (in time, dignity, etc) and the payoff is low - it's a net loss.

Adding a red light costs literally nothing - cents on the dollar - and inconveniences no one. Even if... let's say 25% of google glass customers turn the LED off, the other 75% haven't so it's still working. You can very easily do a cost/benefit analysis here and it is hard to come up with a sane analysis where the LED isn't worth the cost.

If you're going to throw terms around, you should at least make a basic attempt to understand what they actually mean.

> TSA screenings DON'T WORK, PERIOD

Let me make sure I understand. Are you saying that, 100% of the time, packing a gun in your carry-on won't get caught by a TSA screening? If not, what do you mean exactly by "don't work, period."

TSA screenings weren't introduced to prevent guns from being packed in suitcases; we had luggage screenings and customs beforehand.

TSA screenings were introduced to stop terrorists from hijacking airplanes.

EDIT: On the assumption that you will continue to display top-notch reading comprehension:

"The TSA was created as a response to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Its first administrator, John Magaw, was nominated by President Bush on December 10, 2001, and confirmed by the Senate the following January. The agency's proponents, including Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, argued that only a single federal agency would better protect air travel than the private companies who operated under contract to single airlines or groups of airlines that used a given terminal facility.

The organization was charged with developing policies to protect U.S. transportation, especially in airport security and the prevention of aircraft hijacking."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Adminis...

EDIT 2: I should also point out that we had sky marshals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Air_Marshal_Service

> To stop terrorists from hijacking airplanes . . .

. . . by preventing them from carrying weapons onto those planes. Yes? So, going back to my original questions, if the screenings are security theater, according to your definition, they should be 100% ineffective at that job without any attempt at circumvention. Or have I read you incorrectly somewhere along the lines?

All that stuff about the purpose of the TSA organization in your edit is useless, because I'm specifically talking about the screening procedures.

> . . . by preventing them from carrying weapons onto those planes. Yes? So, going back to my original questions, if the screenings are security theater, according to your definition, they should be 100% ineffective at that job without any attempt at circumvention.

This is wrong on several levels: first, it ignores the fact that security screenings existed prior to the establishment of the TSA. So the TSA screenings could have no value for actual security without being 100% ineffective, if they were no more effective than the preexisting screenings.

And second, because something can be security theater and still have some positive effect on security, if that positive effect is both not its primary motivation and not remotely warranted by the cost.

Security theater doesn't mean that there is no gain in security, it means that the security function is pretextual and any security effect is incidental.

Really, preboarding screenings were nationalized under the TSA to reduce the scope of potential future liability faced by airlines, who (through contractors) were previously responsible. It's not like the screenings didn't exist before 9/11, it's just different people were signing the screener's paychecks.

The whole "people will hack the red light" issue is pretty easy to get around.

First of all, make sure that, if the light breaks on its own, the camera will stop functioning. (To prevent "innocent" recording without the red light.)

Second, pass a law requiring hardware manufacturing to include these red lights, and making it illegal for people to record others in public with devices which have been modified to function without a light. (It wouldn't be needed for cameras, which have no other purpose -- I'm talking about devices like Google Glass.)

I'm not necessarily saying this is the best solution to the problem, just that it's one possible solution.

After all, if you're in a restroom while someone else is wearing Google Glass, and you know they'd be hit with a $10K fine and up to two years in jail if they were recording you, then you're probably going to feel OK that they didn't hack the red light. Anything's possible, of course, but it becomes a crime like any other.

the LED/shutter sound aren't about 'preventing it from happening', and your binary logic here is pretty lazy.

The point is that a red LED or shutter sound make it obvious to other people that photography is happening, in the most common cases. Someone who wants to surreptitiously photograph people without their permission will always do it, yes, but that doesn't mean the solution is to 'help resisting people transition into' being photographed without their permission in any and every scenario.

If the common case (i.e. stock Google Glass) has a 'recording' LED or shutter sound, it becomes much easier to address situations where a well-meaning person violates someone's privacy without thinking about it. This will lead to proper etiquette and understanding being formed. The alternative, 'I can take video of you without your knowledge, get over it, the FUTURE' perspective is not going to win anyone over anytime soon. Especially vulnerable minorities.

You misinterpret what he means by 'preventing it from happening' -- he is referencing the unnotified recording of another person by one wearing Glass. Adding a red LED will not prevent people recording without others aware as a red LED is something terribly easy to kill.

Nobody's goal here is to prevent recording without notification. It's impossible to prevent it, anyone who's used a digital camera since they were invented knows this. Stop misdirecting the conversation around Glass with moronic strawman arguments. The original article did not ask for a mechanism for preventing unnotified recording; it asked for a light to notify people you're recording them. This is a fundamentally different proposition that solves a different problem.

Whoa, relax. The original commenter's point was that you're adding in something that will give a false sense of security to others instead of trying to reorient the conversation towards having an always-on regards to other people and recording.

What does the red light solve, if not telling others that the glass-wearer is recording?

Preventing it from happening is not an option. What would you do?

The same thing you do in any other situation where someone is behaving in a socially unacceptable way:

1. Legislate against that behaviour.

2. Punish those who do it anyway.

You can't stop it completely, but if for example the penalty for recording in public without everyone's consent were crushing your shiny new toy right in front of you the first time, fining you a month's salary the second time, and throwing you in jail for a month the third time, I think you'd find very few people really felt that using always-on recording technology was so valuable they couldn't do without it.

As for your analogy with copyright infringement, well, people used to say that driving while talking on a mobile or smoking in a crowded bar were too ingrained in society and no-one would be able to stop them. It turns out they were wrong, and the people who want to do those things at the expense of others are a small minority, and most of them give up and find other things to do instead when you threaten them with being arrested. The others, you try to catch and actually arrest.

As has been said many times before, just because we can do something, that doesn't mean we should. I could do all kinds of things right now that would hurt people in all kinds of ways, and nothing would physically stop me, and many of those things probably aren't even illegal. I still don't do them, because hurting people is a scummy thing to do.