First arrest captured on Google Glass points to a “Little Brother” future | Hacker News Reader

First arrest captured on Google Glass points to a “Little Brother” future

arstechnica.com

162 pointsulysses136 comments

This sort of reminds me of how Russia and its dash cams have sort of changed how people (such as myself) perceive the act of driving. In the past, dash cams were largely limited to police officers on patrol, but now anyone can put one in their car for $40 and have it set to record as soon as the ignition is turned.

Some dash cam videos that have made the news recently include the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_ufuY5W7K0 (plane crash in Afghanistan)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHqFDsKq5DA (plane crash somewhere in Russia)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y66OHiB_p4I (meteor in Russia)

I think that Google Glass will lead to more videos like the one linked and the ones I included. Perhaps we'll eventually have just news dominated by reports by a single individual as opposed to a reporter and a camera man.

Yes. Event detection->Video sourcing via location information->Aggregation and distribution.

All of that can be automated to occur very quickly.

>Video sourcing via location information->Aggregation and distribution.

Checkout my project at www.ommageo.com (beta) in this space

One part that's currently missing from Google Glass and that sets it apart from the dashcam example is the ability to continuously record on a circular buffer, mostly due to constraints in battery life. But once that's possible I would expect many interesting videos to start hitting the internet, as you could essentially save the last x minutes of video to file.

A good example of this is the video of the SFO crash landing. It was somewhat unlikely and miraculous that someone just happened to be filming at that time, but in the future there might be tens or hundreds of videos from all the eye witnesses. And not just for this event but any other.

It's interesting to think about other repercussions of such technology. From the innocent (such as a large increase in the amount of embarrassing videos on YouTube) to important (such as reconstructing a crime event (think boston bombing)) or scary (blackmail?).

This comment just made me realize how right on the original vision of justin.tv was. It was probably 10 years ahead of its time. Maybe PG is a genius at finding founders who see the future.

Or maybe they just looked at the work of Steve Mann, who was doing realtime broadcasting of a wearable camera to the web in '94.

Technologically it's really only a matter of time before storage gets to a point where keeping months of coninuous 1080p video isn't a big deal, it'll fit on a square cm and cost a pittance.

But that's not the scary part.

The scary part comes later, due to massive increases in computing power. Imagine a world where, say, computers with terabytes of RAM and thousands of high performance cores are run of the mill server systems. And then it's not just a matter of people storing data but analyzing it, and collating it, deeper than we think is even remotely conceivable today.

Face recognition, voice recognition, biometrics, kinematics, writing style, and of course metadata will make public an astounding amount of information. A video of a random group of strangers will be trivial to index and identify every individual through the above techniques. A shockingly detailed account of everyone's lives, where they've been, who they've met, what they've purchased, and so on will be determinable using, eventually, relatively little cost in computing power.

Here's an example, let's say there are only a handful of pictures or videos from inside your apartment, imagine if every book on your shelf, every knick knack, every belonging was automatically identified and indexed. It's a world that rapidly spins away from any sort of world we're comfortable or familiar with but we probably won't figure out how to deal with it until well after we've been subjected to the worst abuses and invasions of privacy.

Time to bust out the scramble suits...

Then again, computing power and data-requirements both expand at a high rate together, when there are a gazillion cores and terabytes of RAM available for sneaky intelligence business, there will be 4k (or even higher, sky's the limit (and the size of the photon, obviously.) Today various intelligence agencies like the NSA as we now know collect insane amounts of data on the population, but they're unable to effectively sift through it all. When Google Glass gets refined, minimalized and meets fashion, we'll see an impossible amount of increase in data.

This is my bright point in the future as far as surveillance goes, for instance dashcams in Russia became a neccessity for the individual citizen to remain safe in face of the law, the results we all know where meteor strikes are documented better than ever, where law officials have to take care what they do, where car accidents are right down to the facts on the mem chip, etc.

GGlass can become the same thing on an even more personal level, the truth becomes more easily available when any one person with the ability to press a button can document an event for the world to see.

It doesn't require processing all data though, just enough of it.

Consider something simple like identification. How do you automatically identify someone from video? Face recognition is the go to method now, and it will be used in the future as well, but it will be more capable, of course. But that's only one out of many techniques that are possible, especially with massive amounts of computing power and storage available. Once you've identified someone once in video you can match up other data, such as kinematics and biometrics. How tall you are, how much you weigh, what your overall shape is, your hair color and style, etc. Your typical routines and hangout places. Where you buy coffee, where you watch movies, where you shop. Also, the way you hold yourself, how you walk and stand. Your friends can recognize you without seeing your face, often using these sorts of clues, but there's no reason computers can't use the same techniques. Meanwhile, with enough data computers can catalog your wardrobe. With that sort of information available, and it's really not an enormous amount of data per person, it'll be possible to automatically identify people even without their faces visible, even if they're wearing new clothes and have recently changed their hair styles, and then that info will be cataloged.

And again, that's just square one. It'll be almost trivial to keep track of where everyone is, what they are doing, and with whom on a time scale of at least every day.

Then there are the scary things. Videos of crowds at protests and rallies can and will be automatically indexed to identify every single participant, even if they're covering their faces. And that's the least imaginative thing that will be possible with such a torrent of data and analysis.

> Face recognition, voice recognition, biometrics, kinematics, writing style, and of course metadata will make public an astounding amount of information. A video of a random group of strangers will be trivial to index and identify every individual through the above techniques. A shockingly detailed account of everyone's lives, where they've been, who they've met, what they've purchased, and so on will be determinable using, eventually, relatively little cost in computing power.

Indeed. I can't imagine it will be many years before we see a similar video, except now with a Terminator-style overlay (that the wearer also sees in real time) indicating the name, age, occupation, marital status, etc. of every person. I've never been afraid of technology before, but this really doesn't seem to me like a future society I'd like to live in. "Oh look, that girl over there just got dumped according to Facebook." "Haha, that guy that dresses like a bigshot really flips burger for a living!" "That family over there is from France." ... and so forth.

Others in this thread have said that it's just a gradual line of change from everybody carrying cellphones with cameras and an Internet connection. I sort of disagree. Even after smartphones became ubiquitous, it's not socially acceptable to obviously point it at strangers. Pointing your glasses in their general direction is, though.

I wonder if I'm just going through the same line of thought my parents did when they realized the Internet was here to stay in every part of life.

On the other hand, there's always masks :-)

Technology was supposed to make our lives easier and allow us to work less. Instead it gave us new ways to judge people.

... and made our lives easier and allowed us to work less.

People will start wearing sun glasses..

...at night.

I believe dash cams are illegal in most/(some?) of Europe. Not specifically targeted by law, just not allowed as it is now. And they can't be used as an evidence (in court) either.

If this counts as "Little Brother", then I would argue that we've already reached that point. A year or two ago, I recall seeing many stories of outrage that police were confiscating phones after people filmed arrests. Fights like this get filmed all the time in high schools.

Granted, people don't recognize Glass as a film device at the moment, but I'm sure there was a short time where people didn't recognize phones as filming devices either. Once they recognize Glass too, is there any difference?

I'm not trying to say that Glass doesn't raise privacy issues, but I think this is a poor/insignificant example.

Once it gets to the point where data is being uploaded live, it won't matter if the physical device gets confiscated.

This is already possible with phone cams. Apps like QIK and Livestream, even the ACLU has their own. May or may not be possible with the severely underpowered system that's in the dev edition of glass, but that'll only be refined over time :)

The only thing keeping me from using this is that video normally includes audio (and,indeed, it's somewhat important for context), but I'm not sure whether California's wiretapping laws (or some other?) would get me in hot water if I recorded someone else's conversation. I'm pretty sure this is a both-sides-must-consent state for audio recording, and I'd not want to have to go to court to claim that things said in public (e.g., when an officer of the law is detaining you, or someone else) aren't private.

If it's in a public place where there's no particular expectation of privacy - in particular, if you are not party to the conversation but can clearly hear it and are visible to the parties talking - it doesn't seem like it would run afoul of recording laws.

The statute applies to "confidential communications" -- i.e., conversations in which one of the parties has an objectively reasonable expectation that no one is listening in or overhearing the conversation.

http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/california-recording-law

Note that this is the same justification the authorities use for actions like warrantless GPS tracking of cars or recording of phone call meta-data.

That you have no expectation of privacy about where your car moves because someone could just follow you around. When dashcam videos are all instantly uploaded to youtube, and you can run license-plate recognition on the entire database to track someones's car around, then we might start getting concerned. And while I care a little about the FBI's ability to constantly track my car for reasons of principle, my concerns get a lot more practical when my boss is tracking my car to make sure I'm really sick or not going on job interviews.

I don't disagree that it's potentially a problem, I'm just saying that as someone recording in a public place you're unlikely to be running afoul of wiretap laws.

We should be far less concerned about personal cameras (wearable and/or phones) than fixed security cameras, anyway. We're probably on a fixed CCTV 100X as often as we're being recorded by personally-carried cameras. Worry about Glass and other such devices is just a red herring.

While that does make sense, there was a period of time over the last few years where people were getting charged with violating wiretapping laws in two-party consent states for recording police, who did not consent: http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras/sin...

That said, my understanding (IANAL) is that "ACLU vs. Alvarez" upheld that, in legal terms, this is bullshit: http://www.aclu-il.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Alvarez_ru...

Get RobotsAnywhere from us ( mkb@robots-everywhere.com ) it doesn't have audio and saves single frames for that reason, it's also optimized for low bandwidth.

And you can drive a robot with it.

People were using a few different live streaming services during the occupy wall st events.

Certainly that's true, but the bulk of Glass is not the end of the technology. It's an open question on what the popularity will be when a Glass like device is capable of being completely incognito, i.e. in a normal pair of sunglasses.

Widespread sousveillance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance) is the path to the right kind of future!

I don't want my snoopy neighbors to be photographing me at every time of the day. I am not doing anything to deserve that level of suspicion. Not even criminals deserve this level of surveillance, it is abhorrent nonsense out of 1984. And we accept it just because we change the 'sur' to 'sous' on the grounds that the government is not allowed to do it?

Believe me, if constant personal surveillance in every moment and place becomes generally socially acceptable, there will be nothing to stop 'surveillance'.

There won't even need to be any surveillance; the gov't can just review the sousveillance footage.

Sure, but we'll see 'em when they do, and then we'll see 'em again when they try to act on the info they've gathered, etc.

We'll vote them out of office if they abuse their knowledge, because we'll know they've abused it.

I think my sarcasmeter just pegged.

I choose to believe the US system of checks and balances isn't broken.

It may not be broken but it definitely has been co-opted.

>There won't even need to be any surveillance; the gov't can just review the sousveillance footage.

“If the NSA is big brother, Glassholes are the new little brother.”

`Godwin's Law' Reductio ad Hitlerum:

"Our NSA-Youth Corps wears Glass, shouldn't you?"(tm)

Will "the government" exist in 100 years?

Can you elaborate on "abhorrent nonsense out of 1984" with a rational argument?

Cheap easily accessible recording devices have powered most civil interest in abuses of police power, the identification and capture of domestic terrorists and a few full out popular revolutions against corrupt government regimes.

The constant refrain of "oh it's 1984" is completely at odds to the empowerment of the public that readily available and pervasive recording devices have given us - the cellphone camera has done more to prevent tyranny then that book ever will.

You're already watched in the vast majority of public spaces you go to. However, you don't have direct access to this kind of footage for personal defense -- which just increases the susceptibility of our surveyors to corruption, abuse or simply omission.

Moreover, I don't think your neighbors would be particularly interested in recording your life; what they see is already stored in their minds. Now in exceptional cases they _would_ be interested, such as spotting someone break into your house -- and also on their own defense, of course -- for example if you offended them.

In any case, the case for the right of personal sousveillance is vastly stronger than against, as I see it.

I think we should have the right to prevent Facebook-like companies from aggregating our friends' data about ourselves, that's the only problem I have with Glass. Ideally we'd be able to force a company to delete any recognisable image of ourselves that we haven't signed a release for. Especially when your friends and neighbours are going to screw up privacy settings (by Facebook's design) and share it with at least everyone they know.

Even though I will never be able to get this, I want this so much. People I know constantly over share and refuse to listen about how the information is being used, and I know I make it into their streams.

You don't, but your grandkids probably won't care.

Eventually you're going to elect priests and public officials (i.e. establishment authority figures) even though there are videos of them having sex and/or taking a shit. Because no one will care anymore.

I don't think I'm ready for that future, but there will be benefits as well as the obvious negatives.

I've been pondering this for some time - sousveillance is arguably better than surveillance, in that it potentially allows people to shine a light on many more troubling situations - and keep evidence - and to some extent it reduces the 'surveillance disparity' between police/law enforcement and everyday citizens. That said, there are a lot of caveats with the road we're on just now.

One of these is that Google is driving this forward as a single player, and - have no doubt - that's where they want to be. If we place all of our sousveillance content with one organization, then we place a lot of trust in that organization to keep it safe, not censor it against our wishes, and so forth.

I trust Google a lot more than many, many other companies, but ultimately it is still possible for it to be strong-armed and pressured into doing things behind the scenes which may or may not be to everyone's benefit - or more typically, are to a specific cause's benefit, or for pure business reasons.

For a truly open, transparent future we'd need some kind of distributed, reliable shared fabric into which sousveillance content could be stored - and also potentially analyzed if we want to make use of the additional benefits of image/video/audio recognition, tagging etc.

And that's when the challenges of bandwidth, latency, availability of technical expertise, infrastructure cost, etc all come into play, so I think at least in the near term we are still looking at placing our trust in one of a few providers.

PS: Also I'd add that sousveillance isn't a magical fix-all; if you have a recording of someone taking a swing at you with a weapon, that isn't evidence that you weren't spending the previous few hours tormenting them - there will be situations of selective editing and misrepresentation, just as there are in other forms of media.

Everybody nowadays is walking around with high quality cameras in their pockets that can be switched on within a few seconds. Look on youtube for tons of smartphone video of fights, crimes, arrests, etc. I still fail to see how Google Glass changes anything.

With glass, people do not know they are being filmed, unlike when a cellphone or camera are pointed.

Only because they don't know what Glass is yet; the same could be said for John Q. Public back when the first cell phone shipped with a camera.

Also, it's still possible to film covertly with a cell phone, whether it's rigging it into your clothing somehow, or simply holding it up and pretending to talk on it. Google wasn't even the first to incorporate a video recorder into eyeglasses...

True, this is just an incremental change in that direction, but a significant one I think.

Eventually devices like Glass will be too small to detect.

Right - and there are already much subtler devices like Memoto (http://memoto.com/) that have been created for the purpose of continuously logging photos. The obvious progression for Memoto, I'd think, is video.

Eventually? Although I've not tried them myself, a quick search of the internet pulls up numerous "spy" cameras built into all sorts of things, including eye glasses, that are virtually undetectable.

One example I found:

http://www.homesecuritystore.com/p-2319-dvr290-hidden-camera...

They do know they are being filmed (or will know once these devices become more common), as there is a red light that flashes on the glass when it is recording. However, that could easily change in the future too - with hidden cameras that constantly record everything becoming more common.

So if I put some paint over that light, no more red light while recording. I find the argument that a light will make our privacy ok not all that convincing.

You sure about that? I haven't tried it in-person, but this description in the "First Encounter" seems to directly contradict what you said:

http://blog.launch.co/blog/the-unbearable-wearable-google-gl...

How close do you need to be to see the flashing red light?

Not too hard to point a phone at someone and pretend to text.

The difference between:

    * Retrieve phone from pocket/purse/backpack
    * Unlock phone
    * Launch recording app
    * Start recording (ensuring phone is in the right orientation)
    * Hold phone out in front of you in an uncomfortable way so you
      can both record and see what you're doing.

and:

    * Tap on temple or say "OK glass, record a video"
    * Look at what you want to record

The passivity and ease of access of Glass is its greatest asset, and precisely the reason it's a game changer.. Replace recording with looking up something online, same thing.

One feels contrived and annoying (the tech being in the way of what we want to do), the other smooth and natural (the tech just simply doing what we want).

The first list is missing one bullet (at the bottom):

* Possibly get arrested

If that bullet exists in the first list, it'll eventually exist in the second. Given enough time.

But there's another barrier for arrest, you can't tell if it's recording (or if there's a light, people will hack it/cover it). If 8 people around have glass, it'd be fairly difficult to notice all of them, check for the recordings, and take them.

I know miniature cameras exist right now but since they only function as a camera, there's not too much utility to always having one around. Glass though has a camera but that's not it's main selling point.

I don't think the significance of this can be understated. Two reasons:

One, I think the act of pulling something off of someone's face is a lot different from pulling something out of someone's hand. It's subtle on the surface, but crossing that kind of social boundary on a regular enough basis could be exactly the tipping point that turns public opinion against law enforcement on a broad scale.

Two, as the technology and form factor mature, it'll simply be harder to tell whether something is/contains a camera or not.

Have they come out with the prescription lenses version of Google Glass yet?

* Or possibility to get shot because you were pulling something out of your pocket.

Do you mean there are laws (in the US) about filming something in public, or just risk an arbitrary arrest for annoying a cop? I remember reading a story about a guy who installed a software to record from the webcam of the computers in an apple store and I think the legality of it was unclear because it was in a public place or something. (although he did end up with tons of troubles)

He means risking arrest for annoying a cop. It happens very frequently. When the victim sues, the decision always goes in the victim's favor. Sometimes with large cash rewards.

Police officers are abysmally trained and are effectively immune from the law, so expect to see abuses like this continue.

See this article, and the links in it, for some examples: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/jury-says-journal...

Considering voice activation's problems I somewhat doubt that it's easier to turn on video on glass than on a phone.

On the Glass device, there is a small button around the user's temple. Simply holding it down for <1 second will begin recording.

It's a lot easier to turn on video on Glass.

When you press and hold the button down it records the basic 10 second video with an automatic end at ten seconds.

You have to tap the button a second time within the 10 seconds to record an extended video.

In the extended recording, you have to hit the button a final time to stop the video.

It's >1 second.

I can start recording with my iPhone (assuming it was previously in video mode) faster than I can start recording with my Glass.

And there isn't really any technical reason why Glass (or successor technologies) couldn't just record constantly, eg. continually overwriting a buffer of the last 60 minutes, the same way dashboard cams do. If you happen to see something interesting, just look at it, and then afterwards instruct Glass not to delete it.

Gabe of Penny Arcade notes that the Glass gets really hot if you leave it recording constantly. So, that's one reason. Battery life would be another.

As of today, yeah it'd eat your battery alive. However, unlike something that spins a motor or shines a light the essential work involved may be low enough that even without advancements in battery technology it may become feasible or even trivial.

There are already dedicated personal video recording devices that can do this. When you're just recording video (and not doing any other functions) it's easier to extend battery life, etc.

http://www.amazon.com/Looxcie-Wearable-Bluetooth-Camcorder-C...

Wait, how do you wear that? Does it go over ear or something?

Of course, there are cheaper and more discrete solutions, like this one [1], the one you linked is probably even more conspicuous than Glass, and half-VGA resolution is pretty bad. I use the linked one as cheap motocycle cam, and it is hard to aim properly with no viewfinder, but what you can expect for about $ 10.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj26JjSiazQ (I hope it's the right video. Corporate firewall won't let me go on youtube)

I don't know if it's more conspicuous than glass - it's very similar to a lot of bluetooth headsets. And it's been out on the market for a long time with hardly any controversy.

There's lots of devices like this - I also remember some systems that cops wear that just clips onto the front of your shirt and looks kind of like a pager. Glass isn't particularly novel in this regard (except for maybe its connectivity via wifi).

* Acutally it's hit home button

* Swipe up for camera

* Hit record, boom done

Bet ya I could do it faster than talking to google glass.

I think there needs to be showdown of who can get the camera out faster.

I just hold down the dedicated camera button until it starts taking video. Sometimes you can see the edge of my pocket at the start of the video. One day, phone manufactures will start producing useful hardware again.

Dedicated camera button is one of the best decisions Microsft ever made.

> I think there needs to be showdown of who can get the camera out faster.

Making a quick pull of ... something ... out of your pocket around police officers does not strike me as a good idea.

Wait, people keep their phones in their pocket instead of their hand all the time? mind = blown

Bet ya if your phone was locked down in the typical corporate IT security way (pattern lock is out, need to use a numeric pin, it needs to be at least N digits long, entered correctly before you can do squat with the phone, gods help you if you screw it up too many times), you couldn't.

There's also startup time once you've launched the app. Even on a modern iPhone, that's a second or two before the shutter iris goes away and presents you with the viewfinder screen.

The Glass demos I've seen make it instantaneous.

http://xkcd.com/1235/

"I still fail to see how Google Glass changes anything."

If, after so many discussions and articles and demos and videos, you can maintain this viewpoint, you may just have to accept that you lack both imagination and foresight.

Or perhaps simply has a more mature view than Silly-Valley's Google-hype "OMG GLASS WTF LOL GIMMEGIMME CATFIGHT PAW DOG LASTCATSTANDING!@#!@#?"

Your theoretical mature view would hopefully be able to better account for the privacy concerns this gizmo raises.

The only thing the successful widespread adoption of glass would achieve is the wholesale and largely irrevocable invasion of social space with corporatized audio and video surveillance for the totalitarian state apparatus, thinly masked as techno-fashion. Sure, it might have some other uses, but other than removing the need to hold a screen this is the only thing it really achieves in terms of recording or data access that's fundamentally different from present era devices.

I'd agree with your statement--however, limiting the scope to only be "recording or data access" rather misses the point.

The desktop computer from a "processing or data access" standpoint was not very different from the mainframes or minicomputers at the time--indeed probably much stunted!--but the changes it caused were massive outside of that limited scope.

The common argument of "Google Glass is no different a surveillance device than a modern smart phone" is so troublesome precisely because it is accurate without having explanatory power--there are confounding features to Glass that go beyond that simple comparison.

The desktop computing revolution was largely a cost-driven fan-out of existing computing paradigms on a cheaper/smaller scale. Glass is not cheaper than mobile phones ... hence my suggestion that it's only really the display that's different from a functional perspective. The danger of omnipresent wearable video recorders vs. privacy are quite a lot more weighty than the as yet unproven use cases for such a display. Society should encourage a public discussion on the value of privacy and proceed in this direction only with extreme caution. Profit-driven alliances with totalitarian governments are a modern historical fact: https://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/8660186

The common argument of "Google Glass is no different a surveillance device than a modern smart phone" really is not accurate, it is a deliberate ignorance and a misrepresentation.

There's nothing confounding about glass that makes it LESS of a surveillance device than a smart phone, certainly there's plenty that makes it more so. What do you find accurate about the argument?

How much time do you spend being recorded naked on a smart phone in your bedroom? None I bet. I can envisage google glass, or 'google contacts' resulting in everything being recorded if you extrapolate, with no expectation of privacy.

Already in technology companies, employees may be asked to leave their phones outside, will those companies be more keen or less keen to have 'google glass' left behind? More, I would bet.

The argument is accurate in so far as the Glass has the same camera and network and processing capabilities--what is ignored is everything else. I rather suspect you and I are on the same side here.

We're on the same side, but I think you're giving the argument too much credit, it's like calling a sphere a circle. You're probably going to have to take a harder stance to convince people.

You and I both know that a camera is different to ubiquitous cameras, and that when and where those cameras are directed and recording are important. Most important of all given those first two distinctions, is who controls and owns the footage. The implications of the footage ending up on a computer not belonging to the recorder and recorded are profound. How will the law react? Mandatory recording for the typically sensitive professions? Will that then extend out in all directions? Will Joe Public be charged with destroying evidence: e.g. shop owners being sued for compensation, who destroy their CCTV footage to cover up?

Think further back. Amount of video produced prior to digital cameras. Increased amount produced with mobile phones. Soon to be increased amount produced with glasses. Each new form factor increased the availability (always have phone) and ease of shooting video resulting in a boom in the amount of video being produced over the prior form factor.

David Brin has been predicting/talking about this for over a decade now. Sadly a lot of people are only familiar with his Sci-Fi work, his non-fiction work is equally interesting.

http://www.davidbrin.com/transparency.html

You know, seeing this video of google glass is a crowd... We thought iphone thefts were bad? Once people realize the value of google glass, whats to stop a criminal from snatching those off the user's face? An iphone at least has the protection of your pocket. Snatch and grabbing a pair of $1500 google glasses is going to become a major problem.

It'd be quite easy for Google to lock these down. For example, don't allow a new account to be used on the device until the previous account has been deactivated by the owner. If you don't have the owner's password, it's worthless.

In short: make a proper anti-theft system and publicize it loudly. Word will get around, and there will be few thefts.

You don't think there would be a way to "jailbreak" the Glass and get around a software lockdown?

It hasn't worked out too well with phones, so I doubt it will be different for glass.

As far as i know the glasses are just one part, and there's a fairly bulky computer you'll have to have in your pocket, connected via bluetooth or similar.

You should double-check that.

It piggy-backs off of your phone's data connection or wifi - there's no cell radio on it. Unless you're around open hotspots all the time, having a smartphone phone is going to be required.

I'd hardly call modern smartphones "bulky" though..

Thanks for the clarification. :)

I feel like I need to keep pointing this out because it keeps getting used in discussions, but the consumer edition of Glass is not going to be $1500.

the cost is so high probably because it is not ready to be released to the general public.

What are the current laws regarding filming people without their consent in the US & other countries?

Thinking about:

- public vs. private space

- minors

We have some very specific laws on these things here in Japan, which would (should?) extend to cell phones & camcorders. Google Glass is just one more recording device

It's my understanding that privacy issues and certain laws have greatly influenced the artificial shutter sounds in digital cameras. Certainly a can of worms is inevitably being opened.

Unfortunately these laws are made for vintage cameras, which require (expensive) film. These cameras of yonder years were large bulky devices with exactly one purpose. So you knew if you were being filmed. By contrast already with an iPhone, you do not know if you are filmed, or if the guy with the phone is just looking at a map. It gets worse with Google glass, with them it is easy to film just everything, and decide later if you want to store the video. ( And to make matters worse, there are perfectly legitimate non privacy invading uses for a Google glass camera, like an AR route planner.) So I think that these laws are not much more useful than anti piracy laws.

The bad thing about glass is that you can't tell if you are recording or not. You can't just go and challenge every person at the beach wearing glass, and when it becomes popular, it will be abused.

I thought there was a light on the outside of the view prism when recording was happening?

Come on, we're hackers! A pesky light is asking to be turned off all the time.

You think the average Glass user will disassemble the device (which teardowns would seem to indicate is a one way operation) just for the purposes of disabling the recording light so they could record on the sly?

Aye, we're hackers, who are a minority of people.

I was thinking less about being able to stop them at the time of recording, and more about the legal use of what they've recorded.

For example,

-- if they poke their head into your house uninvited & record you breaking a law - that might not be permitted as evidence.

-- if there are laws against recording individuals in certain circumstances, and they do & post to YouTube, you can sue them for damages in some places

My point being, Yes, there are more cameras everywhere, but that shouldn't really matter as long as there are laws in place regarding recording people. It is no different from when they walked around with camcorders, as long as the law stands up for individual rights of privacy.

Having said it that way... oh, crap :-(

Yeah, my neighborhood dive bar outright banned Google Glass for this reason (OK, and also as a publicity stunt): http://the5pointcafe.com/google-glasses-banned/

This reminds me clearly of "A Scanner Darkly." That is Phillip K. Dick's prophetic novel where a surveillance grid consisting of half of the population, the scanners, spies on everyone else.

"Whatever it is that's watching, it's not human, unlike little dark eyed Donna. It doesn't ever blink. What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. I'll only wind up dead this way, knowing very little, and getting that little fragment wrong too."

I think it just a matter of time we see the first movie of a fist being planted on the face of a glass wearer. Agressive people who notice that the are being recorded often direct their anger to the person with the camera.

I wonder if the police will be more paranoid about witnesses videoing them doing their job in the future?

Well, how do you like nothing to hide, nothing to fear now?

Actually, if Google Glass catches on, we would all become knowing video subjects. I'm not sure what the author is complaining about. Right now I can buy a pinhole camera and start recording people and they would genuinely not know it's happening. If I had Glass, people would at least know.

The battery on Glass works for about 1.4 hours, probably shorter if you were continuously recording.

Yesterday I was watching helplessly innocent person getting beaten up by some goon. I could have easily recorded a video and uploaded some where. Is there any other alternatives like a tiny camera I could attach to my glasses(not Google glass)?.

Oh yeah, this couldn't have possibly been captured with one of the millions of cell phones capable of recording in HD. We're all doomed now that they stuck it on a pair of glasses.

Sure, and the iPod won't change anything. People can already use their walkman to play tapes wherever they want. Why would they need an iPod?

People don't walk around with their phones out in the air recording everything because it isn't convenient. The more widespread this gets and the ease with which we are able to store every second of video has very obvious privacy implications.

Little brother? What a farce. Let's be a bit more realistic here.

The hardware and software for truly synthesizing the vast quantity of video based data will not be either totally cheap or available to the general public for their benefit. More likely, it will be used to re-affirm and enforce the monopoly of power of the state (when outside) and/or corporations (when at work/school/play).

Surveillance breeds totalitarianism. Everpresent surveillance breeds total totalitarianism.

Noam Chomsky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz1AImQ5jqA

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6005249 and nobody cared about it.

If nothing else, this video confirms what other reality cop shows have long proven: The sure-fire way to avoid arrest is to never take off your shirt :)

Little brother or big brother? If this data is captured by the NSA, then Google Glass is an erosion of civil liberty.

I've never seen a clearer demonstration of why you shouldn't say a word to the police if you ever come in contact with them. Those kids unwittingly admitted to crimes when explaining to the police what happened, and were arrested on the basis of things they said. If they had just shut up and asked if they were under or arrest or if they could leave, they all would have walked away.

That's a very cynical view, isn't it ? That was a correct arrest.

Sure if you regularly commit crimes, never cooperate any more than the law requires with anyone, least of all the police or anyone in official function, as any criminal lawyer will tell you a million times. IANAL, but that's probably good advice.

Relevant : Don't Talk to Police (especially if you're innocent) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

Everybody in the United States needs to watch this video. Thank you for posting it.

Sure. Problem is when things are crimes but are not wrong. If the guy in the linked "don't talk to police" video is right, everyone in the US is commiting felony every day. But are they doing something wrong?

Yea a little brother future won't change these cases for most people. If everything is recorded you won't have to say anything to the police, you'll be arrested anyway.

silence is considered a commercial dishonor, and allows the other party to dictate the terms of the contract you're negotiating. Police are excellent contract negotiators ("you are under arrest" is a contract offer, legally), and are trained that if you're not in acceptance with their offers/orders, they pretty much get to do whatever they want to/with you.

Seems the Supreme Court disagrees with your opinion as well [1].

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/17/supreme-court-silen...

> ("you are under arrest" is a contract offer, legally),

Could you, uh, expand on this?

This looks like some http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemen_on_the_land which is a fringe belief in how the law operates.

First of all, those guys are terrorists. That's extraordinarily rude to lump me in with them.

Second, Your comment is an ad-hominem [1], unless you can provide evidence that I believe what they believe.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

I am not saying you are an adherent to this movement, but to my uninitiated eyes, it looks like some thing I have seen said or written by FOTLer, namely the reference to contract, etc, but I agree this was bad form to infer that you were a supporter of all or any idiosyncrasies of these groups.

I'd love to in private. saying things in public seems to bring out the ad-hominem brigade. I would suggest Brian Blum's "Contracts: Examples and Explanations" [1] as a good first step, and start applying the knowledge therein to your local acts/statutes regarding law enforcement. Further, I would advise looking up the rules of conduct for your local BAR, so you understand the motives behind "Don't Talk to Cops".

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Contracts-Examples-Explanations-Series...

The publicity of Google Glass must be what is causing this uproar right? I am assuming this because video camera glasses have been around for 15-20 years.

There have been HD ones which look much less conspicuous than Google Glass ones for at least 5-6 years. They are currently under $200 (I don't own any, I just have seen them here and there and looked it up).

I think it is just a matter of time before we see

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