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Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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