

Creepier By The Minute: Google Glass Will Identify People By Clothing Choices - fcukdigg
http://www.macgasm.net/2013/03/08/creepier-the-minute-google-glass-will-identify-people-clothing-choices/

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beatpanda
Who's working on technology like this, and why? And why isn't it self-
evidently bad to the people working on it?

I think a code of professional ethics around software engineering is long past
due. Journalists started doing this in the 20s[1] after a series of events,
including the Spanish-American war, made the awful potential of ethical lapses
in journalism obvious to everyone.[2]

We can't continue to maintain the reflexive belief that technology is neutral
and is only dangerous depending on how it's used. At some point people have to
be willing to refuse to work on certain things because of the obvious social
implications those things would have.

I don't know how anybody could be working on things like lethal drones, facial
recognition, locked bootloaders, deep packet inspection, or other freedom-
reducing technology without considering the consequences of their work.

And I recognize that not everybody thinks the technologies I mentioned above
are categorically wrong, but it'd be cool to start a conversation to draw
lines about what _is_.

1\. <http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp> 2\. Spare me, I know the profession
isn't perfect and ethical lapses still abound, but at least we have some way
of knowing when an ethical standard has been broken.

~~~
eloisius
What's wrong with facial recognition? It has numerous positive uses.
Automatically annotating family photo albums being one, trivial example.

Even "lethal" drones--it's not like there's one software developer who makes
LethalDrone OS. There are many components to it that have very positive
possibilities, for example auto stabilizing flight controls, which can and
will end up being used in search and rescue drones.

~~~
beatpanda
And you're telling me at no point did any software engineer write the code
that allows the pilot to fire a gun, or do calculations to account for the
impact of "kickback" from firing a projectile on a drone's flight path, or...

~~~
eloisius
Sure, they probably did and I'm not trying to argue that it's impossible to
use technology for evil. In fact, I'm someone who has protested and left a
project because of the ethical implications it posed.

My position, and the only point I'm trying to make is that these technologies
aren't themselves sinister. It's their uses that we need to cast light on.

Saying that no one really "needs" facial recognition or photo tagging is
obvious. For that matter, no one needs an iPhone, or a computer, or the
internet, or books. But, it does open up new possibilities to have those
technologies to work for us. Before now, there's no practical way you could
query your family photo album for all photos of aunt Beulah from 1994-1998. Is
it needed? No. But neither is having any recollection of your relatives.

I'd be interested in seeing what kind of criteria you can come up with for
dichotomizing good and bad technology purely on technical grounds. That is,
without taking into account usage and motivations for usage. I mean that
sincerely and not jest.

I do agree with you that there should be some sort of "guild ethics" we adhere
to, but not that we should ostracize certain technologies. We should refuse to
work on certain projects or for certain organizations when we know they will
be used for wrong. Firewall technology? Good. Great Firewall of China? Bad.

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aviraldg
I don't think this is creepy at all - in fact, this is how human vision works.
Besides, the fact that the article's on a website called "Macgasm" doesn't
lend much credence to the opinions expressed in it.

~~~
beatpanda
When I notice a stranger wearing a certain brand of shirt I don't walk up to
them and start asking them if they want to buy an array of similar shirts from
me and whip out a credit card reader. In what way is this "how human vision
works"?

~~~
aviraldg
Google has explicitly stated that they do not intend to, and will not use
Glass for advertising. This feature is similar to "Find My Friends" and is
clearly opt-in (as it requires prior training) -- have you even read the
article?

~~~
Samuel_Michon
_"Google has explicitly stated that they do not intend to, and will not use
Glass for advertising."_

If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. Google makes its money
with advertising. Its products exist in order to gather information about you
and your environment, so that it can more effectively manipulate you to buy
its clients' products, services or ideas.

Glass is linked to your Google account. The device has GPS, a camera and a
microphone. Everything you capture, send and share goes through Google and
will be of great interest to them.

EDIT: I searched for a Google statement, the only one I could find is from
last year, when the Google Glass lead said _"there are no plans to display
advertisements through Glass “at the moment."_

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qompiler
This is how people react to being recorded
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDumyGJdLrU>

Good luck Google!

~~~
shurcooL
Google Glass has the advantage that you can't tell if it's recording. "Don't
worry, I'm not recording a video," they'll say. You can't accuse people of
wearing glasses that may or may not record.

Similarly, when people use smartphones, they could be recording with the back
camera, but people are okay with that. They assume no recording takes place
simply because it's the more likely situation.

~~~
notatoad
You can't tell if it is recording, except for the red LED on the outside of
glass that lights up to tell you when it is recording.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Even with a red LED, many people will not recognize Google Glass as a video
capturing device. And if this product takes off, what's a person to do if he
doesn't want to be recorded and tracked? Imagine sitting in the subway or at
Starbucks around 10 Glass users.

~~~
shurcooL
Just for argument sake, what's the difference between being recorded on video
or being watched by someone's eyes?

If you don't do anything noteworthy, no one is gonna care to re-watch that
video.

How many hours of youtube videos already go unwatched today?

~~~
Samuel_Michon
I don't think video capture is the problem, it's bigger than that. Google
Glass has hardware for not only capturing video (like CCTV does), but also
audio, timecode information, and GPS coordinates. All that data combined,
linked to the user's Google account, that makes for a data mining wet dream.

I wasn't suggesting humans will be looking at all the footage like with CCTV
monitoring, Google has millions of servers to do that. It already analyzes the
content of each and every YouTube video -- it provides automatic closed
captioning, translations, it recognizes soundtrack and links to music stores,
it displays ads depending on the video content, etc etc.

~~~
shurcooL
All right, I hear you. If the concern is that there will be automated
algorithms looking through the video/GPS/etc. data, that is way more plausible
of a concern.

So let's suppose the best case scenario for Google. Suppose they have all the
access to 24/7 video, GPS data, facial tracking, etc. basically as much
information as can potentially be gathered. And suppose they have all the
computational power needed to process it in any realistic way they desire.

Can you suggest in what ways that might be bad for me? So perhaps Google can
target me with the most relevant ads out of all ads. Is that a bad thing? I
wouldn't mind seeing relevant ads rather than irrelevant ones anyway.

But what other hypothetical problems could come out of this?

I can imagine if I were a criminal and tried to hide something from others,
then this would be a concern. But suppose I don't have much to hide, only
personal private stuff (which, if exposed, wouldn't be much different from any
other person's personal private stuff).

I'm interested in hearing what people have to say about this.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Google controls much of what web users see. Not only through its general
search engine, also through YouTube, Google News, Blogger, and its many other
sites. Google decides which results are shown and in which order. They have
the power to change public opinion, one person at a time, without anyone
noticing it's happening. The more information they know about you, the easier
it is for them to manipulate you.

"The problem with social search and personal results is that it biases the
results based on the perspective of your friends. If I had a lot of friends
who worked for Chrysler and I asked them to name the best car on the road,
chances are they’d pick a Chrysler car. But if I asked the general public, I’d
probably get a different response. It’s like that old joke Democrats use to
tell after the 1972 election, ” I don’t know how Richard Nixon got elected,
all my friends voted for George McGovern.” I’m sure many Republicans felt the
same way after the 2008 election." [1]

Oh, and "I have nothing to hide" is a well known fallacy. [2]

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2012/01/13/how-and-
wh...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2012/01/13/how-and-why-to-turn-
off-googles-personalized-search-results/)

[2] <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=i+have+nothing+to+hide>

~~~
shurcooL
Fair enough, those are some valid points.

But if Google does try to manipulate people in significant ways without them
knowing, eventually it will get out and people's trust in Google will be
broken. That's why I don't think they'll risk doing it.

I mean, for instance, if they try to steal your credit card info by reading
your emails and steal money from you. If they pull something like that off, it
may work in short-term but definitely not in the long-term.

If they do, they can only get away with manipulating people once.

Of course they can manipulate in a smaller scale, in small and harmless ways
(by showing you more ads of competitor A vs. competitor B), but I think we all
accept that as it is already true today. By helping me find what I'm looking
for faster, they're manipulating me into saving time.

So if Google ever betrays my trust on a large scale, I will stop using them.

I tried reading the [2] article and despite its length, I couldn't find very
good arguments. I agree it's bad if the government knows more about you
without you knowing about them or what they know. But if everyone knows
everything, that's something I'm less concerned about.

If you really want to take a naked photo of me, I would ask "why would you
want to? Seriously?" Even if you put it online for everyone to see, chances
are no one will care. There's 6 billion other people who also have naked
bodies.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
I think we have different world views.

You seem to think that all criminals will be caught eventually, that the truth
will prevail (in a timely fashion), that information wants to be free, that
people are smart and that they care, and that they will revolt if they see
injustice. Perhaps you even think that governments and publicly traded
corporations are benign in nature.

I believe none of that (anymore).

I've organized and participated in dozens of protest rallies (for instance: I
joined 1 million protesters at a rally in Florence [1]), joined boycotts and
picket lines, was a member of a labor union, served in the city council,
organized political campaigns, wrote for activist magazines.

I still try to spread the message of equality, solidarity, human rights, and
pacifism, education, health, and safe foods. The sad truth is that most people
just don't care too much. And it's not just that they don't care about others
or society at large, they don't even care too much about their own basic
rights.

How else to explain that we still have the same broken financial system that
caused our current economic crisis (6 years running!). Why we still have the
PATRIOT act, the TSA, Guantanamo, the War on Drugs, various wiretapping laws,
etc. Why there's no mass outrage when a corporations lies and cheats, when
they leak your personal information, or when it refuses to pay its taxes.

I'm saddened by all of this, and I see it getting worse, not better. People
are signing their liberties away, bit by bit.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Social_Forum#First_ESF>

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ajross
I understand the sentiment, but not really the direction of it. Why is Google
Glass special here? We spend most of our public lives on CCTV already
(seriously, we really do). Why is it more upsetting that normal people have
access to this now instead of restaurants and stores and workplaces and public
venues and...

I'm not saying there's no privacy issue here. I'm saying this ship has sailed.
Why pick on Google and not your local convenience store?

~~~
nicholassmith
The big thing will be because CCTV is used (generally) to record video and
store it for X months until it's taped over by the store, Google on the other
hand is a datavore and will quite happily use the information in a completely
different way to CCTV.

~~~
ajross
CCTV is (and has been!) subject to virtually every abuse I can imagine Google
Glass being used for. Glass will "generally" not be used for privacy invasion
either, so I don't see how this logic works. (And the "won't be stored" point
seems silly given that you can trivially store a surveillance camera
record...). Obviously both can be abused. So why the one-sided outrage?

~~~
cloudout
I'm on CCTV all day, but my insurance company and employer don't use a mosaic
from that data in quoting rates or doing background checks. Glass or anything
similar, can change all of that.

The point is that valuable privacy silos are lost due to centralization by a
sophisticated party, that makes money by selling that privacy.

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eksith
"dug up by _New Scientist_ "

I'm sorry, is this the same New Scientist that suggested (arguably hyped) a
piece of technology that has no hope of working in the real world as a
plausible replacement for other modes of transportation? OK, just thought I'd
clear that up. Thanks for playing... next.

Note, for context:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive#New_Scientist_article>

This is no different than Google's "Try these too" feature when browsing for
images.

When you're digging into NS for panic fodder, you know you're desperate. You
know what else is creepy, follows us around, but we all take for granted?
Voice recognition.

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JonnieCache
Maybe in the future there will be communities set up in secluded locations
where stuff like this is banned.

I'd love to live in a small town where everything from mobile phones onwards
had to be left at the gate.

Of course you then have all the usual monocultural problems with gated
communities.

Like people have said, we're already all watched by CCTV anyway, especially
here, so if I really cared I'd be looking for that community already.

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yardie
As an expat living in France I just discovered this thing called "droit
d'image." I wonder how Google is going to reconcile their glasses with
people's right to privacy (or right to not be recognizably recorded) in
public. It's one thing to drive a few hundred Map cars around and scrub the
images. It will be something else when thousands of these are deployed and
everyone on the other side of the glass will need to have consent.

~~~
s_baby
Question is how is France going to reconcile being stuck in the 20th century?

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bsimpson
I feel like Google is losing a PR war around Glass, almost as badly as Adobe
lost its around Flash.

Glass will probably be adopted among adventure sports enthusiasts and niches
of skilled laborers, but if they want to see them become accepted in everyday
life, they need to do a better job assuaging people's concerns around privacy,
fashionability, and information addiction.

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abraininavat
macgasm.net, huh? They'll think it's creepy until Apple comes out with the
iGlasses five years later, and then it'll be revolutionary.

~~~
nicholassmith
You do understand the reason most people think it's creepy isn't necessarily
that it's recording, but that it's recording and sending video to a company
who's had so many run in's with privacy laws and wants to store as much
information on a person as possible? Right? Not everything is about Apple vs
Google.

~~~
abraininavat
Oh, I'm sorry, I should have attributed a higher level of journalistic
integrity to a site called _macgasm.net_

~~~
nicholassmith
Why's the name a problem? Aside from assuming it's a witty zing from an Apple
loving fanboy that Google's new product is doomed, I can think of quite a few
other sources that have been discussing Glass in terms of privacy in the same
terms. Not everyone who likes Apple products hates Google, and vice versa.

