This is a well-written piece, simultaneously praising and mocking Google Glass, with lots of memorable passages that made me smile or laugh. Let me quote just one of them:
"At one point as I climbed the stairs and approached the second floor, I saw a group of five people wearing Google Glass, all silently staring off into space. I couldn’t tell if they were wirelessly having a conversation through their eyeballs, or just bored by the presence of real humans in front of them."
The entire article is filled with similarly funny tidbits.
The thing with the people standing in a group staring blankly into space is a vision of the future; the reality nowadays is that they're holding something and looking down at it, doing roughly the same thing, but at least you can see clearly they're doing something.
Haven't seen Glass in this country yet, but I can imagine it's something as disturbing as people talking on hands-free sets to phantom people.
Seconded, all 3 episodes of Black Mirror are excellent stories about an imminent future that I'm not sure we really want to come about (except for the art project ;-).
"As I approached the line to the restroom, I took a deep sigh, thinking that I might find some respite from the hundreds of cameras strapped to people’s heads at the conference.
Yet when it was finally my turn to approach the rows of white urinals, my world came screeching to a halt. There they were, a handful of people wearing Google Glass, now standing next to me at their own urinals, peering their head from side to side, blinking or winking, as they relieved themselves."
Really? I thought it was rather silly, rhetorical to a fault. Just about every single one of those "memorable passages" had the alternate explanation of "they were doing this thing that people normally do, but they had Glass on".
There's some insight there, but the author missed it in getting so focused on zombies with glass, and people with cameras in the bathroom.
i do not believe it's a sign of anyone getting old or stopping new things, just that i think general social responsibility hasn't been catching up with emerging technologies and Googlers / early adopters could do well in publicly setting civil conduct examples, like taking the Glasses off when going to a public restroom, because people on the other end of recording devices have rights too in public spaces, if not legal, moral, ethical or merely civil common sense.
Case in point is that, for the first time i remember in the short 32 years of my life, a few weeks back i angrily got up from my metro seat and went sat dow as far as possible of a women sitted right in front of me, which was having a loud and unnecessary family discussion with her mother over the phone. She was:
* very notably by the look on peoples faces, not only causing distress to me but to the surrounding people (later afternoon rush hour)
* i could still hear her clearly 2 carriages away
* she publicly admitted during the conversation that having those kind of public conversations was uncivil but would not turn off the call, by her own will
Same goes for the latest tendency (around here at least) of people playing music loud on their phones, again, on public transportation.
There is civil freedom in public space of course, but there are different types of public spaces; closed quarters public transportation is very different from a town square and can only imagine how discomforting it will feel when i'm sat across someone wearing Google classes, wondering if i'm being recorded or not and most importantly, if i as a citizen complain about my privacy, will be recorded and shown up on Youtube in the next minute.
I will never understand why people yell into the phone on the metro. It's loud and talking louder doesn't, magically, reconnect the call.
I wouldn't call this a new trend. You have a number of youths in close proximity and 2 ear cups. It makes sense to use the speaker when more than 2 people want to hear. I used to do the same when I was young and mixtapes came on tape. Now, some idiot sitting alone and singing along I find annoying.
To offer a counterpoint, I thought it was a terribly written piece that is like "cliches about glass 101". Sure he had the conversation with the gentleman regarding winking...or maybe he read about that app and thought he would milk the "Google Glass dystopia" a little further (he had another ridiculous piece that made waves about Google Glass' "shine" wearing off, which is funny because I've read the same fear-mongering "they're all out to take pictures of my wiener" articles since the first hint of glass hit the tubes).
But with google glass, suddenly small discrete cameras will be everywhere! Not like today, where for a picture to be taken, a huge flash bulb has to explode, and the subject has to stand perfectly still for 10 minutes.
Not exactly discreet, anyone wearing the dorky glasses will be automatically labeled dork, and when they start winking at things they want to photograph it will just be super creepy.
It is just a matter of time (perhaps it has even happened, I don't follow Glass development much) until there is an app for jailbroken Glass devices that takes photos on an X second timer, no winking required. Whenever cameras and control logic are combined, intervalometer control isn't far behind.
Right, and it can be a smart intervalometer, with a little pop-up, "taking a picture in 5, 4,... (to skip taking a picture this time, tilt your head to the left)". Or, "you seem to still be sitting in that waiting room, skipping the timed picture as per your settings (tilt your head left to make an exception this time)." And "you will soon be arriving at the party on your calendar, increasing rate of auto-pictures and going into silent-running mode for two hours (tilt your head left to cancel)."
That's where we're headed, right? Smartphone cameras are so small already that they could be embedded in a pair of glasses without the dorky hardware hanging off the side. Make them sunglasses and no one can see you winking. Or just video your entire day then edit it later to extract creepy stills at your leisure.
Yes, it seems contrived to me, just like a blog post that the author references, written by himself, where he claims to have forgotten to pay a NYC cab driver because he was used to using Uber in SF. I think the winking thing is likely made up.
I'm a lot more worried about the privacy implications on a macro scale than I am about some random person getting a photo of my private bits.
The scary part of Glass-like devices taken to their logical conclusion for me isn't the little individual invasions of privacy (though those are also unfortunate), but the massive amount of real-time, real-world information collected in the aggregate.
If Glass-like devices are ever mainstream and controlled by one entity they create the easy possibility for an information mesh network that makes the one shown in "The Dark Knight" look absolutely quaint in comparison.
Ubiquitous video + audio + advanced feature detection destroys personal privacy when in public basically across the board, even if you yourself are not a participant.
eg:
EvilOverlord: "Glass-MCP-10k, where is George McBay?"
Glass-MCP-10k: "Scanning... Subject George McBay last seen entering residential building 10.5 seconds ago at 32.925924,-117.227812. Data based on facial recognition match with 96.75% confidence. 5 Gargoyles report seeing him within 1 mile radius of this location within the last 10 minutes."
I see the massive benefits of Glass-like-devices but I am also terribly concerned about the possible privacy implications. The potential for abuses could be staggering and given that I think it is a good idea to actually discuss the potential for problems and not just assume everything will be okay because the tech is "neat" (yes, it is!, but...).
"The scary part of Glass-like devices taken to their logical conclusion for me isn't the little individual invasions of privacy (though those are also unfortunate), but the massive amount of real-time, real-world information collected in the aggregate."
As opposed to the world without Google Glass, where people are constantly taking pictures in public and then uploading those pictures to Facebook? Honestly, singling out Google Glass is just a diversion, probably driven by Google's competitors who could not see how a head-mounted display could be useful.
There's a huge difference in terms of scale (assuming Glass becomes as mainstream as Google hopes it will be) and real-time accessibility of the information.
I am not a Google competitor. I use lots of Google products daily: gmail, nexus 4, ARM Chromebook, Go, I even have a Google TV box. And yet I still feel Glass has massive potential for privacy abuse on a scale never seen outside of maybe the NSA.
I am really not seeing how that is the case. There are so many photos being uploaded without Google Glass that it is possible to reconstruct a model of an entire town using those photographs. We already crossed the point of having large numbers of photographs taken without our permission uploaded corporations that do not care about any of us. The most dramatic change with Glass will not be the number of photos, but the applications that will be possible.
A while ago, a friend of mine sent me a picture he found on Facebook. It is me and my best friends from college at a party on the first night of our freshman year. We were all in the background of the picture -- it was completely inadvertent that we were photographed. That was nearly a decade ago, long before Google Glass was even a concept.
You are not going to see more privacy abuse resulting from Glass than you already see resulting from the combination of smartphones and online social networks. I do not want Facebook to build a profile about me, but guess what? My friends and family upload pictures of me to Facebook without asking permission, complete with metadata, which is added to a database that has my browsing habits (surreptitiously collected) and tidbits gathered from any mention of me by those same friends. What do you think Glass is going to add to this situation?
Furthermore, what solution would you propose? We as a society already managed to dig ourselves into a hole, where we have become dependent on large corporations to satisfy our computing needs; if you want a technical solution, you are going to have to trust Google to implement it. Legal solutions would likely further restrict our freedoms and worsen an already overly complicated legal code, restricting our ability to take pictures or used head-mounted displays and other wearable computers.
Another scenario, Google constantly runs a system looking at tweets, texts, and news stories. Anytime something happens that is criminal and significant enough for it to notice, it turns up the logging for all the Glass devices in the area.
If it were opt-in to send the resulting log to law enforcement, that would be totally fine. If not, things get worrisome. But what about in between? Say sending the log in is only done when the user clicks ok, but the police subpena Google for who all had their Glass devices in that area, so they can contact them directly. Gets into the area of withholding evidence and such.
This actually reminds me of my brief stint at Apple. I went out to the headquarters for a conference right around the time the first iPhone was released. That year all Apple employees were given free iPhones, so of course, everyone at the week long conference were glued to them. I remember very distinctly riding a bus to the campus with my fellow Apple employees and seeing every single solitary face buried in their iphones, all of us sitting in silence. Despite my enthusiasm for the iPhone I do remember having a slight sinking feeling at viewing that. I was seeing a glimpse into the future to come.
The difference is Google is paying a lot of famous people a lot of money to wear Google glasses. That is not the sign of a company making an awesome innovative solution people want and have a use for.
Then I met the man who excitedly told me about his power to snap pictures with his eyelid. He explained that he uses the wink-to-take-a-picture feature so much that a few days ago he was not wearing his Google Glass and was confused when he blinked his eye and nothing happened. His mind had played a trick on him, he said.
Well this itself isn't new, since I often reach to adjust my glasses even when I'm not wearing them.
Creepers have been creeping for years and years and years.
They peer through curtains; they make spyholes in cubicle walls, and with digital cameras they hide cameras in ceilings and books and showers and shoes.
Voyeuristic porn is a category. Upskirt is word popular enough to have an understood meaning.
I'm a bloke. I'm not worried by those creepers.
But I am uneasy about some users of Google Glass. I'd be really uncomfortable if I was standing at a urinal and someone was next to me still wearing Google Glass.
I have a feeling that when/if Glass becomes popular enough it will become a social faux pas to be wearing Glass while looking at a woman. Can you imagine some guy wearing Glass staring at a pretty girl across the way? It's creepy enough without Glass; it's super creepy with. As such, I'm betting it will be considered polite to prop Glass up on your head when interacting with people.
Yeah, that's a good point. Maybe Glass will be like prescription sunglasses, and people will have a separate pair? Maybe there will be a way to overtly disable the computer part or remove it entirely?
I think it's really unlikely that, aside from early adopters, people will have Glass "in place" when they're not using it, though.
> But I am uneasy about some users of Google Glass. I'd be really uncomfortable if I was standing at a urinal and someone was next to me still wearing Google Glass.
Now you know exactly how people who aren't blokes feel about creepers.
"I'd be really uncomfortable if I was standing at a urinal and someone was next to me still wearing Google Glass."
What if that person is deaf, and Glass is doing speech-to-text for them, helping them get through their day? What if they are a foreigner, and Glass is translating signs, instructions, and spoken language for them?
There are a lot of good uses for Google Glass that should not be ignored just because it has a camera and a microphone. Privacy concerns are no greater for Glass than for any smartphone -- significant, sure, but nothing new. It's just a smartphone in a different form factor.
And none of those things prevents them from taking it off and hanging it on a pocket or in their collar while using a urinal.
The only excuse for this that I can come up with is if, like someone I recall being posted about around here, it was actually mounted to their head in a way that makes it impossible or impractical to remove.
I'm not saying glass is evil and everyone using it is evil at all times.
I'm expressing mild dis-comfort.
Some people experience 'bladder-lock' when standing at a urinal if there's someone next to them. I predict Google Glass is going to cause more cases of bladder-lock.
I'd feel the same level of discomfort if I was at a urinal and someone was standing next to me holding their smartphone, even if it wasn't pointed at me.
>There they were, a handful of people wearing Google Glass, now standing next to me at their own urinals, peering their head from side to side, blinking or winking, as they relieved themselves.
I wasn't there so I have to take his word for it, but... I really doubt that. Blinking, of course. People blink. But why, I cannot fathom, would everyone at a urinal be peering side to side and taking pictures of other people using the restroom? No one does that with the camera they carry with them everywhere. Why would Glass change that? What would it be about Glass that would suddenly make everyone want to take pictures of other men in the restroom?
Was this story just made up to be hyperbolic? I seriously can't figure out why Glass would cause such a huge cultural shift that would make people start photographing each other in the bathroom not only acceptable but common.
Pervasive surveillance has already caused shifts in behavior that wouldn't exist without them. For one thing, teenage fights are filmed by bystanders and replayed/posted on the Internet. Pictures of women in compromised positions (children even) are passed around schools. Cyberbullying (even though I hate that term) is easier and more anonymous because of these tools.
If you're the victim, it can feel as if you are fighting the entire world.
THAT's why I think someone would be well within their rights to take swift action to halt something like that in its tracks.
BTW, I'm certain it's the reason why police risk the backlash associated with taking cameras away from third-parties vs. having their actions armchair-quarterbacked by legions of second-guessers.
>Pervasive surveillance has already caused shifts in behavior that wouldn't exist without them.
But all of those things existed even before the means to record them. People would fight. Women would be spied on. Children would be bullied. But taking pictures of people in a bathroom is not something that was common or accepted before, apparently, yesterday. We've had the means to record the bathrooms for quite a long time now, and it doesn't happen. When it does happen, it makes the news.
The author wasn't describing a demented pervert hiding in the shadows to see you naked, he was describing many people at a tech conference not hiding the fact that they were taking pictures of each other in the bathroom. That doesn't happen.
It was never stated that the each of the men at the urinals was overtly taking photos of the next. The author has no way of knowing whether or not the men wearing the glasses and blinking were actually taking photos. The way I read it, that was kind of the point.
It's this inconspicuous nature that makes Glass so concerning. Personally, the stories I've heard about cameras in bathrooms often involved trying to conceal the camera. It's quite uncommon for someone to whip out a DSLR at a urinal and start snapping photos of the man next to him. If it were to happen, it would be pretty obvious. With Glass, all you have is a person in a bathroom wearing glasses and blinking.
I think the worry is that once the cameras become commonplace, it'll make the barrier that much lower. Once the barrier is lowered, more people will feel like there is little harm in crossing it.
Would there, in fact, be as much harm in crossing it?
What I mean is.. if societal norms change such that, say, nude photos are no longer considered important - because everyone has nude photos online, after all - is it still as much of a problem?
Most of the psychological issues here are highly cultural.
Maybe for you. But I don't think that someone else should have that power over me. Once you start allowing that barrier to be crossed, you're inviting all sorts of other incursions on what we consider to be personal liberties.
> But why, I cannot fathom, would everyone at a urinal be peering side to side and taking pictures of other people using the restroom?
Either there really is a huge section of people who have been waiting to do this more discretely all along, or the writer was taking liberties by highlighting his fears. You can never really be sure whether the person next to you is a pervert, but when he pulls out a phone and takes a picture of your dick you can get a pretty good guess.
"I’ve been a nerd all my life, [but] I felt like a mere mortal among an entirely different class of super-connected humans."
This is the most insightful passage in there, though it's probably unintentional. There is a separation taking place between "nerds" who enjoy the practical benefits of new technologies in their day-to-day lives, and those who believe that new technologies should and will alter our species in ways that frighten us.
And that's nothing new; many (most?) Baby Boomers implicitly distrust PCs and the Internet, let alone smartphones, but many others realize that they are living in the most interesting time of their lives and wish they'd been born a little later.
To be honest, though, I'm a little surprised to see this separation take place so early; Glass is a charmingly inoffensive vision of things to come that really shouldn't be shocking to anyone with an iPhone. If you're worried today that someone might take a picture of your dick, you will be absolutely horrified at what we have become before you die.
I'm not worried that someone might take a picture of my dick. I'm worried that it's still very hard to explain to a large drunk gentleman that you didn't take a picture of his dick when his fist is smashing into your mouth. ;-)
On the flip side, I'm excited by the idea that someone won't be able to punch me in the face for any reason without some fairly conclusive evidence testifying to that effect.
'Course that doesn't help me if I really did take a picture of his dick.
Baby Boomers implicitly distrust PCs and the Internet, let alone smartphones, but many others realize that they are living in the most interesting time of their lives and wish they'd been born a little later.
In the US at least, I have to believe that the 60s were the most interesting times that generation lived through.
I assume people think this is a problem because they are afraid someone will film them "down there". But you have to actually look down there to do that with Glass, and last I checked that was already frowned upon, and it's something people know they shouldn't do. So why would Glass make this situation much worse?
Yes, if someone winked at my exposed genitals while I was in the bathroom, they would get a fist to the face whether they were wearing Glass or not. The rules of society have not become extinct just because someone is wearing a head-mounted camera.
The rules of the society I live in certainly don't include sudden violence at anyone who's checking out my junk. I might be upset or angry, and I'd probably let them know it, but I'm not getting into a bathroom brawl over it.
Really? If someone was indiscreetly peering over your shoulder to check out your package, you would let them know that it made you upset? Excuse me good sir, I do believe you are offending me?
Where I come from, that's more than an indiscretion. We're not talking about a locker room.
Well felony assault consists of intentionally causing severe bodily harm to someone or attacking an elderly person or child. A single blow to the face would generally not be felony assault.
However, I would consider cornering me in a bathroom and sexually harassing me to be just cause for self defense.
Without having to google, I can tell you that at what point something gets defined as a "felony" varies from one state to another.
(I used to pay accident claims. Some policies specifically did not cover injuries that were incurred in the commission of a felony. I had to write a denial based on that clause. We first had to research if the event in qhestion was a felony in the state in question.)
Society lays out the rules by law. And society judges when those rules have been breached. I think people forget that they have to live in a world where people other than themselves might have a different idea of what constitutes an acceptable response to distinctly discouraged behavior.
Is a woman who is being filmed naked against her will unjustified if she smacks the guy doing the filming when she learns of the violation?
You know what's vile and barbaric? Sexual harassment. Just because it's easier to see your broken nose than it is to see how traumatized a victim of sexual harassment is doesn't mean violence is immediately wrong. What you're arguing is for blaming the victim.
Listen to yourself, man! If someone peeked their head under a stall, would it be disproportionate violence to push him back out with your foot?
Seriously, sexual harassment is not a light crime. It does serious damage to the victim's mental state. There's no way of knowing if the perpetrator is going to take things further. If you want to state here right now that you feel that violence as a way to stop an ongoing act of close-quarters sexual harassment is a disproportionate response, then that's fine. But don't be surprised if other people in your society don't agree.
And yes, violating someone's privacy to see them naked when they obviously don't want to be seen is sexual harassment. Filming that takes it to the next level.
You wouldn't reel back if I punched you in the face? You're man enough to shrug it off without so much as flinching? The idea is to get you to take a step back and pause so I can walk away.
Someone who is violent without reason is not just a victim, they are also a perpetrator.
There is no reason to ever be violent if it isn’t absolute necessary to defend oneself.
Ok, maybe pushing someone away can be ok in that moment, however the glee with which people here talk about violence is absolutely vile. Violence is not ok. It is to never ever be used, only in the most dire emergencies.
A person that has already eschewed the moral code of society to such an extent would not be phased by their targets' words of disapproval.
A voyeur would consider the risk of being yelled at, reported to a local authority (such as a bar owner), being thrown out of an establishment, etc. They would consider these risks and weigh the consequences and determine that they are worth it in the end. They would still get what they wanted, and would be free to carry on their activities in the future, perhaps at another establishment or after enough time had passed.
But the risk of physical violence, that's not so easily dismissed.
Well legally they'd be perfectly within their rights to tape you telling them off. And if you got violent they'd have all the evidence they'd need to press charges, conveniently backed up into the cloud.
There are NUMEROUS statutes that prohibit the surreptitious filming of people where a reasonable expectation of privacy exists. I think a bathroom qualifies.
And I think you'd have a hard time getting a jury to convict someone of punching another guy in the nose for filming them in the bathroom.
Honestly, do you think the VERY FACT that he has a camera running at the time he gets punched by the guy he was filming wouldn't be prima facie evidence that he was in-fact filming in a private place? Cloud or not?
I'm willing the guy who is looking at a sex-offender charge and life-long pervert registration is willing to avoid pressing charges just to make the whole thing go away.
> "And I think you'd have a hard time getting a jury to convict someone of punching another guy in the nose for filming them in the bathroom."
No, that conviction will be a slam dunk, because there's video evidence of it.
You'll also score a simultaneous conviction for running afoul of peeping tom laws, because filming in a bathroom is as you mentioned illegal in many jurisdictions.
The only winner here is the prosecutor. The fact that party A was violating the law before party B assaulted him does not nullify party B's crime. The law doesn't really work that way. The bar for justifiable use of violence is legally high.
If someone is standing 20 feet from me recording, that's a different story. If someone is standing less than a foot from me and I discover him violating me, he's close enough to do physical harm. Perfectly justified in doing everything in my power to put some range between him and I. It's called self defense. The mere threat of physical violence coupled with the ongoing act of sexual harassment is enough justification for self defense.
A beatdown? No. A fist to the face or an elbow to the chest to get him away? You'd better believe it. There's not much room to run to safety when you're cornered at a urinal.
Naked? In the bathroom? With an expectation of privacy? Yes. Yes I do.
Crimes don't exist in a vacuum, there are factors that make the actions cross lines. A man glancing at a women's chest or a woman glancing at a man's rear end is not becoming of a professional, but it's not a crime. Repeated offense and an escalating situation? Then it becomes a crime. Likewise, nudity and expectation of privacy are factors that go into determining the appropriate response.
If I walked up behind a woman and started breathing heavily on her neck while she was cornered in a room with only one exit, she would be completely within her rights to use violence as a means to get away from me even though I never touched her.
No, to clarify, I mean just in public on the train or at a concert or a bar or whatever. The sorts of places where "mild" sexual assault of women by unfamiliar men is rather routine-- I'd posit much more common than assault of men by unfamiliar men in public restrooms, though I'm open to correction on that.
My underlying question being, at what point does looking put one in enough fear of touching that preemptive escalation to violence is warranted? Because from what I'm told by female friends, that fear is fairly commonplace in their lives, while violence is rather more rare.
I think I've adequately described the situation I'm referring to and the reason I feel violence is justified in that situation. Somehow you're ignoring all that. If you're in a bathroom, you're inherently close quarters, there's generally only one exit, there is an implied expectation of privacy, and witnesses are not plentiful. It's pretty obvious when looking has potential to turn to touching. That line exists right around the distance that touching is possible. If I can land a solid punch on someone's nose without taking a step, they're too close.
I'm trying to figure out what your agenda is; if you're trying to lead me into a trap. Are you trying to catch me saying that I don't hold the same standard to women? Because your "at a concert or on a train or in a bar" example misses the whole "nude" and "expectations of privacy" part of this story, not to mention the "trapped in a room with one exit and no witnesses".
Would I cross the room to punch someone? No. Would I use force to get them away from me? Well, isn't there a whole industry built up around women's self defense courses? I'm not answering your question because I don't feel comfortable with your intentions. I think you know the answer, I just don't know what you're trying to get me to say.
I feel like I was pretty honest in my last paragraph: My sense is that the sort of fear of sexual assault that you're describing is something women I know experience fairly often in public, fully clothed, with witnesses. (And their fear is reasonable, since sexual assault occurs in those same circumstances.) Their reactions vary, but never is preemptive violence on the table, for obvious reasons.
Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with extending your standard of self-defense to women who feel uncomfortable with the way men are behaving in public, but I also feel it would be hugely challenging to our social structure and I'm curious where you fall on the issue.
What I'm not comfortable with is saying "no, women shouldn't feel as frightened as I would" because the two situations are completely different. I'm not talking about how common these situations are, or how commonly violence is the outcome. I'm talking about how I would react in the very specific situation that is being outlined in this specific story.
I would urge everyone to reserve violence until it is absolutely necessary in your mind to prevent injury to yourself. But if it is necessary, I wouldn't blame anyone for it. Naked, vulnerable, cornered, and threatened has potential to bring out violence in anyone. It's basic fight or flight, except the flight option is taken out. I wouldn't punch someone on the train for staring at my clothed body and merely making me feel uncomfortable. I would punch someone on the train for staring at me and breathing heavily while keeping me from walking away.
Feeling uncomfortable isn't the line I'm trying to draw, feeling trapped and threatened is.
If I understand the scenario, and feel free to restate if I've got this wrong, you're talking about being at a public urinal and noticing another man staring lustfully at your junk. This places you in fear of imminent physical violence to which you feel justified responding in kind.
So, there's a general response from men here that this sounds like an absurd overreaction, but I'm not in that camp. If anything I'm trying to defend your point of view. It's just it sounds to me like you're describing a feeling of trapped, threatened vulnerability that is extreme and rare for men, but a daily occurrence for women, that goes something like this:
"Gosh, that man seems visibly interested in me as a sexual object despite the totally inappropriate context, and the fact that I haven't made any advances or invitations whatsoever. Well, I'm sure that's the hard limit of his disregard for social convention.
"Okay, he just told me to smile. Well, I'm sure that's the hard limit."
Now I'll distance myself from the herd here by saying I think men who act like that (a strict superset of men who might stare at your junk in the john) ought to experience some fear of physical violence themselves. My original question to you is whether you intend that to be an implication of your asserting your right to self-defense in this situation, where the consensus seems to be that it is unwarranted. Though perhaps I'm belaboring the point because it seems your answer is no, or at least no contest.
I can understand using force to prevent someone from touching you inappropriately. But that has the huge caveat that you must have reasonable evidence they are going to touch you inappropriately. Them standing and staring is not good enough.
Punching someone on the train for standing in your way is not reasonable either.
The problem with this discussion is trying to come up with a one-size-fits-all response to every possible situation. Life doesn't work that way.
It's all well and good for us to think about what we might do in a situation like that. In almost every case, that's not what happens when faced with that situation. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
So let me be clear: it's extraordinarily hard to compare "what you would do" in a scenario when you have the luxury of thinking about it, considering the alternatives, and thinking about possible consequences. In the heat of the moment, when you've got seconds to react, you're likely to make a decision is widely different than the one you THINK you'd make.
Those of us who have faced violence in the past know this intimately. If you've never been held at the point of a gun (I have), then it's hard to comprehend the variety of emotions, positive and negative, that come to the surface when you're suddenly faced with that reality.
Even people who have trained their whole lives for violent encounters deal with this. I wouldn't get too worked up about not having all the answers at your fingertips.
That said, if I catch you taking a picture of my junk in the bathroom, it's not going to go well for you.
Consider this: if I bump you (even unintentionally), by the strictest reading of the law, I committed assault and battery. That's obviously ridiculous, so we use our common sense to keep society functioning. We consider intent, and the likelihood that someone would feel genuinely threatened by someone else's actions.
SO, to paraphrase your example: an average woman, who might lack the physical means to feel safe in the presence of someone who might be larger and looking at them in a sexual way, would be justified in feeling threatened.
You seem to have a quaint notion of how the justice system works. Video evidence? Probably wont be surpressed by defense. Probably wont be contested because it's obtained as the result of an illegal act. The jury will probably not agree with the defense that the video represented the first stage of an attack by people who film attacks to gain notariety in the Internet. Probably.
If you agree to post your bar number from any US state and the range of cases you've defended, I'd be willing to hear your counterargument.
Would you like my penis length while we're at this? I was interested in a discussion, not credentialing, posturing, and condescension. Why are you after all of the above?
Hey, you're the one offering a legal opinion. I'm willing to bet my experience with the justice system beats yours.
For one thing, I've lived in the USA for my entire life.
For another, I've lived in several states.
For yet another, I've been involved in an altercation that came to the notice of the police. Several in fact. I'm still walking around a free man with nary a scratch on my record.
So my experience would seem to be directly on point and in direct contradiction to your opinion of how these things go in my country and state.
But hey, if you think your penis is so wonderful, feel free to provide a picture link. I promise not to share it.
Paul, I'm happy to. But when someone directly contradicts me, I think it's only fair that I indicate where I'm coming from. Otherwise, it's just an echo-chamber.
Yes, any kind of initial filming would be illegal. But once there's an argument going, everyone decent, I wouldn't see it as a privacy violation to overtly film the proceedings. I suppose it depends on the exact wording of the law.
It doesn't take a genius to see how cameras in a bathroom could be abused. I wouldn't expect every person who potentially faces Internet-scale humiliation that might come from the prospect of their private parts ending up on someone's FB page to simply shrug it off.
I'm counting the days till some Glass-wearing hipster gets his head shoved in a toilet for crap like this. When it happens, I expect THAT will be filmed as well.
I agree with you on this point: there will be misunderstandings, and there will be violence. Almost certainly someone is going to end up in an emergency room, where a doctor will be picking bits of Google Glass out of their head with tweezers.
I was just pointing out that this is not a good thing, and freehunter should not be proudly exclaiming how he's going to punch someone in the face.
When did I say I was proud of it? Of course I wouldn't be proud to hit someone. But I'd be even less proud to let someone get away with sexual harassment. I can't believe we're even getting into a discussion about how you shouldn't be allowed to defend yourself against sexual harassment.
The majority of teenagers don't upload their sexts or videos. Sometimes it's done to humiliate others, but it usually goes on Facebook. This doesn't change anything.
given the nature of your response, I am going to make the wild assumption that if your Rules of Society were enforced you'd have had your ass kicked by a lot of women.
I don't make a habit of going into women's restrooms and staring at their nudity while they relieve themselves. I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion.
The problem is I generally don't check if other people are looking at me when I'm using a urinal (and by "generally" I mean "never"), so that I would have a very hard time figuring out if the person closest isn't in fact just photographing my "down there" just from a blink of an eye.
> Many were using their cellphones while wearing the glasses — defeating a declared purpose of the new gadget, to free you from having to look at your phone. Another man continually looked at his watch to check the time, even through the glasses display a clock right above your eye.
I get that the author is trying to be humorous but I fear that some people may take some of his criticisms seriously. AFAIK nobody has declared that the purpose of Glass is to "free us from having to look at [oure] phone[s]". It simply makes certain functions more convenient than using a phone, in certain situations. Let's also not forget that Glass' functionality is pretty limited at this point, so people using their phones while using Glass were most likely using an app with functionality that isn't offered by Glass yet.. like browsing the web.
Glass is going to take off with the active crowd. It's perfect for people who either have jobs or hobbies that require the extended use of their hands. Think cyclists, police officers, postal workers, construction foremen, taxi drivers, etc. I feel like it's journalistically sloppy to criticize Glass for the (I feel) false premise that everybody is going to be wearing Glass all the time. The OP was at Google IO for crying out loud, of course you're going to have a bunch of early adopters walking around with Glass' on their face.
> AFAIK nobody has declared that the purpose of Glass is to "free us from having to look at [oure] phone[s]".
Here's a quote on that topic from Isabelle Olsson, lead industrial designer for Google Glass:
"One day, I went to work — I live in SF and I have to commute to Mountain View and there are these shuttles — I went to the shuttle stop and I saw a line of not 10 people but 15 people standing in a row like this," she puts her head down and mimics someone poking at a smartphone. "I don’t want to do that, you know? I don’t want to be that person. That’s when it dawned on me that, OK, we have to make this work. It’s bold. It’s crazy. But we think that we can do something cool with it."
I still read that as a very specific use case. I very much doubt that if you were to ask her if Glass would eventually remove the need for a phone altogether she would say yes.
That doesn't seem like a specific use case at all. Where the person happens to be standing when they are using their phone is unrelated to the example, really.
Brin asks: “Is this the way you’re meant to interact with other people?” Is the future of connection just people walking around hunched up, looking down, rubbing a featureless piece of glass?
> Glass is going to take off with the active crowd. It's perfect for people who either have jobs or hobbies that require the extended use of their hands.
I think Recon is not getting enough recognition. They have been selling a real product for a couple of years and now they announced a new one http://jet.reconinstruments.com
In Japan and some other countries, there is a law requiring cameras to make loud noises so pictures cannot be taken discreetly. I wonder if this will apply to Glass and, if so, what Google will do to enable Glass to be sold in Japan. Is there even an external speaker with which they could make the noise?
I travelled to Japan in February and noticed that my Nexus 4 suddenly started to make shutter sounds when I snapped photos there, after I connected to my friend's wifi hotspot. Something similar will be implemented in Glass for sure. Of course, there are many workarounds around this, including separate camera applications.
recording video is an immediate workaround (I'm assuming that the phone doesn't continuously make shutter noises when it records video; if it does then nevermind).
We should never have had any expectation of privacy in public places. I think what scares most people is that they're going to end up on the internet for some reason.
Perhaps this shows how self-obsessed we are: to think that anyone is going to care about us walking down the street minding our own business. Maybe it's the uncertainty that makes people uneasy. I can walk down the street recording everyone with my smartphone, but at least they know they're being filmed.
It's not as irrational a fear as you're making it out to be.
Check out any number of tumblr blogs. People of Wal-Mart. Look at That Fucking Hipster, etc.
Or a very, very large section of /r/pics or /r/funny on Reddit.
Even ignoring the extreme cases like /r/creepshots, the Internet has already proven that it greatly enjoys taking pictures of strangers in everyday life and mocking them mercilessly.
People would like to go around with their fly accidentally undone and not have a bunch of armchair comedians commenting on their junk. People would like to go around on a bad hair day without it being picked apart by screeching Internet fashionistas. Our fear of being spread all around the internet is grounded in past instances of nobodies being spread all around the internet.
I probably didn't clarify the core point well enough. Even if you're right - if the fear is rational - what is your alternative? Banning filming in public? Some of the more corrupt police forces would love nothing more than to have evidence of police brutality tossed out on those grounds.
Vigilance and self-policing, because you're right, regulation on this front has a highly chilling effect on expression.
This particular topic is near and dear to me - I do a lot of street photography which is, at least partially, defined as taking pictures of strangers in a documentary manner, and almost always takes place in public.
Countries with strong privacy laws, such as France and Japan, do suffer from this. The photographic community in the UK has been hit hard in the past few years as even innocuous picture-taking of popular landmarks has been hit with intense police scrutiny if your gear is too "good".
We do not want the heavy hand of government in here, because inevitably this will mean throwing the baby out with the bath water. Expression and art is usually at the boundaries of what society currently finds palatable, and activities along this border needs to be regulated by people, not immutable and slow-changing laws.
The only solution I can think of (and it's not a particularly good one) is to slam the door shut on people who would abuse their freedom of expression and whose actions will lead to the loss of freedom by inviting regulation. I'd rather oppose people rather than technology, though.
If only there would be something that detects the moment of snark forming in their head and snaps a picture of the commentator at that instant. Surely, there will be enough comedy material right there for everyone involved.
> We should never have had any expectation of privacy in public places.
I fully agree, but I see this from another perspective. In the past, people in public didn't care so much when they were photographed or filmed in public. Nowadays, so many people in public will claim privacy or their personal rights.
This change in attitude has brought the art form of street photography nearly to extinction. In the past, people often ignored photographers, while nowadays, some people will demand you delete pictures, try to take your camera to smash it, or even threaten to call the police even though they just accidentally ran into your view finder.
In Germany, some privacy fundamentalists have already threatened that are going to destroy Google Glasses when they meet people who use them, and call that "digital self-defense".
> "to think that anyone is going to care about us walking down the street minding our own business"
If your worst fear is having your photo show up on one of those "poorly dressed and out of shape" websites, this is easy to brush off.
If you're an attractive woman (or girl) walking down the street minding your own business, there is already a real possibility to end up on some sort of voyeur/jailbait website and become a target of sexualized comments. It is completely reasonable to be concerned about sexual predators having an even easier time taking those photos.
I don't think it's just that. I don't have any fear that any individual will film me, since this probably happens frequently anyway (how many strangers have me in the background of their pictures somewhere?).
Nonetheless, the idea that there will eventually be cameras everywhere putting videos online, combined with technologies such as location-tagging and ever-better face recognition, means that in the not-too-distant future it may be possible for someone to retroactively stalk me by splicing together bits of lots of different videos, determining exactly where I was throughout my day.
While it's possible that the benefits of these technologies outweigh the costs, it's not too hard to dream up dystopian scenarios.
Not only will someone be able to retroactively stalk you, they'll be able to cut together their own version of reality. Imagine someone having every snapshot of you while you're having a bad day - scowling at a slow elderly person ahead of you on the stairs, flipping someone off while driving, a really bad photo of you with a bunch of drinks around you. Nevermind that you were trying to hurry to get up the stairs to help your pregnant wife, or that someone threw a brick at your car, or that you're just watching your friends' drinks while they play pool.
Exactly, the "Mark Burnett problem" (producer of Survivor). I heard him claim in an interview that with enough footage he could create any perception of a person that he wanted (hero, jerk, brilliant, idiot, etc.). It seemed obvious after hearing it, but not something I had considered.
"We informed you that under the new Citizen Bill of July,2040 we have revoked your right to vote, and travel without permit because you have been identified as a participant of the antisocial demonstrations of May, 2018."
I know this sounds paranoid, but given past behaviour of totalitarian government, I don't see why any future techno-totalitarian society would not use that kind of tools. And my example is rather mild, it could be something much more sinister that travel restrictions... This is one the reason I find the "Right to be Forgotten" a sane idea.
>We should never have had any expectation of privacy in public places.
Privacy, no. But we expect some stupid thing we do in public to have a localized, temporary effect. Maybe you get a few dirty looks, maybe some people laugh at you, thats it. But once its on the internet its there 1. forever 2. easily discoverable by people you know.
That's pretty scary to me. I can walk home drunk and silly and a few people in college might find out. With glass, everyone on my facebook, including employers/co-workers find out and see a video of it.
On the flip side, it would be liberating to see this happen on such a large scale that we come to accept these things and give people a break for having a bad day or doing something silly in public.
I don't think it's self-obsessed to care about your privacy, and I don't think there shouldn't a reasonable expectation of privacy in public places. For example, if you're a woman and you bend over, and someone snaps a photo down your blouse, and that ends up on a creepshot website, are we supposed to cross our arms and say, "Deal with it, lady--you were in a public place"? To what degree does being in a public place negate civility and privacy?
Until you do something in a moment of distraction or half-thought that would strike a lot of people as humiliating or ridiculous in some way. Like the kid who smiled so big in his school picture, now the butt of countless internet jokes and his picture is everywhere. Nobody wants to be made fun of that way.
This is exactly what bothers me about the constant nudges to share more information online. It's like no one's ever been stalked by an ex, been abused, etc...
> We should never have had any expectation of privacy in public places.
I don't think I agree with this point. I know most countries have some kind of laws saying more or less this, but I think there is an implicit agreement regarding how much of what I do every day is public or not, and the lack of security cameras in bathrooms is a reflection of this.
I might be wrong, but I think that if we were to write privacy laws today, knowing that we (almost) have the technology to monitor everyone everywhere, we wouldn't write something as simple-minded as "you don't have any right to privacy in public places at all" - I think we would probably throw a "reasonable right to privacy" in there somehow.
I was irritated by this article for many reasons, but the foremost is its hypocrisy. The author recalled first-hand events from memory, curated them to support a critical narrative, and then shared the results with millions of people on the Internet. Now we sit in judgement of the anonymous people he described. There are plenty of ways in which Glass and conventional blogging differ, but not enough to warrant the author's shock.
My concern is people like myself who wear prescription eye glasses who may want to try Google Glass so end up putting the device on prescription glasses. It's one thing to remove your Google Glass glasses to be polite or legal i.e. washroom, locker room, driving a vehicle but for me that wouldn't be an option.
Also, I wonder if I could make a pair of infrared LEDs put them on my person somewhere to emit an interference beam pattern to mess up the camera on someone else's Google Glass glasses.
Yes, that’s my concern as well. I used to think that as a prescription glass wearer, I’d be a natural early adopter of smart glasses, but given the privacy concerns, it’s bound to be socially (and sometimes legally) unacceptable to have smart glasses on all the time.
Unfortunately, that is not practical. Cameras need to filter out IR from sun to get a decent picture. Unlikely your measly head mounted LEDs would amount to an interference.
I am just confused as to why taking off your Glass will not be similar to other common social bathroom courtesies like putting away your cell phone, or utilizing family bathrooms, etc. Once a stigma is in place at the social level, it will work itself out. If not, there is always the direct approach of just asking someone to put it away.
I'm just ducking in to take a leak; removing the glasses would double the time it takes, and the dev pair I tried didn't seem to fold up like regular glasses to slip in a pocket, so what, I'm expected to carry around a Glass purse to stash them in? I'd rather they implemented something to make it very clear when Glass is recording--make the big plastic bit that holds the lens glow red, something like that--so everyone would take the signal that I am not recording them, just happen to be wearing it.
Also, we already have a social convention in place for this. You don't look at, speak to, or otherwise acknowledge other people in the bathroom, except so as to give them appropriate space. Everyone in there is taking care of private functions; if everyone follows the convention, we all get a maximally private experience.
Convention already dictates that you shouldn't be rubbernecking at the other urinals; even talking to someone else while at the urinal gets you labeled as "that guy" among the people I know.
it is proper to remove them or place them atop your head like you do with sunglasses indoors. also, i doubt people were doing anything but staring down or straight ahead in the urinals. it would be weird for someone without glass to be doing what he describes in a bathroom. just saying..
If you're talking about prescription lenses, the answer to your question is yes. Glass is designed to be modular, and Glass is intended to accommodate those who wear conventional glasses for vision correction, giving them the option to use glass with their prescription lenses.
If thousands of people had Google Glass on, it's possible some were advertising props and not fully functional - this would explain some of the behaviors the author saw.
The only hope here is that similar to gym rules that do not allow cell phone usage in locker rooms, hopefully we can adopt the policy "Don't be a Glass ass. Remove your glasses before entering restrooms."
My first response was, "Who cares, we already have cameras everywhere and anywhere, this doesn't change anything," but the idea of no one really knowing when you're filming or taking a picture (unless they notice a wink) is kind of a game-changer.
Give it a year or two, regular looking glasses will have these features too. Then the real problems begin, unless you want to start banning all glasses.
It's funny how title has changed to be a flame bait now. Glass is one of the new things that Google is introducing and at the Google IO where you expect Google enthusiasts, why is it surprising to see a lot of Glass wearers?
Glass of course has privacy issues and I will not be comfortable speaking to anybody who is wearing one. It's at least 100 times more nerdy as the Bluetooth headset but those issues aside, you should totally expect to see these at Google conference.
"At one point as I climbed the stairs and approached the second floor, I saw a group of five people wearing Google Glass, all silently staring off into space. I couldn’t tell if they were wirelessly having a conversation through their eyeballs, or just bored by the presence of real humans in front of them."
The entire article is filled with similarly funny tidbits.