Originally published on Variety.
If the NSA is Big Brother, the increasing number of Google Glass wearers on the street are an army of Little Brothers.
Although impressive, this wearable technology comes with a rash of anti-privacy side effects. The Glass wearer chooses to be connected to Google’s servers, but the people in their lines of sight — and lens — do not.
Glass can take an automatic photo every few seconds and send it back to Google’s servers, essentially turning any Glass wearer into a walking Google surveillance camera. It can stream video, too.
Not only could that make unwitting bystanders the reluctant stars of Internet videos, but it could end up in law enforcement’s hands, too. If the NSA scandal taught us anything, it’s that private companies like Google turn over hefty amounts of their user’s data to the government. Glass is not exempt.
Should Glass be allowed to go wherever a person can? What about bathrooms, private parties or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings? An advocacy group, Stop the Cyborgs, launched to raise awareness of this question, in part by handing out “No Google Glass Zone” stickers. Several restaurants have already declared themselves to be Glass-free zones.
Glass has already aided law enforcement in one well-publicized case, when a documentary filmmaker recording a Fourth of July fireworks show caught a fistfight on camera. He said he was able to record because Glass was hard to notice, unlike the obvious method of holding up a cell phone.
But data capture isn’t the only privacy problem with Glass: It’s also data use. The most controversial is facial recognition, technology that scans and identifies specific faces.
Just like fingers and irises, faces have unique patterns that make them one of a kind. Facial recognition is already in use from Facebook to bars to airports. It’s already extremely accurate and getting even more sophisticated.
Picture a man at a bar who merely looks at a woman to learn her name. Then he can do a few quick searches to find her age, address, phone number and interests. It might sound like science fiction, but it’s already here.
After a Congressional committee wrote an open letter questioning Google about their privacy concerns around facial recognition, Google stated that the technology won’t be supported at the launch of Glass. They also revised their app developer policy to prevent Glass developers from building facial recognition in their apps. Still, politicos say they’re disappointed by Google’s inadequate answers.
And just because facial recognition isn’t part of Glass’s launch doesn’t mean it won’t happen eventually. The Glass platform supports it, and several companies have already built facial recognition apps for it. There’s big benefit, and money, in getting a name from a face.
Glass is a new form of digital narcissism that drags in unknowing bystanders. It shrinks the private sphere and makes the public realm even more public.
People aren’t the same when they know they’re being watched. If the growth of Glass means more micro-surveillance, it’ll also hurt the privacy that lets us live full, explorative, uncensored lives.
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