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Privacy in the world of [Google Glass] and wearable computing . . . and wifi, apparently
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It's pretty likely at this point that most people, especially on these forums, have pictures of themselves that are publicly accessible online. Even if it's just a profile picture, or graduation picture, or driver's license photo ect.. That's all it takes to photoshop your head onto a nude body. It's an interesting question as to whether or not it's moral/legal to release a fake nude of someone, but it's really only tangentially related to this OP since it's pretty easily done now, without google glass. Plus, I think the US has pretty much come down on the side of paparazzi on the legality of taking someone's picture whilst in a public place.
Actually my entire wi-fi point was originally to broach the "Google stealing my webs!" issue when they went driving for SSID points and were accidentally collecting packet-data, which would be unsecured if people didn't have their networks properly set up.
In that case, the process is in fact harm zero - as ElJeffe has referred to - because they're not even sending or manipulating the network in any fashion, and did not use or distribute the information obtained in this way in a manner which could be considered public.
My other point is that there's a practical issue here: Wifi works differently to stealing physical property with is different to trespassing. Our laws have to be practical and enforceable, and the practical side of things is that unsecured private wi-fi - in Australia for example - is considered a public nuisance to the extent that Melbourne has equipped some police cars with wardriving equipment to notify owners of unsecured wi-fi that this is the case.
And on top of that all this is manufactured legal protection in the first place: for example if you're sending radio traffic on the CB bands, then it has to be voice traffic, and it's not allowed to be encrypted in anyway. It's explicitly public by law. This also actually applies to the 2.4 ghz band when you rise above certain range and distance metrics - it becomes illegal to encrypt the traffic on whatever network you may be running.
Well, now you're talking about some program, or Google itself, actively fetching and superimposing kiddie porn over what you are viewing. Neither Google nor any other app would ever be able to get away with that, so that's not going to happen. However, if the nude children are (a) images derived from nude adults or (b) nude cartoons (i.e. it falls outside what is considered kiddie porn) then while I would personally find it squicky, it's not really something that bothers me that much, I think.
Then again, I was just making a joke in the first place. I mean, does it really matter if some asshole is walking around looking at people with Pamela Anderson's naked body superimposed over their body?
I keep wondering why the hell Google just doesn't design the thing with an LED on the front to serve as a tally lamp.
Bam. Red dot glowing when it's recording or snapping a photo. Now people know.
The only thing more annoying than being recorded all the time would be if you had a bunch of LEDs flashing in your face constantly. I see your point, though.
It does have an LED that turns on when recording, I believe, but developers have already rooted their devices and disabled that functionality. I'm not sure that there's really a feasible way to guarantee that the LED is enabled while recording.
This is a case where the solution may have to be social, not technological.
Mentioned in this article about Google Glass.
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I don't think you can really talk morality without there being any consequence or a risk of consequences (of your action, not what happens if you break the rules), it's just a neutral act. However punishing people for something that has no consequences is something I'd class as morally wrong, as would a punishment that vastly outweighed any potential consequence.
Because for this to be enforced, you're causing more harm than you would if you ignored the issue.
Both to the individuals who are getting punished for something they didn't know they did, and to society for adding in various roadblocks for new services and technologies purely so you can make some logical point.
I really disagree here. All it takes is a requirement that an actual "public" flag be set for autoconnect to work, and you have solved much of the problem.
I really don't understand what you mean by a roadblock. If you are saying that it hurts the ability to have ubiquitous wifi, then I would argue that you should not have it if you can only get access by stealing bandwidth from people. If you wouldn't literally walk over to someone's house (or a public space right near it) and plug in a cat5 cable, you should not be in exiting to someone's wifi without permission. What possible difference is there between the two?
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
You wouldn't need to root your device for that, just paint over it.
Why does glass need to record at all? I understand that you need the camera to serve core functionality (AR, image based input for search) but that does not require you to be able to record like an action cam. In fact, an action camera and an AR/HUD are totally separate products. Drop the superfluous action camera function and mosh of the privacy concerns vanish, without hurting the key functionality of the device at all.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
With smartphones, yes - people have them all the time and can record anything. But they don't. My phone dies in about 1.5 hours if I'm recording video. If I saw something happening that was worth filming, yes - I'd get my phone out then and record it - but the number of people walking around with their phones out, recording everything right now is small compared (i assume) to the people who would do that if glass becomes 'a thing'.
I think that the LED is a good thing, introduce some legislation that makes it illegal to tamper with glass for the purpose of disabling the recording indicator. Most of the time nobody is going to care...but when you do catch someone perving out, and find out they disabled the LED / painted over it, you can charge them. It also keeps people from distributing apps that disable the LED or baking that functionality into the OS, changing it from something a lot of people are going to do immediately to something only a few people would do.
The big issue (with the above caveats) isn't so much the filming, it's the sharing (or more accurately, publishing). If everything uploaded is automatically set to 'private' and not indexed, and it takes conscious action to release / stream the footage, I'd be far less concerned. Blurring faces unless permission is granted, or even sending notifications that you are in shared images - and giving you the option to have them blurred (or even just remove your Personal Identifying Information from the tag). I'm sure you would be able to set your profile to opt-in, or opt-out, where anything with you in it is automatically blurred without explicit permission.
If you are just a bystander / in the background, and not identified and indexed by Google in a publicly shared image...I'm not sure what the issue would be. Only when you are tagged by facial recognition and that photo becomes tied and indexed to your ID does it really become an issue.
I don't see why you would have a camera and not give people the option to record. For me, the bigger issue isn't having my picture / video taking (with of course some caveats) it's the uploading and sharing...and especially the indexing / tagging. Like people said - the camera isn't particularly novel, 'spy' cams and camera phones have been around for decades. It's the back end - Google - that's the concern.
Personally, I would love to have a private video of everything I do and have done. Right now my wife and I are pressing a suit against a guy who tricked her grandma (dementia) into signing over her estate to him...it would be INCREDIBLY nice to be able to just say 'See Exhibits C-R, recordings of these conversations on these dates'. Stick a fork in it, the only question is what damages we are collecting and if the prosecutor would press criminal charges against the guy.
So there is great utility in having a camera that records everything. Downsides, of course. But a huge amount of utility too.
Imagine if you could rewind a meeting you had with a client six months ago on a whim. Or review the exact words an SEC lawyer told you about their interpretation of some obscure requirement. Or hell - be able to see your wife's face when she looks at you the first time the two of you hold your baby.
People want recording capability for the right reasons, and more importantly, besides deliberately obfuscating as hard as possible, if you allow the device to input visual information and then send that to the internet (for the purpose of an image based input for search), it's going to be rather difficult to stop them from recording to the internet in general. Doubly so because as a consumer I try to avoid devices which deliberately handicap functionality.
I'm not sure I disagree in principle, but someone will just write software to allow it to record.
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Probably because it's a feature that actually appeals to some people.
I understand that people don't want to be recorded. And I understand the potential privacy issues this device raises. But there are some people, I'm sure, that would love nothing better than to record their entire life experience if possible. Is that right? Is that wrong? I think it's a very complicated question and not one we can just dismiss due to privacy concerns. That's not to say the privacy concerns aren't valid, but I don't think it's as simple as saying "I don't want to be recorded, therefore feature x of Google Glass is bad."
I mean, imagine if the guy from Memento had Google Glass. None of that shit would have happened.
I do not believe there is any conceivable way you could actually prevent people from owning a google glass from disabling their light.
I guess the solution is some kind of arms race where everyone wears a google glass and any google glass can tell if any OTHER google glass is recording.
You can't PREVENT people from disabling their light.
You can make it illegal to tamper with a recording device for the purposes of disabling or concealing the recording indicator light.
Boom. No apps that automatically disable the light, it's not a baked-in feature of the OS. Between the difficulty and illegality, that's going to keep most people from doing it right there.
Of the few people who will dab it with paint / physically disable it / crack the OS and disable the light, well...you can't prevent everything, and when you catch them creeping you can prosecute them for that too.
There is also the technical solution of putting the indicator in the camera's FOV, or some sort of sensor behind it that acts as an interlock if it's not illuminated (or light levels are way off indicating it's covered up). Which is still not a perfect solution, but if the interlock is baked into the OS it's going to prevent 99.9% of people from doing it, and the rest will just go the easy route and use some other sort of hidden camera.
EDIT - now if the technical solutions are actually worth it...is a good question. But if my laptop has a light level sensor just so it knows when I close it, I can't believe it would be difficult to implement a similar solution for an LED.
How is saying that people should only use networks they know a roadblock for new services and technologies?
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
It's not, it's good practice. Legislating and enforcing that is a different matter though.
Data is collected through the camera at all times, isn't it?
It may not be an "action cam" live streaming the entire day all the time to Google HQ, but that doesn't mean there aren't recognition software capabilities and advanced analytics being uploaded in small files at all times.
My understanding is that it is always on, but there is a difference between being on for search and for recording. There are cameras in cities recording 24 hours a day, but that footage isn't made publicly available.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
I live in a state that has two party consent laws regarding recording. Glass is going to run face first into them.
How is legislation that says "all devices with wifi must only autoconnect to networks flagged as public" a problem?
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
It's not compatible with any of the current technology as there's no limiter on phones or public option on routers. And we're talking about this issue because we don't believe a reasonable person can be expected to properly understand how to set up wireless devices. All this to fix a problem that doesn't really exist - secured networks are the default factory setting on most routers I've come across, but we're saying that this isn't good enough. How is changing the name from 'open network' to 'public network' going to fix anything other a technicality?
Yes but those cameras aren't privately purchased and mounted to the citizenry's face.
(Which would be fucking hilarious now that I'm picturing traffic cameras on peoples heads)
A lot of people care. If i saw someone going through my garbage, I would not be happy about it.
Actually, that's not what's being said. What's being said is that logging onto a network is equivalent to entering into a piece of property, and doing so without permission is equivalent to trespassing. I talked about this on chat a while back, that we should see network /computer intrusion as another form of trespassing, and that a lot of the resistance to doing so was due to what that would say sociologically.
It may not something that currently exists, but as we keep advancing technology, maybe it's something we should consider. Because it seems pretty trivial to implement and solves the auto-connect problem cleanly and with no downsides.
If you're saying it's not even a problem because the number of unsecured routers out there is miniscule, so just let auto-connect work with anything unsecure, that's cool with me. Except people are freaking out about that idea, hence this stab at a solution.
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The idea would be to make it a non-default setting, so you need to deliberately choose to set a network as public.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
Though ultimately, I think online privacy/property probably needs to be considered it's own thing. And not just something extrapolated from physical belongings and land.
I think changing the name of 'Open network' to 'Public network' is really all you'd need to do - I imagine that's probably a more popular option anyway than the private but unsecured. Couple of adverts notifying people of the change and newer routers making you click a button to accept the risk in having a public network (and what it is).
Already is, secured network is the default - you have to deliberately set it as open usually, don't you?
Its not just about accessing the network though. Its about using someone's bandwidth when you access it. No one ever seems to respond to this, but if you saw a cat 5 coming out of someone's window and in landed on the sidewalk, would you think it was acceptable to just plug your computer in and use their internet?
The pets analogy doesn't work, because we can't control animals. We can control how our phones work.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
Apparently we can't though, or our routers. Which is why I was saying that these are two different issues - connecting to a open network, and piggybacking on a neighbours wifi should be considered two different things.
I might not be able to control the phone (I might have set it to auto-connect accidently, or in an area where that was the right choice because there was a lot of public networks, and open but private networks are very uncommon), I can't see wifi networks to know when I've moved out of range of one and into one that's open but not public, and the phone might be in my pocket when it initially connects.
It's a completely different situation from a cat-5 cable, and you are expected to have control over a dog (your liable for what it does, at least here in the UK - but I don't think they can trespass, it's mostly for causing damage/harm. Not a dog owner so can't really say).
I should be expected to notice it repeatedly happening however, and when I'm not moving about. The US is able to deal with waiting vs loitering, so it should be able to deal with this.
I literally don't understand why you think the cat-5 cable issue is different. Let's posit a world where autoconnect does not exist, but you can always see available wifi and choose to connect if you want (or a world with public flags and where all hardware that exists recognizes them). How would you feel about connecting to unsecured wifi then?
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
There's a simple enough solution, though - don't turn on auto-connect to any open network. (And I've yet to run into a device where this is the default - it takes a conscious decision by the user to enable it.)
It's not morally correct to take advantage of someone doing this, and it'd probably be best to let them know they've made a mistake, but I don't think the right to have a private, unsecured wifi network is worth protecting. Especially not if it comes at any cost to the rest of society.