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Privacy in the world of [Google Glass] and wearable computing . . . and wifi, apparently
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The current federal government also has a military and a federal criminal justice system. So its just like being on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. O M G
The idea that the federal (or state, or hell local) government needs Google fucking Glass to constuct this digital police state is laughable. Every block in every major city in the developed world has multiple security cameras. Google Glass would be among the least efficient methods they could use given the problems they'd encounter obtaining the footage and normalizing for head movement, hardware and perspective.
This of course ignores that increasing the mean by which a government can create a theoretical police state is not itself an evil just because a police state would be. Applying the same logic, we should oppose the Census, social security, FBI, CIA, IRS, FDA and revocation of the Articles of Confederacy. A weak government is not in and of itself good.
And I was 9 when the wall fell, so don't pull the "you're just little kids and at 25 I understand the world way better". I actually have memories that predate the end of the Cold War, and computers older than the web.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
And what was the place before the house was built?
We can alter expectations within a limited space by our actions, both temporarily and permanently.
Ah, see, I think this may be where we're misunderstanding each other. You're providing legal links, because you're discussing a legal concept. Which is important, and I've no doubt you're right about our legal precedent.
I'm also not particularly interested in the legal aspects at this exact moment, I'm talking about a moral or perhaps ethical understanding of privacy.
So, naturally, when Facebook came out I gave no shits and had no interest. To this day I have never even been to Facebook's website. I just don't see the appeal.
Nor do I see the appeal of tweeting or texting. Why wouldn't you just call the person? It has the benefit of asynchronous communication, granted, but still... that's what e-mail is for.
I'm not even thirty yet, but I feel like such an old fogey. Hell, I even resisted getting a smart phone until just last year. Why the fuck would I need a computer in my pocket?
So, if that concept doesn't hold water, why is the EU debating making it a right? And why is Google spending $Germany to fight it, as well as raising the spectre of "censorship!"?
Probably not the best example, since they already had the pictures from other sources.
Your concern here is the software side, and is independent of Google Glass.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/Mort-ZA/
@MortNZ
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
What the place was before is generally immaterial. A private home is private property. It is not public property and is treated differently. The two are not the same.
I'm talking about the generally-accepted principle that human actions can alter a location's expectations (otherwise people couldn't own land or have private residences), and arguing that this principle can be applied on an ethical level (if not a legal one) on a much smaller scale.
Is he or she acting immorally/unethically by seeing it?
Is he or she acting immorally/unethically by expressing this occurred to another person?
Is that person acting immortally/unethically if they truthfully express what was told to them (assuming that include sourcing and such) to a third party who wants to know this person knows about you?
I would say no to each of these because one had no reasonable expectation of privacy. If they heard you talking about walking down the street with your dick out because they didn't properly whisper while in public, I don't think the situation is meaningfully altered.
Because the EU isn't big into coherent legal frameworks, doesn't meaningfully enforce the rights that declare anyway, and has a lack of entrenchment that makes any rights they define no more meaningful than the speed limit?
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Do I like this world? I think I might, assuming that fusing with the core mind to access this stuff doesn't involve a ritual with the implants that is too complex.
I would say no to each of those questions because if I'm walking around with my dick out, I'm displaying it.
If I'm whispering, I'm not displaying -- I'm concealing.
Intent is A Thing, and there's a difference between my dick and a whisper. In my case, a large difference. :winky:
Because the EU has a hard on for fining US tech companies over made up bullshit.
e: And also a strong tradition of censorship. See: Anti-blasphamy law, Laws against denigrating heads of states/national symbols both domestic and foreign, banned political party(not just the one you assume).
So what if your fly is just down? Or you're stumbling drunk and you think you're whispering to your friend but drunk yelling?
Or what if you later regret walking around with your dick out and retroactively claim you weren't displaying it, its just people are too good at seeing through your concealment?
That's the whole point between public space and private space. In a private space, you have some ability to control information flow. An owner can prohibit photography, or bar entry without signing an non-disclosure agreement. In public space, you can't censor people from telling uncomfortable truths.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
You lot might have cheerfully shifted to living as if stepping out of your house did in fact nullify any such expectation, but we havn't.
And while Sherlock Holmes could, in theory, have coffee outside the offices of a political party and remember everyone who enter, also 'round here, structuring that information into, say, a database without the consent of the people in the database would be illegal. Google Glasses doesn't, by default violate such a law either in letter or spirit, but as a technical platform it makes it hella easier to do so. Historically, this isn't a trivial concern, and acting as if the worst that could possibly happen as the width and depth of information available in the public sphere increases is the spread of embarrassing facebook updates, leaves something to be desired that can't be solved by calling people luddites.
(To be clear, I'm not actually saying I think Google Glasses should be banned, or even that I won't buy one - but saying that we're not radically shifting what the "public sphere" means with the technology of the past few decades, that this is just more of the same and thus not worth discussing, is wrong.)
(edit: Also to be clear, I assumed The Enders post was tongue in cheek and responded in kind. I did not actually mean to imply that anyone in this discussion was a little kid.)
I have glasses with this feature right now, I'll sell you a pair for $1500. Hell it's a Tuesday, 50% off. $750 and they're yours.
First paragraph: If your fly is down and it's an accident, then I'm gonna say yeah the person is doing the wrong thing on an ethical and moral level (not speaking legally atm) by going around blabbing about it to other people instead of letting you know (so you can fix it) or just keeping their yap shut. At the very least, they're being a dick, but I'm comfortable labeling it as unethical/immoral/"the wrong thing to do" in that situation, without other factors included.
Second paragraph: I get the feeling this one is an entirely separate issue because of the deception and falsehood involved, but I'm at work and I can't quite put my finger on it. Let's stick a pin in this one for later.
Third paragraph: So how does this moral framework handle something like an upskirt photo? Or, more complicated, let's say an individual trips and falls, landing in a position where their unmentionables are on display? It's a public place, and the only real way to morally object to photography of the incident would be to accept that the victim's intent renders a certain expectation of privacy on an ethical and moral level. Because in the case of an upskirt, your camera is still nominally in a public place, recording things visible from that public place. If that's all we care about, then we've got a pretty shitty moral compass here.
EDIT: P.S.: Anyone remember the spy video that may or may not have lost the Presidency for Romney? Was he in private? No. Did he try to claim he was? Yes. Are we better off for having seen that? Probably. And so on.
The bits I've italicised tend to be national not EU laws. The EU certainly has interests in competition law but doesn't have a lot of competence in other areas like you've listed. That is not to say I trust the EU's tech or competition regulation but sometimes they are right for the wrong reasons.
Taking the hypothetical that far, at that point I admit that I think maybe we as a society are due for a good desensitization of such things. People shouldn't care if their underwear became visible. In the future, we'll all be Britney Spears for 15 minutes, and we should learn to shrug it off and say "so what, it's underwear." And perhaps in doing so chip away at the perverted desire to photograph, upload, and download such a picture.
That's all well and good, but somehow "get over it" doesn't seem like a useful response to the victim in this decade.
This is really the right answer here. You can talk about post-shame societies all you want, but that simply is not how people operate, so any position based solely on the idea that people should just relax and stop caring about the things they care about isn't really very relevant to the issue of how to deal with google glass coming out in 2013.
"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
But in a more general situation, I guess it depends on how much you value truth and transparency. If someone falls or otherwise does something embarrassing it may not be noteworthy enough to say something about it, or I may decide as a courtesy to not pass that information on. But I don't see any strong moral obligation to conceal the truth because it might prove embarrassing to that person. A lie of omission surely doesn't hold the moral weight of a direct lie (especially out of context), but that doesn't mean it doesn't hold any weight. If I saw my best friend's partner walking down the street with his/her arm around another person when he/she was supposed to be at work or or out of town, that partner might see it as a violation of his or her privacy and wish it to be concealed from my friend. I would suggest that not telling the friend - especially if asked a direct question like "do you think he/she is cheating" - would be unethical/immoral.
Finally I think there is an ethical imperative towards freedom of expression. The free exchange of ideas and information has an ethical component. There can be no true freedom of expression once you decide that a person can prohibit another from speaking truth about another arbitrarily.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
"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 imagine the service providers will be the ones to do this. So you'll be unable to take photos of Johnny Richkid without his permission, they will come out blurred or not at all.
Yes, but it will move from being only vaguely important and ineffective to being vastly important and possibly effective. Rich folk will hire dedicated 'sweepers' to keep their pasts private, and to allow them to do fun stuff in their free time, the middle class will depend on automated services, while the poor have nothing.
Some thoughts:
1) Most of the privacy concerns seems to be with the software side of disseminating the information.
2) I don't see how people will be recording/uploading everything they see/hear. That's a lot of data where 99.9999999% would be completely useless to the people bothering to do it.
Google Glass really doesn't seem that different to me in this regard other than it being more cameras.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/Mort-ZA/
@MortNZ
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
I told you them colorvision telloscreens were no good for nobody, and now look what's happened. Everyone's watching them things and their eyes are just rotting out of their faces, and now sure enough they're selling everyone them Goggle Glasses. How convenient for them.
I don't need sounds in my movies or colors in my telloscreen or Goggle in my glasses!
Yes, it's not like Google has ever been caught behaving badly, like when they were snooping into private Wi-Fi networks, or paid half a billion dollars over online pharmacy ads...
Technology and social issues both generally march on, but I just don't think it happens as fast as some people here are suggesting. I can't imagine that even the 3 year olds with their own iPhones and facebooks are going to be ok with a total lack of privacy when they grow up.
I also think that it is a red herring to say that we are already comfortable with people seeing what we do now in public, and so the accuracy of the recall of our viewers should not matter. The inaccuracy of our viewers is a fundamental part of the human condition, and it does drastically change dynamics imo when you go from a world where people can see you but have no way to directly identify you or share what they saw in a way which would let others easily identify you to one where every person who sees you is capable of determining who you are and disseminating videos of you to anyone who types your name into google (or even worse, to anyone else who sees you on glass).
Let's return to me "business woman in the club" example. I think that it is pretty uncontroversial to say that a successful woman has just as much right to dress how she wants and dance how she wants in a club as anyone else. This behavior may not be work appropriate, but it doesn't matter. She isn't at work, is she? Now let's say that she meets up with a new client, or goes to work with a new boss, and he is wearing glass. He looks at her, and gets shown all the links that correspond to a search for her face, and now he sees a clip of her dancing. Obviously not the first impression anyone would want to make in this situation. In a world without glass, she could still encounter someone for the "first" time and then he could realize that she was actually they girl he saw at the club, but that chance is much more remote.
"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
Read up on the Wi-Spy case to understand why people are leery.
That's different though, as far as I'm understanding the issues mentioned here so far.
For instance, thinking about it on my local train commute I get recorded at least 4 times in both directions.
People also have their phones out and waving them around all the time on the train, I'm assuming they're reading/browsing etc, but chances are just as good they're recording everything.
My afternoon walk to the shop/through the park has me being recorded at least half-a-dozen times probably. The park almost always has photographers, tourists and video cameras set up.
While I don't go clubbing, there were people at work that did, and every Monday morning they'd load up the Club's website and look through photos from when they were there.
The Clubs themselves take the photos and have people wandering around taking photos, as well as having the option of people uploading their own photos.
We're already heading towards a world where everything is being recorded all the time. But it's not Google Glass that's the next step, or going to put it over the top. It'll just be more cameras in a world already saturated.
The software that allows us to use all that information will probably be the biggest leap forward (and we're getting there)
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/Mort-ZA/
@MortNZ
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
I'm not sure I agree with the "no expectation of privacy in public" concept because it breaks down pretty rapidly.
Currently we do have an expectation of - if we don't call it privacy, we should call it pseudonymous operation. You might be getting filmed, but most of the time you aren't and you can safely assume that at any given moment, only the people around you can see what you're doing and its only their eyewitness account that can be conveyed. That's part of why integrity and honesty are valued... much of what you do relies on your good word.
I think we can expect not to be recorded for later search and retrieval at every turn - that's a reasonable expectation that exists today.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/Mort-ZA/
@MortNZ
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Google glass is that software though. It's the whole basis of the product. The largest search engine in the works is making a huge move into visual and audio searching, and that plus cameras feeding information directly to Google is the issue. The goverent can record me 24 hours a day. I don't really care. I don't care about random people filming me on the street either. What makes me uncomfortable is all those videos going to Google, who will make them searchable by name.
"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