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Privacy in the world of [Google Glass] and wearable computing . . . and wifi, apparently
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All the phone recordings will just go to youtube anyway... which is functionally the same
The software side I can understand being problematic, but at the same time awesome for other uses.
There were just quite a few posts talking about being recorded all the time, and where these should be banned etc. that seems a bit too focused on one product amongst a sea of others. (Plus I don't think most of the times I've been recorded was the Government. It's mostly private companies)
I'm wondering how people are going to be streaming all this video information to Google though.
My cell data plan is limited, slow and expensive. Public WiFi is only periodically available, and tends to be slow and limited as well. Maybe it stores everything and uploads it once you're home? But that gives the user more control and I don't see why they would.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/Mort-ZA/
@MortNZ
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Hardly. Searching someone's name does not yield YouTube videos they appear in. It's the software, not the hardware, that is the game changer.
"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
And my grandpa couldn't imagine that he'd live his last years anywhere but his farm, which is now sold & gone. Social norms don't yield at the boundaries of current imaginations.
Computing is becoming mobile. I don't like that, but I also don't pretend that it's a 'privacy issue' or whatever that's causing me to dislike the new trend - I dislike it because, well, it just makes me uncomfortable.
Pinhole cameras that could be reliably used for surveillance without your consent have been available & in use since the cold war. Privacy has never been as sacrosanct as you seem to want to believe, even if it's now being further crowded-out by smartphones, smartglasses, smartwatches, smartascotts, etc. Maybe in the future all of the school hallway & office sex scandal gossip will be accompanied with high definition video & images. Extra scandalous! There's a lot of potential headache there in terms of law enforcement / legislation for say, child pornography, but a total crisis in privacy seems pretty unlikely in a world already full of bullshit gossip, rumors & obsession with popularity.
In your own example, with a woman from a given business going to an illicit club, how is this a new problem? Walls have ears, people almost always find out, and Google Glasses are hardly necessary for creating the drama, sexual blackmailing, etc.
My TV has WiFi.
For some reasons this bothers me.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/Mort-ZA/
@MortNZ
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
My data plan is fast as fuck and ubiquitous. It tethers wifi at the rare places where I can't get it for free, and I can stream effortlessly.
We've already had an instance of a company storing and sending back location data in secret (Apple) - this will be blatant. It's going to be almost instant that your face is matched to your own Glass ID and your standard location map. Google Now is already building an impressive (and useful) predictive map of the places I go and the union of all this data is going to lead to some extremely detailed information about the life and movements of a large part of the population.
In Britain, they cover London with CCTV - here in the USA, we're crowdsourcing this shit and happily paying for the privilege. And don't get me wrong - I'm buying Glass as soon as its available.
The difference is ubiquity. Now, the odds of someone seeing you in those situations are probably low (assuming you are trying to avoid running into people you know). Contrast the post-Glass world where people can find video of you no matter what to or they are doing just by searching your name. In this world, if I was the business woman I question, I would not dance. And that is a terrible outcome.
"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
Every incremental step is worth examining. Google glasses are an incremental loss of privacy. They don't do anything new, but they do it in a new way that is easier and more pervasive.
Then you and your friends hang out. They check you out with their sweet glasses, then you use your cease and desist app to send one to all the results.
Im no lawyer so feel free to correct my assumptions.
You are totally wrong.
Click here for a horrible H/A thread with details.
Because of the camera strapped to the face or the software?
Sorry if these questions seem redundant. I feel that we should have different words to differentiate between the two aspects being discussed here.
Edit: Also, totally jealous of Spool's connectivity.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/Mort-ZA/
@MortNZ
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
people have a right to their own image, yes
mostly a right to prevent others from making money from it. sharing on fb? grey area
If it is all uploaded to youtube, wouldnt it depend on their terms of use?
Sharing to facebook or wherever, probably not a cease and desist, but they already have tools to get things of you taken down. Video hosting seems like it depends who it goes through
Without being a goose, could you explain? Not much of a discussion otherwise
And neither will it yield glass recordings
Basically it comes down to
- image processing to associate video, pictures to a name
- ubiquity of recording devices
Are you complaining about one, both, or the combination? Because anyone with sufficient processing power could already do this on existing videos
I mean, if you really think this is going to happen, then you also think that your google+ account and gmail will also be searchable right? Google actually takes user privacy pretty seriously
edit: Also, keep in mind that the software you're talking about does not currently exist, AFAIK
Basically, what this is doing is turning real life into the internet, so you will need a face alias for every place you go in real life.
Tell me you do not have a problem with this when someone with Space Kung Fu Man's social beliefs decides not to hire you based on a picture of you in a theater with your hat on.
Privacy concerns are not about people "feeling bad," humans are shitty and this tech will not make them any less so, just give more opportunities to judge and punish those who do things you do not like.
Could you site something? Wikipedia says I can photograph anyone in public I want, unless there is a local law about the issue(and those listed are only for profession works). I am the copyright owner of legal photographs I take.
Click here for a horrible H/A thread with details.
This is certainly the case with the police in most (if not all) States. You don't need their consent to record an officer conducting a traffic stop in front of your house.
It will be way more effective once they have eye tracking integrated, but you'll still turn you head to look at something that is really effective.
edit:OOOOOhhhh..... they can could even cobble it together with all the shit people buy. If they leave them on at home, they could even tell how quickly they used it. So, like, they could totally track cradle to grave purchase decisions. That's fucking hot.
Click here for a horrible H/A thread with details.
Do you know how much battery constant recording and uploading would consume? There isn't even enough space for your typical cellphone battery
Actually, that's a good point.
I was thinking in terms of bandwidth, which might not be a thing in certain areas (I wonder how wide spread good coverage is though)
But yeah, downloading my podcasts (i.e. doesn't use the screen) actually drains my phone battery relatively fast.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/Mort-ZA/
@MortNZ
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
It isn't one thing. It isn't even the cymureent version of glass. It is the combination of ubiquitous video, that video running through the servers of a search giant with tremendous computing power, and the image based search that powers glass. Any one of these things might not be a big deal, but combine them all and you have a recipe for a major shift in what is private vs public over time.
"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
As Google Glass moves nearer to our eager eyes, we're hearing more about the ways in which we might be able to use the augmented reality specs. The latest? Digitally identifying people by what they're wearing.
The app, named InSight, uses an algorithm that matches people against a pre-taken photo, taking into account the distribution of colours and patterns in their clothing and accessories. A bit like facial-recognition, but on a more complex level.
http://m.techradar.com/news/portable-devices/other-devices/how-google-glass-will-identify-your-friends-in-a-crowd-1136323
This is how it starts. Give it a few generations, and you'll have accurate recognition based on images available online. That's where it gets scary.
"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 also not actually part of Glass itself, but an app you can download, so "powers glass" is completely misleading
edit: If google were to do this (and keep in mind this isn't actually google doing it), it would pull your friends off your G+ to recognize them... and that's about it. Not every person you meet, not strangers
Google is creating a searchable image database with glass. It's necessary to do augmented reality. A lot of it will be cool, like apps that tell you about paintings, comparison shopping apps, etc., but eventually, google glass will make google goggles a major search paradigm. Like I said, it isn't one thing, and isn't glass now. It's the promise of the tech in google's hands that gives me pause.
"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'll happen anyway though. Google is doing it with Glass at motivation, but the benefits are going to hit every smartphone on the planet and that's the rub. Always recording is asking the wrong question - if you can identify people by faces in a crowd, then any given smartphone image is going to hit, what, 80% of that crowd? Hell at major events everyone has their smartphones out and recording anyway - which is what powered the whole reddit boston bomber thing (which is still blaming the wrong people IMO anyway - the real issue is the newspapers who ran it as front page material).
A lot of the concerns I see people raising are largely to do with things which are already a problem anyway - the idea of being ID'd from your online photos has always been a problem if you choose to see it that way. If you have someone's name - and you probably do since it's a standard way we greet people - then you can get any photo of them easily enough. Plug existing online photo to online image search, and you've already accomplished what people are fearful of with Glass for some reason.
Google Glass without the magic search engine is just a camera and tiny screen attached to your face. There are potential issues with this sure, as has been touched upon earlier, but it's not the end of privacy as we know it.
The face recognition engine without Google Glass is almost just as powerful. There's already tons of photos and info about you online. And 99.9% of it won't be gathered by Google Glass.
Honestly, combining the two doesn't seem that much more crazy than magic search engine+Phone.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/Mort-ZA/
@MortNZ
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
That's what the microfermenter is for, so it can convert blood sugars into ethanol and top up it's fuel cells.
Yeah, a bunch of people seem to want to say it's either about
A. The fact that the glasses are worn, which is moot since stuff like that already exists without Earth turning in to a horrific dystopia.
B. The eventual software which would allow it all to be more easily searched through which isn't actually related to wearable computers. That software will eventually exist one day. Having a camera on your glasses isn't going to what makes it suddenly more viable given the multitude of constant recording done in public already.
There is a question of scale, and that question isn't irrelevant.
The printing press didn't make books bigger, it made more of them.
Plenty.
"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
Google image search(dealie where you search, by text, for images) already has, what, several billion tagged images?
This will be more data, but I don't know if it really is all that important to google. Pretty much every term you search for is going to return thousands of images. I mean, they are already looking at pretty much every image that gets uploaded to the internet. That's a fuck load.
Click here for a horrible H/A thread with details.
But glass seems to be the device that will drive widespread use of image based search, to me at least. Soft keyboards didn't need to be that good when all phones has qwerty keyboards, then touch only phones took over and that input method improved dramatically. Now that we have a device that has no input methods other than a camera, GPS/accelometer and a microphone, so if this takes off, it stands to reason that camera based input will improve to meet usage demand.
"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
When my dad built our 286, I was one of the first and only kids in my school to have a computer. I was the first kid in my school (as far as I know) to have internet access. I was the IT department at my high school - everyone came to me if they wanted to know how to use Napster / burn an mp3 onto a CD, or they were having problems with their computer or printer...I had (or at least really wanted) all the electronic toys.
Somewhere, I turned into a bit of a luddite. I mean - I've spent a significant portion of the past 20+ years in front of a CRT or flat screen. I've traveled the internet and all of that. But...other than a cheap pre-paid phone in 2001 my parents bought me because I was driving across the wilderness of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, I didn't own a cell or have a plan until the end of 2006. I only upgraded to a smart phone because I wanted to play angry birds on the shitter. I've never had a Facebook account, and am only on Google+ because it's a free way for my phone to automatically upload pictures I take of my daughter.
When I think about it, Google Glass + a smartphone are everything I ever wanted - augmented reality, always-on high speed internet, the works. And all I can think about is how easily it could be abused. Not that it will really affect me - I'm about as boring and normal as it gets. But I think about how - if Google Glass becomes ubiquitous, we are voluntarily putting ourselves in a world that's Stasi's wet dream - a world Orwell couldn't even have imagined. I think how great it is in a benevolent society, but I think about how badly this technology could be abused by governments and corporations that have existed - not just in my lifetime, but currently exist today.
I know there isn't anything particularly special about Google Glass - the novel stuff is on the back-end, but the hardware is stuff that could be bought (although expensive) off the shelf for a decade plus.
And hell - maybe instead of being worried about the corporation using Google Glass to bust unions, or political parties to tar and feather their opponents, ubiquitous and full time recording will be used by whistleblowers to identify companies that intentionally violate regulations, or corrupt government officials. Maybe this will answer the 'who will watch the watchers' question...and the answer will be 'everyone'. Maybe it will be a good thing.
But you know what, things are new and scary, and get off my lawn.
Sort of what I'm talking about. Google uses wifi mapping to improve location and mapping services. This inadvertently resulted in them collecting data from people's wifi networks, in cases where those people were broadcasting those networks unencrypted into public space. They never looked at or wanted or used any of this data, they never hung out at anyone's house collecting data for any period of time other than what was necessary for their mapping services. They were just capturing wifi packets so that devices could use wifi SSIDs to assist in GPS location. But politicians smelled blood (money) in the water. You make it sound as if Google implemented some sort of malicious spying project, but there was never any evidence that it was anything but incidental, unintended, and explainable.
Care to explain your statement at all, or are you just hoping you could toss it out and people would accept the sensationalized headline version? Look, Google is the new Microsoft. Governments here and particularly in Europe are going to use any law they can to bleed them of any money they can get. Don't assume it's the courageous government fighting the evil corporation.
I generally take this sort of optimistic viewpoint of any new technology, particulary any technology that isn't primarily intended for killing people. It's ultimately a tool that allows people to do more. And people are generally more good than they are bad. So the goods of the use of the technology will outweigh the bads. It doesn't mean we sit back and do nothing. Maybe there is regulation that needs to be considered. But at this point I mainly see politicians just wanting to stick their hands in Google's pockets, and using privacy fears because "omg privacy" is one of the most meaningless and yet powerful political angles one can work.
But just so I'm clear, is the primary fear here that a stranger approaching you on the street will, through facial recognition and image search and social media, be able to know a lot about you by the time they are within personal space? I think that might be a good reason to implement some sort of blanket protection for children, perhaps in the form of making it illegal to cache any facial recognition data about a minor.