Folks:
I’m interested to find out what people think are the most interesting legal and social issues raised by Google Glass. Here are a few that I will put forward for to get the (comment) discussion started….
1) Distracted Drivers. Will states ban wearing Google Glass because drivers might be watching Bugs Bunny instead of paying attention to the road? Will self-driving cars that can manage to stay in a freeway lane and crawl along at 10 mph or Google Glass catch on faster?
2) What if there is an accident and one driver captured it all on video with Google Glass? Will a court prefer to watch the video rather than listen to eyewitness testimony? If so, is that really a change from a lot of court proceedings currently where surveillance video is a factor? (Many other kinds of litigation also depend on notoriously unreliable eyewitnesses and/or biased witnesses.)
3) Does this relate to or conflict with state laws against audio/video recording without other folks’ consent? Will it become legal to walk around recording everything but the recordings can’t be admitted in court? Will states require Glass wearers to mount a huge red tally light on top of their heads to inform the public that a recording is being made?
4) What about laws preventing citizens from taking pictures? There are “no photography” signs at various places, e.g., in the TSA security lines at airports. The government also harasses people who take pictures of buildings occupied by government workers, e.g., this guy who was questioned in 2007 for an example. Will it become illegal to walk through the airport wearing Google Glass? What if you have a vision disability (e.g., 20/200 vision) and those are your only eyeglasses? Would it violate the Americans with Disability Act for the government to make you grope around blindly because they were worried that you might take a picture without holding a camera? Or will the government force Google to add a database of geographic locations that cannot be photographed and prevent any open-source or third party software being installed on the device that would circumvent the database of locations where Google Glass will refuse to record?
5) Finally, what about fraternity parties? If the sorority members show up wearing Google Glass will the Animals have to be removed from Animal House?
Interesting questions. One minor point: TSA does not prohibit photography at security checkpoints.
http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-information/taking-pictures-checkpoint
There are plenty of incidents where the people on duty apparently don’t know of or follow that policy.
The proper way to drive is with a properly installed heads up display, not with a jerry-built (what a horribly stupid phrase) heads up display cobbled out of google glass, which should be saved for non driving uses.
Besides, it’s not clear yet in the long run that google glasses will be “wearable” in their current incarnation.
Apparently, soldiers outfitted with LandWarrior pretty much hated the thing due to having to focus in two different places at the same time.
*Gargoyles are no fun to talk to. They never finish a sentence. They are adrift in a laser-drawn world, scanning retinas in all directions, doing background checks on everyone within a thousand yards, seeing everything in visual light, infrared, millimeter-wave radar, and ultrasound all at once. You think they’re talking to you, but they’re actually poring over the credit record of some stranger on the other side of the room, or identifying the make and model of airplanes flying overhead. For all he knows, Lagos is standing there measuring the length of Hiro’s cock through his trousers while they pretend to make conversation.*
Have you seen Russian dash cam videos? Here’s a link describing the reasons people make them: http://www.animalnewyork.com/2012/russian-dashcam/
Glass doesn’t currently do continuous recording like a dash cam, but I agree that it’s likely to happen. I’d hope that the video is admissible. (Perhaps Glass could be continuously filling a 60-second buffer that you can elect to record after the fact, to make it more like a dash cam.)
Perhaps it would depend on how quickly society internalizes the idea that these glasses can record video. In a “two-party consent” state like MA, the crime would be to *secretly* record a conversation — in the recent Glik case, the wiretapping charge against him for recording police at work was thrown out because he made no effort to hide the fact that he was recording video using his cellphone.
At some point people didn’t know that cellphones recorded video, and then they did, and presumably around that time it became legal to use cellphones to record everything in public. Seems like the same social+legal change should happen in the case of Glass, eventually.
Glik: http://aclum.org/glik
I think the biggest issue is how Glass will affect “everyone else” – that is, not the person wearing Glass but all the people around him. As happy as I am for the guy who can read Twitter without the herculean effort of pulling out his cell phone, really I’m more concerned for all the people whose actions, words, and images are being recorded – without their permission – and sent to Google for indexing and storage. I expanded on the point here –
http://creativegood.com/blog/the-google-glass-feature-no-one-is-talking-about/
P.S. For kicks you might also check out Julian Assange’s piece on Google, and Glass, in today’s NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/the-banality-of-googles-dont-be-evil.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
I personally don’t feel I live in a better world with Google Glass in it.
I find myself thankful that at least the semipro street photographers’ 4-800mm tele’s look like a rocket launcher.
I will point out there are no shortage of creepy guys taking pictures of pretty girls on the street while pretending to use their iPhone. I’ve seen it done on the subway.
Google is mainly in the business of nerds making products for nerds, but even the most aspergian hacker realizes the need for a recording light, and indeed, Glass has one. These should be required by law, and I will expect it will become socially unacceptable to obscure/minimize them.
I’ve been wearing my Glass around quite a lot.
1. Distracted driving with Glass does not seem to be a real problem. The device is not designed for and not good for watching video or generally consuming any sort of content. If anything, I am more tempted to glance at my iPhone than up at the Glass display.
2. I hope that Glass video is admissible and can be used as defense in court. However, since Glass doesn’t have the battery, the capacity, or the design to make continuous recording, this is moot. Dashcams are the relevant technology for this, not Glass.
3. Don’t know, but also don’t see how this is different from taking pictures and video/audio recording with phones or SLRs. If you wanted some sort of surreptitious recording device, various inconspicuous spy cams and microphones would be hugely better. The point of Glass is a combination of first-person view, retinal projection, touch, and smartphone integration.
4. I imagine it’ll be like phones and other cameras: possession is OK, use to take pictures isn’t.
5. Glass seems to be seriously socially intimidating for people interacting with me. Taking pictures or videos at parties is pretty obvious to anyone who knows how it works, and any use is generally noticed. It doesn’t make people avoid conversation, and, in fact, the opposite. I’ve never been to a fraternity party, so no idea there.
Have you used Glass for any period of time? If not, I’d be happy to let you see how it isn’t the invasion of cyborgs people seem to expect it to be.
It’s a pair of sunglasses that let you check the time, get directions, or snap and share cell phone pics without reaching for your phone.
@Stanislav – sounds like Glass works well for your needs! Great. But again the challenge is to think about it from the perspective of people who *aren’t* wearing Glass, how that affects their lives. In the London Review of Books recently, author/journalist John Lanchester put it this way:
“At the end of an hour’s general chat in a newspaper office the other day, the conversation turned to Glass, and we all replayed the talk in our heads, editing out the bits we wouldn’t have said if it had been possible someone present had been recording everything. The conclusion was we’d have managed about five minutes’ small talk about the weather, followed by a 55-minute silence.”
(Source: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n10/john-lanchester/short-cuts )
As for surreptitious recording devices, they certainly exist elsewhere – but there’s obviously a categorical difference here, as Google intends to sell millions of these items, with audio & video footage going back to their cloud storage. A spycam here or there is not equivalent to a panopticon of millions of Glasses feeding private data back to Google.
So far, from the testimony I’ve read, the most interesting legal issue is that legislators think they’ll be able to control what software runs on Google Glass, or Google Glass like devices.