Google Glass Creepshots

Here’s a worrying look at the implications of Google Glass:

Anywhere you go in public – any store, any sidewalk, any bus or subway – you’re liable to be recorded: audio and video. Fifty people on the bus might be Glassless, but if a single person wearing Glass gets on, you – and all 49 other passengers – could be recorded. Not just for a temporary throwaway video buffer, like a security camera, but recorded, stored permanently, and shared to the world.

To expand what’s implicit here: creepshots will be getting worse. For somebody now to photograph you without your consent on the street, they at least have to

point a phone at you

. A year from now, you’ll never know if that guy is ‘just’ ogling you, or if he’s also videoing your body for the benefit of the seamier end of the internet.

And I don’t see anything we can do to stop it. Even if we make it illegal (I believe it may already be so, in Germany), the internet is still sufficiently anonymous for this to become commonplace.

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