“This is just the beginning,” said Timothy Toohey, a Los Angeles lawyer
specializing in privacy issues. “Google Glass is going to cause quite a
brawl.”
As personal technology becomes increasingly nimble and invisible, Glass
is prompting questions of whether it will distract drivers, upend
relationships and strip people of what little privacy they still have in
public.
A pair of lens-less frames with a tiny computer attached to the right earpiece, Glass is promoted by Google
as “seamless and empowering.” It will have the ability to capture any
chance encounter, from a celebrity sighting to a grumpy salesclerk, and
broadcast it to millions in seconds.
“We are all now going to be both the paparazzi and the paparazzi’s
target,” said Karen L. Stevenson, a lawyer with Buchalter Nemer in Los
Angeles.
Google stresses that Glass is a work in progress, with test versions now
being released to 2,000 developers. Another 8,000 “explorers,” people
handpicked by Google, will soon get a pair.
Among the safeguards to make it less intrusive: you have to speak or
touch it to activate it, and you have to look directly at someone to
take a photograph or video of them.
“We are thinking very carefully about how we design Glass because new
technology always raises new issues,” said Courtney Hohne, a Google
spokeswoman.
Developers, however, are already cracking the limits of Glass. One
created a small sensation in tech circles last week with a program that
eliminated the need for gestures or voice commands. To snap a picture,
all the user needs to do is wink.
The 5 Point Cafe, a Seattle dive bar, was apparently the first to
explicitly ban Glass. In part it was a publicity stunt — extremely
successful, too, as it garnered worldwide attention — but the bar’s
owner, Dave Meinert, said there was a serious side. The bar, he said, was “kind of a private place.”
The legislators in West Virginia were not joking at all. The state
banned texting while driving last year but hands-free devices are
permitted. That left a loophole for Google Glass. The legislation
was introduced too late to gain traction before the most recent session
ended, but its sponsor says he is likely to try again.
In Las Vegas, a Caesars Entertainment spokesman noted that computers and
recording devices were prohibited in casinos. “We will not allow people
to wear Glass while gambling or attending our shows,” he said.
Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren famously noted
in 1890 that “numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the
prediction that ‘what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed
from the house-tops.’ ”
Glass is arriving just as the courts, politicians, privacy advocates,
regulators, law enforcement and tech companies are once again arguing
over the boundaries of technology in every walk of life.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted last month to require law
enforcement to have a warrant to access e-mail, not just a subpoena. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation’s use of devices that mimic cellphone
towers to track down criminals is being challenged in an Arizona case. A California district court recently ruled that private messages on social media were protected without a warrant.
“Google Glass will test the right to privacy versus the First
Amendment,” said Bradley Shear, a social media expert at George
Washington University.
Google has often been at the forefront of privacy issues. In 2004, it
began a free e-mail service, making money by generating ads against the
content. Two dozen privacy groups protested. Regulators were urged to
investigate whether eavesdropping laws were being violated.
For better or worse, people got used to the idea, and the protests
quickly dissipated. Gmail now has over 425 million users. In a more
recent episode, the company’s unauthorized data collection during its
Street View mapping project prompted government investigations in a
dozen countries.
Like many Silicon Valley companies, Google takes the attitude that
people should have nothing to hide from intrusive technology.
“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you
shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” said Eric Schmidt, then
Google’s chief executive, in 2009.
Glass is a major step in Google’s efforts to diversify beyond search,
and potentially an extremely lucrative move. Piper Jaffray, an analyst
firm, estimates that wearable technology and another major initiative,
self-driving cars, could ultimately be a $500 billion opportunity for
the company. In the shorter term, IHS, a forecasting firm, estimates
that shipments of smart glasses, led by Google Glass, could be as high
as 6.6 million in three years.
Thad Starner, a pioneer of wearable computing who is a technical adviser
to the Glass team, says he thinks concerns about disruption are
overblown.
“Asocial people will be able to find a way to do asocial things with
this technology, but on average people like to maintain the social
contract,” Mr. Starner said. He added that he and colleagues had
experimented with Glass-type devices for years, “and I can’t think of a
single instance where something bad has happened.”
An incident at a Silicon Valley event shows, however, the way the
increasing ease in capturing a moment can lead to problems — even if
unintentionally.
Adria Richards, who worked for the Colorado e-mail company SendGrid, was
offended by the jokes two men were cracking behind her at the PyCon
developers conference. She posted a picture of them on Twitter with the
mildly reproving comment, “Not cool.”
One of the men, who has not been identified, was immediately fired by his employer, PlayHaven. “There is another side to this story,” he wrote on a hacking site,
saying it was barely one lame sexual joke. “She gave me no warning, she
smiled while she snapped the pic and sealed my fate,” he complained.
Critics lashed out at Ms. Richards, using language much more offensive
than the two men used. SendGrid was hacked. The company dismissed Ms.
Richards, saying there was such an uproar over her conduct, it “put our business in danger.”
“I don’t think anyone who was part of what happened at PyCon that day
could possibly have imagined how this issue would have exploded into the
public consciousness
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