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Creepier By The Minute: Google Glass Will Identify People By Clothing Choices

macgasm.net

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Re: Creepier By The Minute: Google Glass Will Identify People By Clothing Choices

#11

Post by beatpanda »

Who's working on technology like this, and why? And why isn't it self-evidently bad to the people working on it?

I think a code of professional ethics around software engineering is long past due. Journalists started doing this in the 20s[1] after a series of events, including the Spanish-American war, made the awful potential of ethical lapses in journalism obvious to everyone.[2]

We can't continue to maintain the reflexive belief that technology is neutral and is only dangerous depending on how it's used. At some point people have to be willing to refuse to work on certain things because of the obvious social implications those things would have.

I don't know how anybody could be working on things like lethal drones, facial recognition, locked bootloaders, deep packet inspection, or other freedom-reducing technology without considering the consequences of their work.

And I recognize that not everybody thinks the technologies I mentioned above are categorically wrong, but it'd be cool to start a conversation to draw lines about what is.

1. http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp 2. Spare me, I know the profession isn't perfect and ethical lapses still abound, but at least we have some way of knowing when an ethical standard has been broken.

Re: Creepier By The Minute: Google Glass Will Identify People By Clothing Choices

#12

Post by beatpanda »

aviraldg wrote: post #4

I don't think this is creepy at all - in fact, this is how human vision works. Besides, the fact that the article's on a website called "Macgasm" doesn't lend much credence to the opinions expressed in it.

When I notice a stranger wearing a certain brand of shirt I don't walk up to them and start asking them if they want to buy an array of similar shirts from me and whip out a credit card reader. In what way is this "how human vision works"?

Re: Creepier By The Minute: Google Glass Will Identify People By Clothing Choices

#13

Post by nicholassmith »

abraininavat wrote: post #7

macgasm.net, huh? They'll think it's creepy until Apple comes out with the iGlasses five years later, and then it'll be revolutionary.

You do understand the reason most people think it's creepy isn't necessarily that it's recording, but that it's recording and sending video to a company who's had so many run in's with privacy laws and wants to store as much information on a person as possible? Right? Not everything is about Apple vs Google.

Re: Creepier By The Minute: Google Glass Will Identify People By Clothing Choices

#14

Post by eloisius »

beatpanda wrote: post #11

Who's working on technology like this, and why? And why isn't it self-evidently bad to the people working on it? I think a code of professional ethics around software engineering is long past due. Journalists started doing this in the 20s[1] after a series of events, including the Spanish-American war, made the awful potential of ethical lapses in journalism obvious to everyone.[2] We can't continue to maintain the r…

What's wrong with facial recognition? It has numerous positive uses. Automatically annotating family photo albums being one, trivial example.

Even "lethal" drones--it's not like there's one software developer who makes LethalDrone OS. There are many components to it that have very positive possibilities, for example auto stabilizing flight controls, which can and will end up being used in search and rescue drones.

Re: Creepier By The Minute: Google Glass Will Identify People By Clothing Choices

#15

Post by JonnieCache »

Maybe in the future there will be communities set up in secluded locations where stuff like this is banned.

I'd love to live in a small town where everything from mobile phones onwards had to be left at the gate.

Of course you then have all the usual monocultural problems with gated communities.

Like people have said, we're already all watched by CCTV anyway, especially here, so if I really cared I'd be looking for that community already.

Re: Creepier By The Minute: Google Glass Will Identify People By Clothing Choices

#16

Post by nicholassmith »

ajross wrote: post #5

I understand the sentiment, but not really the direction of it. Why is Google Glass special here? We spend most of our public lives on CCTV already (seriously, we really do). Why is it more upsetting that normal people have access to this now instead of restaurants and stores and workplaces and public venues and... I'm not saying there's no privacy issue here. I'm saying this ship has sailed. Why pick on Google and n…

The big thing will be because CCTV is used (generally) to record video and store it for X months until it's taped over by the store, Google on the other hand is a datavore and will quite happily use the information in a completely different way to CCTV.

Re: Creepier By The Minute: Google Glass Will Identify People By Clothing Choices

#17

Post by beatpanda »

eloisius wrote: post #14
beatpanda wrote: post #11

Who's working on technology like this, and why? And why isn't it self-evidently bad to the people working on it? I think a code of professional ethics around software engineering is long past due. Journalists started doing this in the 20s[1] after a series of events, including the Spanish-American war, made the awful potential of ethical lapses in journalism obvious to everyone.[2] We can't continue to maintain the r…

What's wrong with facial recognition? It has numerous positive uses. Automatically annotating family photo albums being one, trivial example. Even "lethal" drones--it's not like there's one software developer who makes LethalDrone OS. There are many components to it that have very positive possibilities, for example auto stabilizing flight controls, which can and will end up being used in search and rescue drones.

And you're telling me at no point did any software engineer write the code that allows the pilot to fire a gun, or do calculations to account for the impact of "kickback" from firing a projectile on a drone's flight path, or...

Re: Creepier By The Minute: Google Glass Will Identify People By Clothing Choices

#18

Post by beatpanda »

eloisius wrote: post #14
beatpanda wrote: post #11

Who's working on technology like this, and why? And why isn't it self-evidently bad to the people working on it? I think a code of professional ethics around software engineering is long past due. Journalists started doing this in the 20s[1] after a series of events, including the Spanish-American war, made the awful potential of ethical lapses in journalism obvious to everyone.[2] We can't continue to maintain the r…

What's wrong with facial recognition? It has numerous positive uses. Automatically annotating family photo albums being one, trivial example. Even "lethal" drones--it's not like there's one software developer who makes LethalDrone OS. There are many components to it that have very positive possibilities, for example auto stabilizing flight controls, which can and will end up being used in search and rescue drones.

I'm also a litte perplexed about why anybody needs tagging in photos. If you take photos of your family, you already know who they are. Same thing with pictures of your friends. It seems like the only reason anybody uses tagging on Facebook is to alert their friends that they're in a photo.

To me, that use case for facial recognition always felt like a front. It's an edge case, used as a justification for technology where the base case is surveillance agencies using it to identify whoever they might be after in public.

Re: Creepier By The Minute: Google Glass Will Identify People By Clothing Choices

#19

Post by abraininavat »

nicholassmith wrote: post #13
abraininavat wrote: post #7

macgasm.net, huh? They'll think it's creepy until Apple comes out with the iGlasses five years later, and then it'll be revolutionary.

You do understand the reason most people think it's creepy isn't necessarily that it's recording, but that it's recording and sending video to a company who's had so many run in's with privacy laws and wants to store as much information on a person as possible? Right? Not everything is about Apple vs Google.

Oh, I'm sorry, I should have attributed a higher level of journalistic integrity to a site called macgasm.net

Re: Creepier By The Minute: Google Glass Will Identify People By Clothing Choices

#20

Post by ajross »

nicholassmith wrote: post #16
ajross wrote: post #5

I understand the sentiment, but not really the direction of it. Why is Google Glass special here? We spend most of our public lives on CCTV already (seriously, we really do). Why is it more upsetting that normal people have access to this now instead of restaurants and stores and workplaces and public venues and... I'm not saying there's no privacy issue here. I'm saying this ship has sailed. Why pick on Google and n…

The big thing will be because CCTV is used (generally) to record video and store it for X months until it's taped over by the store, Google on the other hand is a datavore and will quite happily use the information in a completely different way to CCTV.

CCTV is (and has been!) subject to virtually every abuse I can imagine Google Glass being used for. Glass will "generally" not be used for privacy invasion either, so I don't see how this logic works. (And the "won't be stored" point seems silly given that you can trivially store a surveillance camera record...). Obviously both can be abused. So why the one-sided outrage?
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