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Seattle Bar Owner Bans Google Glass, In Advance
An anonymous reader writes "A popular Seattle bar and restaurant has posted a notice on its Facebook page warning patrons that wearing Google Glass will not be tolerated. 'Ass kicking will be encouraged for violators,' wrote Dave Meinert, owner of the 5 Point Cafe, perhaps in a mock aggressive tone. GeekWire reports that Meinert raised privacy concerns in an interview with a local radio station: 'People want to go there and be not known and definitely don't want to be secretly filmed or videotaped and immediately put on the Internet.' A subsequent FB post includes more Meinert musings on Google Glass: 'They are really just the new fashion accessory for the fanny pack & never removed Bluetooth headset wearing set,' along with unflattering photos of a pair of early adopters."
And it's my right to take my business elsewhere.
Given the desire to record 24/7 with devices like Google Glass etc, I fully understand the decision, and even support it.
It's one thing if someone hauls up a phone and snaps a couple of pictures or a short video clip, but recording video and audio constantly, that's a big Asshole act...
On a related note, isn't it funny to see how some geeks who complain about having their privacy violated actually want to do the whole "record everything 24/7", not thinking about the privacy of those they meet?
There are degrees of private and public.
Just because I'm out in public doesn't mean that you should have the right to record everything I'm doing. It just means that I should expect for other people to see me in public. But keeping records of what I'm doing in a surreptitious manner is a completely different matter.
Why PlusFiveTroll is modded up is beyond me. There is a *HUGE* difference between wearing a rude headset and recording/sharing/analyzing/uploading everything seen and heard possibly 100% of the time with Big Brother vs. people taking out a cell phone and snapping a few photos or video clips every now and then.
Plus, I think you need to examine what you think it "private". Would it be OK for someone you don't know and didn't ask and possibly even wasn't aware of to record you in your back yard? In your car? At a picnic in a park? At your table in a restaurant? In a public bathroom? In your house sitting at a window?
I'm sorry, but I TOTALLY agree with the Bar owner's advance ban. It is one thing to give away your own privacy... and quite another to violate the privacy of everyone around you all the time. Times are changing for sure, but sometimes things move too quickly. People are already rude and discourteous enough with damn phones... this is going to be a thousand times worse.
I haven't decided what I think of Google glasses, but I expect people's reactions to them to resemble a moral panic or neo-ludditism. Surreptitious recording devices are pretty old technology at this point, and they've been available to the general public for years.
Now, look at the Google Glass website:
How to get one
The picture doesn't show a surreptitious recording device, it shows a pretty obvious recording device. I would probably only wear something like this in a situation where I wanted to take video, but I suppose some folks will wear them all the time. In which case, post a sign like they have at your friendly neighborhood Swingers Club and be done with it. (Again, why get hostile about a video camera just because it can be worn on someones face. The time to get upset about ubiquitous video cameras was when they started including them in cell phones, but I'm afraid that ship has sailed. Or perhaps back when they started selling small video cameras to the general public, but that ship sailed an even longer time ago.)
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
What you're suggesting is that stalking ought to be legal. It's one thing to take a couple pictures of somebody in public or to record them as part of the background and completely something else to have long systemized accounts of what people are doing via hidden cameras.
The rulings that established precedent were done during a time when it was costly to have small cameras with large amount of storage capacity and where the internet wasn't yet fast enough to allow for widespread sharing. And where one was likely to be able to see the people doing the recording.
In the past it wasn't an issue, now it is, it wasn't possible to accumulate much data from this in most cases because the processing power available to your average person was miniscule and one didn't have the ability to cross reference huge troves of data.
But, just because you're in a public place does not grant permission to take the photos of people, especially not if you're using hidden cameras or are taking photos in places where people don't expect to have their images taken.
In short that's bullshit right there.
Citation please. If there are cameras, those are publicly visible and there's likely a notice stating that there's surveilance. The tapes themselves are likely only viewed by security and even then most of what's on there gets discarded within a couple months.
The notice that there is surveillance alone reduces expectation of privacy to zero.
It may be their internal policy to destroy tapes and restrict who can view them. But you as a customer have no ability to rely on that, because they didn't sign an agreement with you that that's what they do.
They might use the tapes of hidden and visible cameras and microphones for any permissible business purpose -- up to and including, employee training; performance reviews; identifying customer behaviors; publicity/public relations purposes (such as advertising).
What they will do in fact, is probably just maintain an archive of footage, to review in case of theft or damage is later discovered, or police come with a warrant to review/seize video footage.
However, that doesn't eliminate the privacy reduction at all. The bar's management can change their policy in any way they see fit at any time