A new hate crime

[the_leander]

Well, that's the real crime right there!!

But seriously, a guy comes in wearing an obvious surveillance device and sounding like an American in FRANCE! What do you expect to happen? It wouldn't have happened with a leg or a hand but something looking like home-made spy glasses ... people get touchy about being filmed.

It does pose some very interesting questions about the future of privacy however: Consider if these or some other device becomes advanced and reliable enough that they become available to the blind (or even to seeing people, who just want to upgrade), given the interconnected nature of things, will these newly seeing people be barred from places that ban recording gear?

Ghost In The Shell ftw (btw there is apparently a new one comming out soon).

 

[Glaucus]

No, not that - but I think that a man who seems American, home of the "freedom fries" which still rankles with the "cheese eating surrender monkeys" and the currently much discussed NSA, might be unwelcome showing up kitted out with a camera.

Perhaps, and if that's the case, you gotta admit there's a super-sized order of irony to go along with that, being the store is McDonalds - an American super-multi-national.

 

[Glaucus]

It does pose some very interesting questions about the future of privacy however: Consider if these or some other device becomes advanced and reliable enough that they become available to the blind (or even to seeing people, who just want to upgrade), given the interconnected nature of things, will these newly seeing people be barred from places that ban recording gear?

Like locker rooms? Yep, that day is coming. People won't like it but it's coming anyway. I imagine the best way to cope with that is to just pre-empt it all with sexting!

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

being the store is McDonalds

The food is not so great but the have the best wi-fi. When we were in Paris a couple of years ago we had to go for fries every two days just to get net.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Like locker rooms? Yep, that day is coming. People won't like it but it's coming anyway. I imagine the best way to cope with that is to just pre-empt it all with sexting!

People don't seem to mind that their phones are spying on everything they do - will they mind it if their eyes are too?

 

[cecilia]

People see phones differently - because they are phones - and the internet etc. However, if you are actually holding your phone in such a way as it would seem you are recording people, they will get touchy about it. If you've got an obvious camera on your head that is assumed to be always filming people ... well, I'd be surprised that this is the first time he got such a reaction.

Plus, just looking at the picture there is no obvious way to see that the thing is permanently attached to his head, it would go against expectation that it would because who would do that? Glasses come off, even hearing aids come off.

oh, baloney. The guy walked in with his family. did they think he was going to make some 007 moves? and he had an explanation (his documentation)

but the thing that REALLY pisses me off is why do some people think it's ok to invade another person's personal space? it doesn't matter if the glasses are removable or not. You don't touch another person without asking. It's like those assholes in FL who think it's hunky dory to follow a stranger. These people are mentally ill.

I'd never set foot in a macCRAP's and now I'll make a very wide berth around the block to avoid this loathsome place

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

but the thing that REALLY pisses me off is why do some people think it's ok to invade another person's personal space?

Which is what filming people without their permission can feel like. Is it OK to film someone who doesn't want to be filmed? If you were filming in a public place and someone objected to being filmed what do you say? "It's a free country" or "you can move, can't you?" ... because if someone who is already there, or who can't leave, feels uncomfortable about being filmed by you and you don't stop then you are being a dick and invading someone else's "personal space".

Now, how is anyone supposed to know the difference between someone with a surgically implanted device who is doing research and won't be keeping images for nefarious purposes (something that you would not likely have had any reason to believe exists up to this point) and some a-hole with weird spy glasses and a note he could have written himself saying that he couldn't take them off.

(Besides, it's quite clear that the device is capable of storing images and by the look of the images shown, if these are just images buffered for processing, it looks like processing takes an extremely long time).

The thing is, the article postulates that this is some new sort of hate crime but it's not. People with hearing aids and prosthetic limbs don't get kicked out of McDonald's, but people with cameras can provoke reactions from the people they are filming and that is an old story. If this guy as just walking around filming people all day and at one point in his trip some folks objected and when he wouldn't stop filming them they had grabbed the camera that would still have been an "incident" with possible charges arising though it's quite likely that a restaurant manager would appear justified in acting this way if he had received complaints from patrons. The only thing really new here is that this guy screwed his camera to his head so it couldn't be taken off. What if I got a video camera and attached it permanently to my hand and had my arm bolted so it was always holding the camera up. If some guy asked me to stop filming him and I told him that I couldn't and for the reasons just mentioned, wouldn't that be provocative? If someone gave that excuse to you wouldn't you be tempted to just take the camera out of their hand? If you tried to, is that assault?

Personally I don't think the "hate-crime" thing stands up, and while the situation was uncomfortable and regrettable and got out of hand, I don't feel it's fair to get hyperbolic about this. Augmediated reality isn't really about helping people "see better", it's about augmenting what is visible with things that aren't - like adding GPS data, image and facial recognition, etc. Google glass will have the same issues, but people can take those off if asked by a citizen or a manager of an establishment.