Its a many way intersection with lots of choices on which way to go when it comes to technology. Since its normal that people want to visually document their own lives Google Glass is a natural outcome of culture and technology. Just banning a service or technology is like cutting off a cultural or technological foot so to speak. Its just a knee jerk reaction to something the we as a society do not understand.

The rules for privacy are still the same. If one is in a public area then there is no reason to expect privacy. There are likely certain civil and criminal law exceptions to photographing in public areas.

Like only photographing someone when they blow or pick their nose or scratch their ass. If such targeting is done in a way that intends to demean, blackmail or in some photographic way similar to libel or slander as applied to pictures/video this might have some legal traction. Also, stalking with or without a camera can be a crime so its hard to see what is the problem as there are already some legal remedies.

Private areas are a another matter. Public thoroughfares are historically a new development and it was inevitable that when traveling you wandered over private land many a time. There were no roads in most places. Only trails that followed passable routes not property lines. Parcels were on the average much larger in able to support animal grazing and farming. In the years following there was a long legal process of developing ingress and egress land easement rights and publicly owned roads.

Its probable that restaurants, clubs and private property owners would use a public notification sign to avoid whatever imaginary legal entanglements from such activities. The conflicts of photographing from public spaces and coincidental inclusions will be fun to see worked out in detail by the courts and legislation. Keeping in mind that just clicking a photo should never be a problem.

There might also be exceptions to posting a ‘no photo’ sign. In the same way Fair Use Rights apply to media this would naturally extend to documenting ones life photographically. What is news and journalistic intent? An accident, however embarrassing, is important to document? An event that affects culture and society itself is an important thing to document? A speech? An arrest or police action?

Would the person wearing/using such a life documentation tool like Google Glass or a life cam device be required to publicly display the device. Might a notice or light be required so that the person knows they are being recorded? There is legal precedence in this in that some states require a beeping sound to be played when anyone is recorded over the phone. A hidden camera is at the least… not polite.

Public land should always be open for photographic or video use without asking. It must be a default that its always OK but thats not the case already. Notices in US national parks like ?Filming and areas of the park require permission of the Park Ranger? kind of nonsense already exists. (Profiteering Idiots?) Of course there is a difference between one or two people filming for a documentary and a whole crew getting in the way of normal park operations.

Just like No Trespassing signs are placed on private property a No Photographing sign would also likely be applicable to the Google Glass and Life-Cam cultural path. No ‘moral panic’ is necessary. Since the White House Internet suggestion box is open to anything we will get more death star requests like this one?

Speaking of potential legislation it would be important for general public use that ?just taking a picture? does not become illegal. Its a natural thing to want to document or enshrine some event , place or people/groups/persons. Do not let natural everyday functions become illegal.

An example of how bad law/legislation can become an evil monster that allows private prisons and lawyers feed cannibalisticly off of a singled out class of people would be the drug laws (lets face it, who cares what good or bad habits you have) and copyright laws (wow. Didn’t we just have an article on how the blind support network was being targeted by the MPAA?). Each are a threat to culture and regulates opinions and habits of people/society based on some (likely religious and or profit motivated) targeted special interest written legislation.

So basically we have a freedom of expression argument with Google Glass and similar uses of low cost digital camera and storage technology. Hard to see what the problem is. Moral Panic? Its laughable. The right to do what we want, even if its dangerous, is a very American thing.

Once we have our life’s documentation by drawings, sound, photo or video how do we protect it? By full encryption of course. Encryption is the best way to put of a sign that the data is private. Everyone should do this because of the, most likely overly lax, privacy laws. There is now some legal precedence that protects this also.

Not covered is the fact that some will make publicly available their life cam data. What is needed is legislation that prevents any government from just copying that citizens private life.

Reactionary,

From AC. If we don’t stop regulating daily activities we might make gestures like pointing a finger at our heads and pulling the thumb trigger and saying ?bang!? illegal. Its already been singled out in a grade school event so its already a problem. It would really be nice to see some heads roll, so to speak, and pink slips issued to those directly involved and the administrators who allowed such an unhealthy/panicky environment to exist in the first place.