Lifelogging

Google Glass is getting a lot of stick in the press. Some think it's wonderful, others see it as a massive invasion of privacy. It's been called 'sousveillance', a term coined by Steve Mann of the University of Toronto. But many will not know that Mann has had something resembling Google Glass for years now.

I blog a lot about various subjects, some of which I'm maybe not qualified to talk about. But I do have a PhD in lifelogging and pervasive computing, so it's about time I said something on the subject of Google Glass and related technologies.

As previously mentioned, Glass is nothing new. It's in the news purely because it's a Google product. There are already many different 'sousveillance' devices, including the Microsoft Sensecam, the Vicon Revue (based on the Sensecam) and the Autographer, not to mention Imouto, the system I wrote myself. Heck, most cyclists I see on Southampton Common have cameras on their helmets, and there are stories in the national press about cyclists who have actually won court cases against discourteous drivers thanks to their video evidence. The only thing Google Glass brings to the table is a novel user interface. Or at least it would have done, had Steve Mann not invented it first.

So is Google Glass a privacy risk? Yes, but not in the way many think. The common fear is that there will be no privacy in a world where everyone has a video camera permanently tied to their head. This is a valid point, but hardly reminiscent of the bleak future painted by George Orwell in 1984. You will still have as much privacy as you always had, in environments controlled by you. Nobody is installing CCTV in your house. Don't forget that the second you step out of your front door and onto the public road, anyone can legally take your photo - at least in the UK. The sad fact is that if you're afraid of Google Glass, then you are very naive, as there are far worse things to be afraid of. Google Glass, and systems like it, do nothing that a normal phone or a cyclist's helmet camera isn't already doing.

But let's go back to those cyclists - I mentioned that cases have been won based on helmet camera evidence. Surely this is a good thing! In a world full of government and private sector CCTV cameras over which you have no control, sousveillance technologies tip the balance of power back to the individual. Let's imagine you're accused of a burglary because the police have grainy CCTV footage of you near the scene five minutes before it happened. If you have a device logging your every move you can prove that you were actually walking away from the scene when the CCTV was taken, and were three streets away when the event actually occurred. It saves an awful lot of arguing if you can prove where you were at any given time. Like it or not, you can't beat Big Brother, so you may as well fight fire with fire and keep things in a permanent stalemate.

Now I've defended lifelogging and sousveillance technologies as aids to privacy rather than infringements, you may remember that I claimed that Google Glass is indeed a privacy risk. The reason I say this is because, like most Google services, it does most of its processing on Google's servers rather than the local device. Pretty much all current lifelogging systems keep local data private and only fetch additional information from the net if they need to augment the local data somehow. Glass does it the other way round, it sends its data to Google and they do the processing somewhere behind closed doors. Google's business motto is "Don't be evil", but it's always nicer to use a system that physically can't be evil, rather than a system that simply promises not to be.

But that said - chill, people. Google Glass doesn't need special regulation, nor does it need a change in the way we work. I know of (but do not practice) methods of silently determining peoples' home addresses from their Smartphone's wifi traffic, which is far more creepy than some bloke wearing funny goggles who may or may not have taken a blurry photo. In today's technologically challenged world it's better to be cautious of the things you can't see rather than the things you can.