[shurcooL]

Google Glass has the advantage that you can't tell if it's recording. "Don't worry, I'm not recording a video," they'll say. You can't accuse people of wearing glasses that may or may not record.

Similarly, when people use smartphones, they could be recording with the back camera, but people are okay with that. They assume no recording takes place simply because it's the more likely situation.

[notatoad]

You can't tell if it is recording, except for the red LED on the outside of glass that lights up to tell you when it is recording.

[Samuel_Michon]

Even with a red LED, many people will not recognize Google Glass as a video capturing device. And if this product takes off, what's a person to do if he doesn't want to be recorded and tracked? Imagine sitting in the subway or at Starbucks around 10 Glass users.

[shurcooL]

Just for argument sake, what's the difference between being recorded on video or being watched by someone's eyes?

If you don't do anything noteworthy, no one is gonna care to re-watch that video.

How many hours of youtube videos already go unwatched today?

[Samuel_Michon]

I don't think video capture is the problem, it's bigger than that. Google Glass has hardware for not only capturing video (like CCTV does), but also audio, timecode information, and GPS coordinates. All that data combined, linked to the user's Google account, that makes for a data mining wet dream.

I wasn't suggesting humans will be looking at all the footage like with CCTV monitoring, Google has millions of servers to do that. It already analyzes the content of each and every YouTube video -- it provides automatic closed captioning, translations, it recognizes soundtrack and links to music stores, it displays ads depending on the video content, etc etc.

[shurcooL]

All right, I hear you. If the concern is that there will be automated algorithms looking through the video/GPS/etc. data, that is way more plausible of a concern.

So let's suppose the best case scenario for Google. Suppose they have all the access to 24/7 video, GPS data, facial tracking, etc. basically as much information as can potentially be gathered. And suppose they have all the computational power needed to process it in any realistic way they desire.

Can you suggest in what ways that might be bad for me? So perhaps Google can target me with the most relevant ads out of all ads. Is that a bad thing? I wouldn't mind seeing relevant ads rather than irrelevant ones anyway.

But what other hypothetical problems could come out of this?

I can imagine if I were a criminal and tried to hide something from others, then this would be a concern. But suppose I don't have much to hide, only personal private stuff (which, if exposed, wouldn't be much different from any other person's personal private stuff).

I'm interested in hearing what people have to say about this.

[Samuel_Michon]

Google controls much of what web users see. Not only through its general search engine, also through YouTube, Google News, Blogger, and its many other sites. Google decides which results are shown and in which order. They have the power to change public opinion, one person at a time, without anyone noticing it's happening. The more information they know about you, the easier it is for them to manipulate you.

"The problem with social search and personal results is that it biases the results based on the perspective of your friends. If I had a lot of friends who worked for Chrysler and I asked them to name the best car on the road, chances are they’d pick a Chrysler car. But if I asked the general public, I’d probably get a different response. It’s like that old joke Democrats use to tell after the 1972 election, ” I don’t know how Richard Nixon got elected, all my friends voted for George McGovern.” I’m sure many Republicans felt the same way after the 2008 election." [1]

Oh, and "I have nothing to hide" is a well known fallacy. [2]

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2012/01/13/how-and-wh...

[2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=i+have+nothing+to+hide