Dorward

CCTV and Google Glass

22 March 2015

Astro Teller is somewhat missing the point:

"I'm amazed by how sensitively people responded to some of the privacy issues," Teller explains, expressing frustration about the backlash against Glass in public, given the prevalence of mobile video. "When someone walks into a bar wearing Glass... there are video cameras all over that bar recording everything." If it were around a year ago "they'd be Meerkatting," Teller joked.

"Society's issues about privacy are completely legitimate," Teller said. "I'm not making an apology for Google Glass. Google Glass did not move the needle... it was literally a rounding error on the number of cameras in your life."

The problem (from my perspective at least) isn't the number of hard-to-notice cameras around. It is who is wielding them and what they might do with them. CCTV isn't really a problem:

Images of people are covered by the Data Protection Act, and so is information about people which is derived from images – for example, vehicle registration numbers. Most uses of CCTV by organisations or businesses will be covered by the Act, regardless of the number of cameras or how sophisticated the equipment is.