the Era of Little Brother — a surveillance state pieced together by hundreds of millions of private cameras

Not sure I agree that Little Brothers are not a Pest. When the glass power of all those Little Brothers link up (even unknowingly) to the omnipotent BIG Brothers the equation changes drastically and very dangerously. Not just for privacy . either. The public political space is also destroyed.  

The Glass Backlash

• BY MAT HONAN

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

“What do you do with it in the men’s room?”

That’s the number one question I get about Google Glass, the face-mounted wearable computer from Google. Everyone wants to know what the etiquette is for wearing one in a situation where other people may not want to be filmed — the bathroom, the beach, a school, dinner.

There’s a pretty simple answer to this question: Be careful where you point it. Despite the incredibly small number of Glass devices in the wild, there is already an outsize concern about their use in our most private places. Google Glass has unleashed a torrent of privacy fears — perhaps even paranoia — but most of it has missed the point. Pictures aren’t the problem. Or at least, they aren’t a new problem. We already live in the Surveillance State.

There are cameras nearly everywhere, recording every action. The New Yorker recently labeled this the Era of Little Brother — a surveillance state pieced together not by one omnipresent governmental entity but hundreds of millions of private ones. Glass is just another watcher.

There are cameras in my bank and in my corner store, in my coffee shop and favorite restaurant. They’re in my drugstore, potentially capturing my most intimate purchases. (I thought it was toothpaste!) And during my daily commute, I always see at least one fellow cyclist wearing a helmet cam; nobody seems to find any of this weird.

The differences between cameras these days — from DSLR to smartphone to Glass, even — are largely in how we perceive them. The guts are similar enough. We know we’re on camera when someone points a lens in our direction — Glass merely brings uncertainty into this mix: Now that person who just glanced at us could be taking our picture.

So what? Pervasive video and photography prove again and again to be actual benefits to society. Rodney King was certainly not the first black man beaten by police, but because his assault coincided with an explosion in the popularity of handheld video cameras, it changed race relations in America forever. The Boston Marathon bombers were found quickly thanks to the proliferation of cameras. Little Brother is everywhere, and he’s not always a pest.

The Google Glass backlash is about seeing something that looks new. It stands out. What does it mean, what does it signal? Sure, we should be concerned about emerging technologies, but photography is not one of them. That picture developed long ago.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/07/gl_honan/