A new script by artist and programmer Julian Oliver is designed to prevent Google Glass devices from connecting to WiFi. The script, Glasshole.sh, will run on a Beagleboard or Raspberry Pi — just connect it to a wireless antenna, and let it go to work. Every 30 seconds, the application scans for MAC addresses common to Google Glass devices. If it detects one, it promptly throws the user off the local network.
Oliver wrote the script after reading a post by fellow artist Omar Shapira in which the author decried the way speculators and investors had crowded into a recent event with zero regard for the purpose of the art show or the concerns of the artists. Shapira makes the point that while many of the projects shown at the Interactive Telecommunications Program are not meant for commercialization, some of them definitely are. Showing up at an event that blends technology and art, and then aggressively asking the artist “So what are the commercial applications of this?” is crass at the best of times. Toss in Google Glass and a rude “trend hunter” becomes a potential idea thief.
The smartphone comparison fallacy
Glass users often respond to such concerns with a smug “Get over it,” or by asking “Well, did you ask everyone to get rid of their smartphones?” Smartphones are an excellent example of a technology that went from unknown to ubiquitous in a short amount of time, but comparing them to Google Glass in this particular context ignores the privacy issue that makes people nervous about Glass. People may be used to cellphones, but walk around all day with the phone in front of your face and the camera pointed at everyone you interact with, and people are most assuredly going to comment on it.
Image courtesy of Penny Arcade
Proponents of Glass will protest that the device’s capabilities as a video camera have been blown out of proportion. Glass can only record a trivial amount of video, it has a visible recording light (easy to disable), and its video quality is lousy. All of these things are true. What’s fascinating about the Glass debate is that it doesn’t just raise the question of what degree of privacy people should have in any given context — it also challenges ideas about how humans should interact with each other.
People, generally speaking, are deeply uncomfortable with the idea of being watched at any given moment. Closed-circuit cameras are widely deployed in many cities as a security measure, but these cameras are typically either automated (tape is reviewed if a crime is committed) or monitored by a security officer who typically isn’t in plain view. If being watched by a camera mounted in a store can be unsettling, being monitored by someone pointing a camera directly at you tends to provoke a response. One of the greatest backlashes against Kinect was against the idea that the device could be used for surveillance (Microsoft’s patent filings and the Snowden leaks didn’t help here).
Cool dude, or Glasshole, that is the question
Google Glass owners worthy of the unflattering nickname attached to the device will immediately howl that their own personal rights to use technology are being infringed. Occasionally they’ll convince a mob of people to agree with them. Case in point: a mob of face computer users recently attacked a restaurant on Yelp, bombarding it with 1-star reviews, after it asked a Glass wearer to remove her eyewear while dining. [Read: Google Glass: Utopia or Dystopia?]
This WiFi hack obviously doesn’t prevent people from recording, though it does prevent them from streaming video to a cloud server. Given that it requires some enthusiast community tools, it’s never going to be widely deployed. What it speaks to, however, is ambivalence and disagreement in the tech community about how certain capabilities — such as ubiquitous computing — should be deployed. The NSA has often been criticized for charging ahead to vacuum up more and more information without paying attention to whether that data should be gathered or how it might be misused. Tech companies aren’t immune from the same type of mistake, even if the practical impact is more limited.
Google Glass and the inevitable flow of copycats could actually help privacy advocates make their case to the public. Even the Snowden disclosures, monumental as they’ve been, only shifted the needle modestly on privacy and the perceived need for greater privacy protections. The typical privacy statement on a website — “We reserve the right to share your data with trusted third-party providers,” — is comfortably removed from real world language or any context for how this information might be used. Google Glass, in contrast, is concrete, personal, and in your face. There’s little evidence, thus far, that people are going to “get over it” — and that means a great deal of controversy over what such products can and should be used for.
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