Traffic cameras have been capturing faces for 20 years. Surveillance cameras have all the bandwidth they’re given. We have no idea what was recorded in Boston and never shown to us, poke around youtube and TMZ LOTS of surveillance footage of pretty solid resolution lands up there.
I don’t know why you’re so concerned about google glasses and so dismissive of smartphones and helmet cams, they’re the same thing. GG are just an interface for smartphones, there’s nothing you can do with the glasses you can’t do with the phone, the phone is where they put the data from the glasses. All those points you make on why smartphones aren’t a threat apply exactly the same way to GG.
I wouldn’t call any of it a threat. It’s just part of the situation of the world. You ARE being filmed when out in public, period. By surveillance, by smartphones, by google glasses, doesn’t matter, you are recorded, and if somebody finds it interesting it’ll land on youtube, or livestream or any of the other places.
GG recordings ARE locally stored. They go to your smartphone. From the smartphone they can go elsewhere, but that’s no different than any other thing recorded by the phone. There’s no functional difference between a smartphone and GG when it comes to privacy. They’re just 2 different ways to record video that CAN go on the internet. The glasses than any of the other things I’ve mentioned. They all work the exact same way, data goes local and might (and when there’s a smartphone involved almost certainly does) go someplace else also. Google isn’t distancing themselves from anything, you’re simply grossly misunderstanding how things work, all they do is feed data to a smartphone, that’s IT. It is NOT a universal spy device, it does NOT stream video to the mothership, those are quite simply lies. It’s an interface for you phone, period. When it comes to recording video it’s no different than a helmet or dash cam.
What mattered at that time was not good enough. But yes, it is absolutely true that old VGA cameras are being replaced with HD ones. The prices on those went down a lot. One should expect a typical street camera to stream an HD video in a few years. Some already do, as you point out.
I don’t know why you’re so concerned about google glasses and so dismissive of smartphones and helmet cams, they’re the same thing.
There is a big difference in how they are used. If a stranger walks up to me and raises a smartphone, I know that he is filming me. If a stranger is wearing GG then I don't know what he is doing. Maybe he is taking a photo, or maybe he is checking his Twitter feed. Mass use of GG has potential to mask the videotaping, as if everyone with a smartphone has to walk with his phone in a filming position. (Naturally, nobody does that, and that's why smartphones are not a concern.) Videotaping of others is not a human right.
You ARE being filmed when out in public, period.
Perhaps; but why to allow MORE of the same? One of a hundred carries a flu virus today; you meet one of them. Your chance to get a virus is 0.01. What would you say if ten out of hundred are sick? Fifty? All of them? This doesn't help you at all, so why to promote it? What is the greater public good that is achieved by everyone filming everyone? Or, perhaps, it is just a game? But other people are not playthings for GG aficionados.
It is NOT a universal spy device, it does NOT stream video to the mothership, those are quite simply lies.
Perhaps; but that's how it was sold, and that's how it is perceived. There are streaming applications for a smartphone, as we discussed above. There are face recognition services for GG and smartphones, even though Google is already afraid of the backlash.