Google Glass Presenting Legal Issues

With any new technology there’s bound to be a period during which society figures out how to react to any potential and perceived new possibilities and even threats. Those of us who were around for the advent of the camera phone will remember well them being banned from public restrooms, schools, and even museums, concerts and other live events. Eventually the sheer proliferation of cameras in feature phones and smartphones made it implausible to ban them from most locations. Event organizers, too, realized that dodgy YouTube uploads filmed on a smartphone simply can’t compete with a professionally recorded and edited video with proper sound and as such were no threat to sales. Even after ten years of continued heavy market demand for better smartphone cameras it’s still impossible to get any kind of quality video recording of a concert or any event with any level of background noise. Unsurprisingly, it appears that Google Glass is going to have to go through the same kind of treatment until both the law and our culture can figure out exactly what to make of it. Reports on the internet have been filtering in slowly of US Google Glass users being booked for using and even just wearing Google Glass while driving. Of course, using any media or communication device while driving is exactly the kind of distraction that the law wants to avoid, but whether or not users should be used for simply wearing Glass is a much more interesting question. Whether or not the reports are true, the issue is a valid one. There are two sides to the argument:

1. If Glass is turned off/disabled then there’s no harm in wearing it while driving. A person should be free to wear their own property if there’s no chance of causing harm or notable offence to others. Wearing Glass while it's off could be compared to keeping a smartphone in your pocket while it’s not in use; that’s simply where it’s intended to be kept. Just because you are aware of notifications as they roll in doesn't mean you'll drop whatever you're currently doing in favor of responding.
2. The problem with Glass is exactly where it’s intended to be kept. It sits on your head, just above the eye, no matter if you’re using it or not. There’s really no way for a police officer to tell if a driver is interfacing with Glass or not at a distance. Police would not only have to pull over every person they saw wearing Glass, but test to see if the unit was off and even if it had been turned off within the last few seconds. This would waste a lot of time for everyone and it’s an easy enough process to turn Glass off while pulling over without the cops noticing. What, then, are the police to do?

Apparently the more tech-savvy  members of law enforcement are only booking those that they see interfacing with Glass while driving, which is totally understandable from where we’re standing. But the greater majority of police can’t be expected to know the ins and outs of a new technology that almost all of them have no access to and, frankly, isn’t yet wide-spread enough for there to be justifiable cause for the expense and time required for a training program. It’s doubtful that Google Glass will be completely banned from being worn by drivers. Or, if it is, it’s likely to be a few contained instances and not banned on a large scale. Assuming that Glass technology becomes as pervasive as Google hopes, asking folks to take off what may be their only pair of sunglasses just because those same glasses have a Smart Device function may one day sound ridiculous to an even more tech-reliant culture than our current one. Another reported instance of Glass wearers being ‘discriminated’ against is in Vegas casinos. Caesars Palace, one of the more famous locations in Las Vegas, has banned Google Glass before even encountering an instance of anyone wearing it through the casino. This time around it’s not because of the communication services of the device, but because of its ability to record video and sound. In fact, Caesars Palace has warned that any gambler caught wearing Google Glass could be facing arrest. The rule isn’t limited to Google Glass; it’s actually a blanket ban of all video recording devices for any and all gamblers. In this instance we feel that the ban is fully warranted, as the casino has a right to protect itself and its patrons from anyone trying to cheat the system. But once again, it does have some interesting potential implications moving forward. All computer-based technology gets minimized. This is a rule that will not be broken. Another is that our society will continue to adopt and adapt computer (or ‘smart’) technologies in to more and more things as time passes. There are already smart watches, smart fridges, smart TVs etc, assuming that one day Smart Glasses won’t be a thing is probably naiive, although a future in which they proliferate could be further off than Google hopes. In the even that Glass does take off and we start seeing copycat products from various other manufacturers and, eventually, even new operating system developers (we’re looking at you, Microsoft), asking someone to ditch their glasses might be a bit more tricky, especially if those glasses have the added feature of allowing them to see. Still, like we said that future, if it’s to come at all, is probably far enough away that the question can be interesting without actually yet being important. For now we feel that casinos and other areas in which any and all recording equipment are banned are well within their rights to include Google Glass on lists of forbidden gadgetry. What we think we will see is a re-hash of the toilet/washroom fear of people taking candid pics and/or videos that we saw way back when smartphone cameras hit the market. Perhaps a ban around schools (especially in the far more cameras-around-schools-paranoid culture of this decade over the last). We've also seen places like Fort Lee ban texting while walking, after an increase in the number of absent-minded pedestrians being hit by moving vehicles. The potential for an extension to Glass-style technologies is definitely possible, especially after we've seen the same thing already happen to drivers. Such restrictions in public would obviously render Google Glass totally useless and we doubt we'll see anything that harsh. Still, before texting while walking was banned we said the same thing about that and look what happened. Glass as the added advantage of allowing the user to see where they're going while interfacing with it. In fact, that's pretty much the whole point. But tech literacy has never been a pre-requisite for tech-targeted legislation. Many of the bans will are likely to be short lived, pending the level of success that Glass sees in the market, and things should balance out to a happy medium somewhere down the line. For now, Google Glass remains a mystery to most people, as only a very select few of users have been able to access/afford the new tech. Most people haven’t even seen it in action, us included. So, on a personal note, we hope those possible bans are held off just a while longer. At least until we can get our hands on a unit and take it for a spin.