Gizmodo on Google Glass and a new generation of aggressive voyeurs:
“Up until now, obtaining a creepshot has been a relatively simple endeavor, but one not entirely without risk. The ubiquitous nature of smartphones and the way people constantly engage with them are developments that ensure hardly anyone anymore gets suspicious when someone comes near them holding a recording device—they’re probably just checking Facebook, right? Still, there’s only so long a person can hold their iPhone at an awkward angle, and only so close they can get to you, before you realize that they’re photographing you and you put a stop to it.
This is where, in the right hands, Google Glass has the potential to be one of the more devious pieces of technology yet created. Because Glass allows a person to photograph and videotape whatever they’re looking at, hands free, the potential for creepshots skyrockets. When in the wrong person’s possession, Google Glass could make it so virtually every interaction a man has throughout the day becomes a creepshot, from staring down a cashier’s top at breakfast, to leering at his coworker’s cleavage, to glancing over at his daughter’s teacher’s ass after picking his kid up from school. Worse still, these women will have no idea they’re being photographed for some dude’s spank bank, because instead of a weirdo coming at them holding up a phone, they’ll just see a normal guy—their friend, their regular customer, their tennis partner—looking at them how they always do.
To hear men like Mark Hurst—president of the tech-consulting agency Creative Good and Glass doomsayer-in-chief—express terror at the next-level eavesdropping abilities Google Glass affords is reasonable to a degree, but they’re mostly just flattering themselves. Perhaps a celebrity like George Clooney should shudder at the thought of how Glass will make his life even more scrutinized than it already is, but the average man just isn’t interesting enough, at least not in the way that would find strangers on the subway desperate to record their every move.
The real victims of Google Glass are going to be women, who have long suffered the ogles of strange men. Glass, however, is going to supercharge those ogles, turning them into images that can last a lifetime on an unfamiliar person’s computer, only to be passed around the creepshots forums that currently exist and ones that have yet to be birthed. Men are already taking advantage of women every day with their bulky smartphones. When the cameras are sitting snugly and indiscreetly on their faces, it will only get worse.
When I emailed Google to ask about the impending explosion of creepshots in the wake of Glass, a spokesperson gave me this statement: “It is still very early days for Glass, and we expect that as with other new technologies, such as cell phones, behaviors and social norms will develop over time.”
The statement is right, if only because a social norm is a far cry from a social good. When cellphones were first released, who could have expected that eventually they’d be used to shoot secret photos of young women that men would then share on the internet and masturbate to? I expect nothing less from Google Glass.”