Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Recent backlash against Google Glass is the first round in the war against the sensors. Is the first round, however, too late? The war has already been lost.

Google Glass has not reached the public, but it has already been banned from here and there. The Glass wearer has a a video camera turned on that records everything. Some people in some places don’t want to be recorded. It is almost fashionable for tech-trendy locations to ban the latest tech. Weird, huh?

“Drones” (remote controlled flying vehicles) are becoming smaller, more powerful, and less expensive. I can spend $200 and float one above my neighbor’s house to see what he is doing behind his 8-foot “privacy” fence.

Let’s go back a few years in technology. I take a photo at a Las Vegas tech convention. The photo appears on Facebook with date, time, and location. Face recognition puts the person’s name out to the world as well. Someone’s wife comments, “I thought you were going to Stockton for the weekend to work.”

Okay, so Google Glass is gaining more attention than the incremental changes that led to someone being embarrassed in Las Vegas. We ban Glass to make a statement. The war, however, is already over.

The sensors won.

Everyone is a sensor

That was a phrase that ran around a little a few years ago. It is a simple concept. My cell phone (smartphone, excuse me as I still call them cell phones) knows where I am, which direction I am facing, the time, temperature, motion, and so on. It knows what and who are in the imager.

My smartphone is full of sensors, and government agencies didn’t spend a penny to purchase, deploy, and maintain those sensors. And there are several hundred million sensor packages running around in the U.S. I guess there are several billion sensor packages running around all over the world.

So?

So government agencies can access all that sensor data. Who cares if your wife is upset for a few days. The IRS knows that your are earning money that you don’t report on your 1040.

The cool Glass bans don’t count. The war against the sensors is over. The data gatherers have already won.