Let’s get through the privacy discussion

When Chris Barrett, founder of PRServe.com, used his Google Glass to capture an evening of fun, he stumbled on a street fight that led to an arrest. Can he do that? Anonymously?

That was enough of a story for NPR to cover, and it was picked up by ABC. Clearly into the mainstream, beyond social shares and Google Glass chatter.

All the better, I think, to go ahead and get privacy on the table so people can gaze further at ways to use Glass that might improve their lives and access to information.

Interesting to me is that when you watch the video-by-Glass, it appears that at least one person captured part of the scuffle by phone. Is that an invasion of privacy? I grabbed a quick screen shot here—maybe not the best but still illustrative. If you watch the whole video at the NPR site, you'll see the sequence as a woman on the left captures an arrest, the officer being the one in the blue shirt and the offender blocked in this view.

Glass will be compared and contrasted with smartphones, though it may not be a perfect analogy once we get through the privacy discussion.