Camera glasses on sale -- goodbye, photography bans
ThinkGeek has started carrying $100 remote-control cam-glasses with a discreet, 1.3 megapixel camera built into the temple. This is the beginning of the end for photography bans. Once these things become easy to install -- undetectably -- in a pair of ordinary glasses, the idea of stopping people from snapping photos in museums, clubs, stores and airport checkpoints is dead. Link (via Redferret)
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No - gadgets like this will just force the goons to confiscate our glasses.
Force?
As in: "Don't make me hurt you, baby"?
As if spies haven't had cameras in buttons, coats, hats, umbrellas and purses before. Only now it's digital.
Used to work in a secure environment. Everything was banned. Cellular phone cameras, PDA with IR, thumb drives, even Ipods. Guess if the security manager sees this sunglasses will be banned also.
Is this setup stereoscopic? Looks like it is, but just can't tell.
Still too obvious to be useful for covert ops. Anybody would be able to tell that this is what it is. One day though and soon.
To me, it is the beginning of the "record everything" era.
But there is one big problem: Mysteriously, everyone in your pictures look very, very confused.
I'm sure the parents twenty years later will be so psych-ed about this and wear this all the time while going on family vacation, just so that their kids will be annoyed and go goth and stare at the hidden cameras.
I assume the headphones mean there is an MP3 player in there.
or is that just to excuse the bulk of the glasses.
umm, I bought my last pair of jeans at a grocery store, and even I think these look lame
(another comment post fail,re-log in)
I'll just install some very large magnets and very strong RF sources at the entrance to my refrigerator box.
@6
That was my thought. I'm not impressed by the stealth aspect, I'm impressed that I could wear these on vacation and take pictures easily. I spend way too much time hauling the camera out of the case, turning it on, composing the picture, taking it, then turning the camera off and stowing it. If they added a heads-up display to this it would win.
well, looked all over the web, no commercial market ocular prosthetics with cameras. Unquestionably the spooks have been using people who had an eye shot or gouged out in the line of sneaky duty, but they ain't sharing any designs.
I see a business opportunity: infiltrator paparrazi.
Missing an eye? Come see me, we'll get you installed and then we split the proceeds from the images you collect while posing as a pool boy.
If they can't be banned, they will become compulsory.
has anyone been prosecuted yet for failing to photograph? Cameras are everywhere,could it be argued you were negligent to not use yours to record a crime you witnessed?
Now Bigfoot hunters will have no excuse for not getting a picture of their sightings.
oh, they never had trouble getting a picture. It was the focus that eludes them
@7: Yes, there is an MP3 player in there.
It's for the "plausible deniability" function.
I realize the tongue-in-cheekiness of the post, but seriously, while stealth may get you around a photography ban, it also validates it in some way. The only way to challenge ludicrous and unlawful power grabs is to do so openly; otherwise, your use of subterfuge will be looked on as a tacit admission that you were doing something you shouldn't have been doing.
This is a pretty clumsy implementation; some ten years ago or so, I saw a spy video camera with the lens installed in the bridge of a pair of faux-Wayfarers; the rest of the unit was in a box connected to the glasses by a fake retainer cord, so you had to run it down the back of your neck and wear a baggy shirt, but still. I think that people can already get around photography bans with their cameraphones; as mbklein says, the real point is not to become the spy that they accuse you of being.
the downside to this, is that upskirt shots are a lot harder to take.
Exotic dancers will be examining our glasses now so that they don't end up plastered all over the internet.
I saw this coming after reading David Brin's "Transparent Society."
It becomes harder to "Retcon" an incident when there are multiple verifiable videos of the truth. And then we could ask who fears truth?
And then ask why.
Takuan@13
Quick cut from a paper by Bickel, Brinkley, and White. (http://www.law.stetson.edu/lawrev/abstracts/PDF/33-1Bickel.pdf)
@10: A 1.3 megapixel, cellphone-sized CCD is going to produce pictures that look like crap; it has fewer pixels, and they're tiny ones, with lower dynamic range and higher vulnerability to noise, than in a compact camera. Anyone who bought something like this to take effortless vacation photos would end up disappointed.
Interestingly, the page doesn't show any sample images taken with this unit. I wonder why that is.
My first thought was of Spider Jerusalem's camera shades in Transmetropolitan.
Also, it would be cool if you could program them to snap an image every 10 or 30 seconds automatically. Wouldn't be to hard to hack the remote if it isn't an option.
Instuctibles has a tutorial to make a video version of these for $40. I have absolutely no knowledge of electronics and I put them together in less than an hour. Only works if you are outdoors, although I suppose you could carry a white cane if you need to shoot indoors.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Covert-Spy-Sunglasses/
Cool. Maybe a copy of "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" by Salinger will mysteriously appear online after someone goes into the Princeton library with a pair of these...
Cool. Now it just needs a push-to-web feature and nobody can stop nobody from sharing photos. Good for freedom of… er… sight? Bad for places like wardrobes and Red Light District
@ #17: I agree. This is just a way to succumb to spurious photo bans, and encourage new ones. Not to mention getting rent-a-cops looking even closer at people's *lawful* behavior. No thanks.
Also, I find it funny that people think these solve the "problem" of composition, which happens to be the part of photography that makes it worth doing in the first place.
All the photo-everything and video-everything society does is underline the fact that people are basically lazy, stupid or easily manipulated.
#22,thank you for that. I was thinking more litigation ensuing from someone failing to undertake an action in immediate circumstances (say failing to photograph an assailant at the the time of the attack on another - or perhaps failure to photograph an enemy of our Dear Leader at a political demonstration.
@#19; that is why they make mechanics creepers
"Please remove your glasses and place them in the basket."
It would be a very stupid rule, but it would be no stupider than many.
Cory, I'm still waiting for you to write the groundbreaking short story / novel about the "almost here technology" of glasses that automatically take a picture every second and the subculture that rises up around the people who wear them.
This pretty much affirms that Jamais Cascio's bluetooth headset camera (http://openthefuture.com/2007/11/make_it_so.html) is possible. Heck, you could probably cobble one together (albeit camera only) from these glasses! As Jamais points out, I think the headset form factor is probably easier to pull off in public in general.
Regardless, these just went on my birthday wishlist!
Oops...I think I forgot to sign in. That previous (Jamais Cascio related) comment was me!