What Do You Think About “Spy-Glasses”?

Connect Safely has a downloadable guide to bystander safety in general—and Ray-Ban/Facebook camera sunglasses in particular—at this link. Cameras have raised privacy issues from the very beginning, but sunglasses that can easily record stills and 30” videos with sound make it soooooooo easy to intrude into the lives of other people. All it takes is a tap on the glasses or murmuring, “Hey, Facebook” to activate the system.

There can be legitimate uses, of course, if one needs to record a procedure for work, for example. And videos of police going beyond their restrictions have been helpful in achieving convictions. It’s a situation where personal ethical standards are pretty much the current controlling mechanism, and it’s thought that most camera glasses are not used inappropriately. Still, Safety.com estimates the average person in the USA is photographed by security cameras about 230 times per week.

Their use in producing art photography is an open question. The cameras record a 5 MP image (2592 x 1944 pixels) and if you post images to social media sites, you may experience differences in how much control over your own images you lose by doing so.