Beware of persons wearing Google Glass

Google Glass GlassholesAnother reason they are called Glassholes.

From Wired.com:

Google Glass Snoopers Can Steal Your Passcode With a Glance

by Andy Greenberg

The odds are you can’t make out the PIN of that guy with the sun glaring obliquely off his iPad’s screen across the coffee shop. But if he’s wearing Google Glass or a smartwatch, he probably can see yours.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Lowell found they could use video from wearables like Google Glass and the Samsung smartwatch to surreptitiously pick up four-digit PIN codes typed onto an iPad from almost 10 feet away—and from nearly 150 feet with a high-def camcorder. Their software, which used a custom-coded video recognition algorithm that tracks the shadows from finger taps, could spot the codes even when the video didn’t capture any images on the target devices’ displays.

“I think of this as a kind of alert about Google Glass, smartwatches, all these devices,” says Xinwen Fu, a computer science professor at UMass Lowell who plans to present the findings with his students at the Black Hat security conference in August. “If someone can take a video of you typing on the screen, you lose everything.”

Read the rest of the article carefully; there is good information regarding situational awareness of your surroundings.

Be aware of your passcodes, as you enter them into your phone or your tablet or your iPad or your ATM or any device requiring such a code.  It’s not just people watching; it’s people with devices able to divulge your keystrokes, the placement of your eyes, your fingers, accomplished with apps designed for just such a thing.

BZ

 

Journalist Wearing Google Glass Claims He Was Attacked; Device Smashed In SF Mission District

US-TECHNOLOGY-GOOGLE-GLASSFrom CBS KPIX 5:

by Carlos E. Castañeda

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — A man said he had his Google Glass snatched of his face and smashed to the ground in San Francisco’s Mission District Friday evening.

20-year-old journalist Kyle Russell, a reporter for Business Insider, said the attack happened as he was walking on the sidewalk with a colleague. A woman came up to him and yelled, “Glass!” and grabbed the device off his face and sprinted away, he said.

Russell said he chased the woman through traffic for a block before she stopped and flung the $1,500 device onto the ground, breaking it – then running away again.

Google Glass Tweet 1Let me make a statement, and let there be no mistake: good for her.  Good for the unknown woman who smashed this “man”s” privacy-invading device into the ground.

Because there has to be, there must be, consequences for the invasion of privacy of individuals in our society.

If not lawfully, then societally.

As a cop, I fully realize that anyone and everyone has a complete and full right to record whatever my actions may be in public as a result of my response to various calls.  And that I have no lawful ability to stop said persons from recording my reactions and my events.  That much is certain.

On the other hand, cops are now wearing body and eye cams, as well as implementing LPR technologies.

Fine.  Monitor me as I take a dump at work.  You want to see that, you are welcome to it.

But my off duty time is my off duty time.  And the first person that I see in a bar or in a restaurant or in line awaiting service for something/anything or recording “casually” my life on Google Glass will be rewarded with an unfortunate result.

My private life does not exist as an entertainment value for someone else, to be immured for infinity on a hard drive or the internet.  I do not exist for your “amusement” or for your pleasure or for your diversion.

Meaning: if I see you recording me in a private venue via Google Glass, things won’t go well.  For you, I mean.

And clearly I’m not alone.

BZ