With Google Glass is set to be made available to consumers later this year, prior to the smart eyewear’s formal release a number of venues including strip clubs, casinos and cinemas have all pre-emptively banned the device.
Not keen on having customers constantly film the action, the camera incorporating Google Glass has already been added to a number of establishments’ banned items lists, with a broad selection of entertainment venues speaking out on the controversial technology.
“As the sale of [Google Glass] spreads, there’ll be more people using them and wanting to use them at places such as a gentlemen’s club,” Peter Feinstein, Managing Partner of the Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club in Las Vegas told NBC News. “If we see those in the club, we would do the same thing that we do to people who bring cameras into the club.”
Suggesting that Google Glass will be handled in the same way as a range of technologies before it, Feinstein added: “We’ve been dealing with the cellphone videoing and the picture taking over the years and we are quick to make sure that that doesn’t happen in the club. If they don’t want to check it, we’d be happy to give them a limo ride back to their hotel.”
As well as strip clubs, casinos are understandably cagey about camera incorporating technologies being used around their gaming tables, with such device posing potential cheating risks.
Adding to Feinstein’s worries and beliefs that Google Glass and similar devices will be treated in the same way as existing tech, an official spokesperson for MGM Resorts stated: “This new product is nothing new in terms of a challenge for us, because for so many years, the very tiniest of portable lipstick and pinpoint cameras have been around.”
They added: “Picture-taking is frowned upon, and security officers on duty ask individuals not to take pictures for the privacy of others in the casino. Resort security officers are trained to monitor for, and detect, anything that they suspect might be a filming device, and will ask the patron to discontinue shooting photos or filming.”
Whilst casinos and strip clubs might not be the everyday establishments of choice for many future Google Glass owners, more likely places of visit to put the blinkers on the smart eyewear include cinemas, many of which already state use of recording devices within theatres is not permitted.
Far from the first time the Google Glass eyewear has come in for criticism, last month, privacy rights groups looked to have restrictions placed on Google’s smart glasses as they suggested the unit’s inbuilt video recording capabilities could be invasive to personal privacy.
“We are not calling for a total ban,” one campaign worker said in a recent interview. “Rather we want people to actively set social and physical bounds around the use of technologies and not just fatalistically accept the direction technology is heading in.”
They added: “If the government installed CCTV cameras and microphones everywhere, all feeding information to a central control room you would probably characterise it as a privacy risk. Is it any better if it’s run by a corporation and the devices are attached to people’s heads?
“It’s important for society and democracy that people can chat and live without fear that they might end up being published or prosecuted.”
Via: TechRadar
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