Ban signs

Click here to download signs in pdf format or Click on the images below to download png versions with a transparent background. Put them up to ban people from wearing Google Glass and other devices like Memoto or Baidu eye on your property.

If you are not sure if you qualify as non commercial use or would like support us. You can buy professionally printed stickers, t-shirts and posters from the our store: Stop The Cyborgs Store

Principles:

(1) Users must have complete control over wearable and implantable technology and any associated services. If they do not  they lack the ability to trust and control their extended bodies and in turn cannot be trusted by others.

Examples of why this principle is necessary:

• If you do not fully control a device how can you guarantee that it is not spying on you and recording without your knowing. Therefore how can you assure others that you are not recording?
• If you do not fully control a device how can you guarantee that it(your legs, your hearing or your sight) won’t be deactivated during an anti-government demonstration.
• If you do not fully control a device how can you guarantee that it (your legs, your hearing or your sight) won’t be deactivated by the vendor during a payment dispute.

(2) No one should be forced or coerced into wearing any device or implant. Nor should they be required to reveal data gathered by any device (e.g. for insurance or employment purposes).

Examples of why this principle is necessary:

• Your employer forces you to wear a device which tracks your movements and records all conversations you have while working.
• Your insurer forces you to wear a device which monitors your location and heart rate. Your insurance premium increases if you don’t run every day, if you enter a fast food restaurant or if you go to any location deemed dangerous by the company for example areas of high crime rate or are out late.
• You go for a job interview and the interviewer asks you to show him/her your life log to prove that you have the experience you claim you have.

(3) Information gathered using wearable or implantable systems should not be transferred to 3rd parties, commercially exploited, published or analyzed without the active consent of all subjects not just the user.

Examples of why this principle is necessary:

• Your partner has an artificial eye. They needs to wear it at all times in order to see. Later you split up and as revenge they publish intimate recordings of you taken during your relationship.
• Your partner has an artificial eye which automatically synchronizes with a 3rd party cloud storage system. The 3rd party is either hacked or receives a legal request to reveal data.
• You are having what you think is a private conversation. Actually the conversation is being broadcast to an internet audience of 1000s.

(4) Widespread automatic identification of people through biometrics such as face recognition poses grave risks for society and should be banned. As should the creation of any database for this purpose.

Examples of why this principle is necessary:

• Your child is being bullied at school. The bullies tag her face with an app which links her face to embarrassing photos and  comments about her. Every young person she encounters sees this information whenever they look at her.
• You have a low credit rating or criminal record. Shop assistants and security guards can see this and so you are excluded from all malls and stores.
• You attend a political protest. You photo is taken and you are identified. You go on an employment blacklist for your political tenancies.
• You get into an argument with a stranger. They identify you and stalk you. Later they add your face to a hit list.

(5) Algorithms or systems which provide advice, contextual information or social feedback exert a powerful influence over decision making and society at large. We need legal restrictions and auditing requirements both to prevent abuse and to prevent concentration of power.

Examples of why this principle is necessary:

• You no longer think about anything for longer than 0.5 seconds. Instead you refer to your device and believe what it tells you.
• You check how your actions are perceived by your peer group, the public, your employer, some ranking algorithm. You self censor and internalize the preferences of the system.
• A large advertising company provides people with advice on which real world businesses are the best. So as you approach a shop or a restaurant it suggests an alternative ‘better one’. Advice seems to be mainly based on reviews so it is trusted however some listings are promoted and the algorithm used to rank is unclear. The company determines 90% of the trade which these businesses get and so they are forced to pay ‘protection money’ to the advertising company.
• A social ranking company gives people a likeability social status rank. The developers give themselves an artificially high score and rivals an artificially low score. The ranking incorporates political and racial biases of the developers.

(6) We need to actively shape the social norms and provoke debate around wearable technology.

Examples of why this principle is necessary:

• If we do not people will expect to wear surveillance devices everywhere and there will be no private space which is not monitored.
• If we do not debate technology like Glass now it will not be possible to talk about future versions which do continually record or which do incorporate face recognition because these will be seen as minor changes.

FAQ On Glass

We are concerned with wearable technology in general for example Memoto or Baidu but here are some responses to the most common questions on Google Glass.

Why Glass is different from a privacy point of view to smart phone?

• The camera is always pointing at head height and only needs to be electronically activated to record. This allows the possibility of accidental or remote activation.
• The devices are hands free so the person does not need to take on the role of cameraman but rather just happens to be POV recording everything they look at.
• Everything is automatically  geotagged & synchronized with Google drive and stored in Google’s data center where it can be data mined.
• Your location is monitored and shared with Google at all times (see mirror API).

Why Glass is different from CCTV?

• It records audio.
• It records at eye level where faces are clearly visible.
• You don’t have CCTV in your house.
• CCTV is not normally uploaded to You Tube or G+.
• CCTV in shops, bars and businesses is normally not linked to single global control room controlled by a data mining company.

Better spy cameras already exist

• Unless you are an actual spy, a peeping tom, a private detective or a 14 year old boy who wants to be a spy you do not own a spy cam. Google and Memoto seem to want to make it socially acceptable for lots and lots of people to wear spy cams at all times. This is a major social shift.
• Lots and lots of pretty crappy spy-cams makes a pretty good global surveillance system.

Why do you want to ban my cool tech?

• We don’t want a complete ban. Glass would probably be great for certain vertical segments, being assisted with DIY, or checking your email when sky diving or something.
• We do want people to be polite and take them off whenever they go anywhere where people might not want to be recorded or where people might be having private conversations:  bars, restaurants, hotels, cafe’s, swimming pools, schools, changing rooms, houses.
• We want users to be in control of their devices and their data.
• We also want an outright ban on commercial and consumer face recognition.

What about sousveillance ?

• Sousveillance may work against the thug on the street but it is useless against a thug in an office. It does not actually challenge power structures.

• Glass is a rubbish sousveillance device because you don’t control it. Imagine you are participating in a political protest where there is violence. You might capture footage of a cop hitting a demonstrator but this is trivial in comparison to the power it gives the cops. The police can ask Google for all footage taken with Glass so as to identify demonstrators. They can ask for the identity of all Google Glass wearers at the demonstration. You will not be able to take footage anonymously because the device is tied to your account. They might even be able to erase your data.