CNET is reporting that an Ohio man went to a movie theater wearing Google Glass. Halfway through Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, an FBI agent approached him, flashed a badge, took his Google Glass, and ordered him out of the theater. Several agents questioned the man about whether he was recording the film, which the man denied. Eventually, the agents connected the Google Glass to a laptop, downloaded the contents, and determined that the man had not recorded the film. He was released. Wearable computing is here. It isn’t just Google Glass, which is still available only to a chosen few. Recon has a rival product. Every snowboarder seems to have a Go Pro camera on his or her helmet. Fitbit and other companies have wrist-based fitness tools. More and more police officers are wearing “badge cams.” (Some are also experimenting with Google Glass.) These new technologies raise a plethora of legal issues, as I noted in a previous post. This post will start by looking at the legal issues raised by wearable recording devices. Wiretapping and surveillance laws. Under North Carolina law, the consent of one party is sufficient to record a conversation. G.S. 15A-287. Therefore, a Glass wearer can record any conversation to which he or she is a party. But Glass might also be used to record a conversation to which the wearer is not a party – for example, a conversation taking place at the next table in a restaurant. Such surveillance likely would be a Class H [...]
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