Status Updates - October 31st, 2014

Cover your Glass. We've addressed in Socially Aware the growing legal hysteria stirred up by Google Glass and other wearable technology. Just as Polaroid cameras were once banned from beach resorts and even the Washington Monument for crying out loud, expect to see all types of businesses and organizations - bars, restaurants, banks, schools, museums, casinos, circuses, strip clubs, accounting firms, you name it - rushing to enact Glass bans. But some bans may make more sense than others. Movie theater owners, for example, are understandably concerned about those wearable devices, such as Glass, that can record video. Should such devices be banned from theaters? The theater industry says yes, absolutely. Indeed, the trade groups that represent movie theaters and movie studios have both set forth a new policy: No devices of any sort in movie theaters that are capable of recording video. But how far will the ban go? For many people who wear eyeglasses to correct their vision, Glass may be their only pair of glasses. Moreover, as technology advances, wearable recording devices will become increasingly difficult to detect - in the not-too-distant future, there may be no effective way of distinguishing between wired glasses and ordinary glasses. No doubt some enterprising entrepreneur is working right now on a solution to that problem. Once more into the breach. California Attorney General Kamala Harris just issued a report concluding that the online data of 18.5 million of the state's residents was compromised in 2013 as a result of intentional data breaches, up dramatically from 2.5 million in 2012. It's not surprising that the majority of the data that was compromised was stolen electronically by unauthorized access rather than by the physical theft of a...