Snapchat spectacles and the creep factor

We’re all amateur documentarians now, which is why sunglasses equipped with Wi-Fi-enabled cameras are a natural next step in the world of wearables. Snap Inc.’s Spectacles allow users to capture 115 degrees of hands-free, phone-free memories at eye level.

It’s impossible not to contrast the introduction of Spectacles with the troubled rollout of Google Glass, which segments of the public viewed as a creepy harbinger of wearable surveillance. While emerging technology often is criticized for clashing with social norms, Spectacles are an example of how technology can be designed to work with, rather than against, society’s expectations.

We label behaviors creepy when they don’t align with our expectations about privacy. It’s creepy to friend-request someone you’ve never met on Facebook, but not creepy to follow someone you’ve never met on Twitter. It’s creepy to record someone surreptitiously, but not creepy to record a friend with permission.

It’s clear that Snap Inc. anticipated some of the ways Spectacles could be used and designed Spectacles to encourage good uses over “creepy” ones and to complement the unofficial rules that guide our everyday lives. The devices’ polarized lenses discourage use indoors, where there is a strong expectation of privacy. Recordings are limited to 10 seconds at the press of a button, which would make any attempt at real surveillance obvious. Lastly, an LED light notifies bystanders when the camera is filming.

App and device designers cannot predict all of the ways their products will be used. Thomas Edison imagined the phonograph would be used mostly for dictation, rather than recording and listening to music. The creators of Pokemon Go didn’t foresee the extent to which users would trespass or walk into dangerous areas.

Of course, users already are using Spectacles in unintended ways, such as by disabling the LED recording indicator or by capturing amateur porn. But Spectacles nonetheless demonstrates how companies can make “bad” uses of their products harder to execute. It’s a subject with which Snap Inc. has experience; having recognized that user expectations of privacy did not comport with the semi-permanence of user data, they designed their Snapchat app to delete read messages. Today, 18 percent of U.S. social media users use Snapchat and 35 percent of those users say they do so because their Snapchat content disappears.

Expectations of privacy continue to evolve and, in the view of some, to erode. Social media and online communications have blurred the line between public and private. For example, email conversations are not as private as face-to-face conversations, because emails achieve semi-permanence in our inboxes and archives. This “retrievability” of online communications means that employers, journalists and law enforcement can more easily view your associations, hobbies, relationship status and 140-character whims.

Privacy advocates, regulators and chief privacy officers echo the need for “privacy by design”—that is, considering user expectations of privacy throughout the engineering process, whether it be for an app, a platform or a physical device. With the current botnet cyberattacks and the release of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s cybersecurity framework, discussions of “security by design” have also made the rounds.  Snap Inc.’s product decisions have showed that “norms by design” is an equally valuable goal.

Anne Hobson is a technology policy fellow with the R Street Institute.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.