A group of researchers based at the National Institute of Informatics in Japan have created glasses lined with 11 near-infrared LEDs that are capable of protecting the user from facial recognition feature of Google Glass. Ever since Google Glass was first unveiled to the world, a number of privacy related questions have repeatedly been asked. First and foremost the camera on Glass would allow anyone to record or take pictures with even hinting at it. The second question has been about the device’s facial recognition feature, and how that would constitute a privacy risk for everyone.
While a facial recognition app for Google Glass has already been created, the Glass Team said recently that at this time no app that offers facial recognition features will be approved for the device at this point in time. They said that such apps will only be approved once strong privacy protections are in place. Even though they won’t be officially approved, the fact that Google Glass can be rooted opens the possibility of such apps being sideloaded on the device. These glasses that have been created will use the LEDs to essentially blur out the face when an infrared sensitive camera photographs it. The researchers have posted a video demonstration of their creation on YouTube.