Unfortunately these laws are made for vintage cameras, which require (expensive) film. These cameras of yonder years were large bulky devices with exactly one purpose. So you knew if you were being filmed. By contrast already with an iPhone, you do not know if you are filmed, or if the guy with the phone is just looking at a map. It gets worse with Google glass, with them it is easy to film just everything, and decide later if you want to store the video. ( And to make matters worse, there are perfectly legitimate non privacy invading uses for a Google glass camera, like an AR route planner.) So I think that these laws are not much more useful than anti piracy laws.

The bad thing about glass is that you can't tell if you are recording or not. You can't just go and challenge every person at the beach wearing glass, and when it becomes popular, it will be abused.

I was thinking less about being able to stop them at the time of recording, and more about the legal use of what they've recorded.

For example,

-- if they poke their head into your house uninvited & record you breaking a law - that might not be permitted as evidence.

-- if there are laws against recording individuals in certain circumstances, and they do & post to YouTube, you can sue them for damages in some places

My point being, Yes, there are more cameras everywhere, but that shouldn't really matter as long as there are laws in place regarding recording people. It is no different from when they walked around with camcorders, as long as the law stands up for individual rights of privacy.

Having said it that way... oh, crap :-(

Yeah, my neighborhood dive bar outright banned Google Glass for this reason (OK, and also as a publicity stunt): http://the5pointcafe.com/google-glasses-banned/

I thought there was a light on the outside of the view prism when recording was happening?

Come on, we're hackers! A pesky light is asking to be turned off all the time.

You think the average Glass user will disassemble the device (which teardowns would seem to indicate is a one way operation) just for the purposes of disabling the recording light so they could record on the sly?

Aye, we're hackers, who are a minority of people.

It's my understanding that privacy issues and certain laws have greatly influenced the artificial shutter sounds in digital cameras. Certainly a can of worms is inevitably being opened.