Moviegoer interrogated by feds for wearing Google Glass while watching film

Wednesday, January 22, 2014 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Google Glass, moviegoer, interrogation

(NaturalNews) Evolution in technology is expected to bring about some degree of unfamiliarity and perhaps even a little bit of discomfort, but you wouldn't automatically jump to the conclusion that technology would contribute to the ongoing formation of the American police state.

And yet, one Google Glass owner is a first-hand witness to this phenomenon, as noted by Angela Moscaritolo over at PC Magazine:

Google Glass has shown up at fashion shows, NBA games, and even the operating room, but there's one place the high-tech headpiece probably won't be met with open arms - the movie theatre.

Seriously. The police state has come to the picture show.

Moscaritolo reports that an Ohio man "found this out the hard way" after he was reportedly interrogated by none other than federal agents for the high crime of wearing the $1,500 computing device to his local AMC theater, located in the Easton Mall in Columbus, this past weekend.

Movie piracy now a top domestic law enforcement concern?

In relating the story to The Gadgeteer, a tech blog, the man - who only identified himself by the initials "T.U.," said he was sitting in his seat, one hour into the new Jack Ryan film, Shadow Recruit, when he was approached.

"A guy comes near my seat, shoves a badge that had some sort of a shield on it, yanks the Google Glass off my face and says 'follow me outside immediately,'" the moviegoer wrote on the blog.

Once outside, he found himself face-to-face with several federal officials and some "mall cops" who summarily accused him of using Google Glass to illegally tape the movie (which he denied).

With the world in turmoil and the nation teetering on fiscal insolvency, apparently the feds don't have anything else better to do than address that most heinous of crimes: suspected copyright infringement.

More from Moscaritolo:

The Glass-wearer said he recently purchased $600 prescription lenses for his headset, and has been wearing it ever since, but switched it off during the movie so he wouldn't get distracted. The man and his non-Glass-wearing wife were taken into two separate rooms, and he was questioned by two officers.

"What followed was over an hour of the 'feds' telling me I am not under arrest, and that this is a 'voluntary interview,' but if I choose not to cooperate bad things may happen to me," T.U. wrote. "I kept telling them that Glass has a USB port and not only did I allow them, I actually insist [sic] they connect to it and see that there was nothing but personal photos with my wife and my dog on it."

Well, here are some free movie passes anyway

T.U. continued to insist that he had not been recording anything, and that his device was "off."

Finally, after some delay, one of the feds connected the device to a computer, downloaded all of T.U.'s personal photos and went through them one by one before pronouncing him innocent.

Later, he wrote, someone from the "movie association" came into the room where he was being held and gave him a pair of free movie passes for his trouble.

"I asked if they thought my Google Glass was such a big piracy machine, why didn't they ask me not to wear them in the theater?" he wrote. "I would have probably sat five or six rows closer to the screen (as I didn't have any other pair of prescription glasses with me) and none of this would have happened. All he said was AMC called him, and he called the FBI and 'here are two more passes for my troubles.'"

T.U. wrote that officers with the Department of Homeland Security, not the FBI, had questioned him.

Sources:

http://www.pcmag.com

http://the-gadgeteer.com

http://www.ice.gov