Using invasiveness to battle criminality, a Google Glass app allows you to scan a stranger’s eyes and know within moments whether that person has been registered with a sex-offender database. Of course, the greater moral question will come when an app can look into eyes and determine what that person might be about to do, not only what they’ve done in the past. From “Through a Face Scanner Darkly,” Betsy Morais at the New Yorker blog:

“Anonymity forms a protective casing. When it’s punctured, on the street or at a party, the moment of recognition falls somewhere on a spectrum of delight and horror. Soon enough, though, technology will see to it that we can no longer expect to disappear into a landscape of passing faces.

NameTag, an app built for Google Glass by a company called FacialNetwork.com, offers a face scanner for encounters with strangers. You see somebody on the sidewalk and, slipping on your high-tech spectacles, select the app. Snap a photo of a passerby, then wait a minute as the image is sent up to the company’s database and a match is hunted down. The results load in front of your left eye, a selection of personal details that might include someone’s name, occupation, Facebook and/or Twitter profile, and, conveniently, whether there’s a corresponding entry in the national sex-offender registry.”