As we enter the era of wearable computing, government requests for user data are at an all-time high.

According to Google's Transparency Report, the company received 14,201 government requests for user data in 2010 and complied with 76% of them. In 2012, Google complied with only 66%, but due to the growing number (21,389 in 2012) of requests, Google actually forfeited user data thousands more times. Google, and other tech giants, have been fighting back, but the trend is clear: Every year, more data is flowing from tech companies to the government.

During this same period, Google conceived of and announced its next big product: Google Glass, a wearable, connected device with a camera. Now, imagine for a moment that wearable computing finally has its breakthrough moment. That a cheap version of Google Glass, after it becomes available to the masses, turns millions of users into full-time documentarians — of any and all things. Then, imagine the FBI has access to that information. Public reception of Glass has been mixed. The vast majority of people haven't tried it, or anything like it, but the concept is new and discomforting. For many, concerns center around Glass' inconspicuous ability to outwardly surveil the unsuspecting. With Glass there is no "point and shoot" — there's just "shoot." Two decades ago, the FBI lobbied aggressively for Congress to pass the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), mandating that all telephone switches be "wiretap friendly" in the event that the FBI needed to listen in on phone lines. In 2004, CALEA was extended to some broadband providers, like colleges, but larger web companies were not included. CALEA set the stage for what's known as the FBI backdoor, the idea that the government — with legal authorization — can monitor communications through connected devices, often times without the user's knowledge. Last year, one federal judge estimated there are probably around to 30,000 secret electronic surveillance orders issued by federal courts every year. Similarly, Wired reported the FBI was lobbying big tech companies like Yahoo, Facebook, and Google to request cooperation with backdoors for surveillance. As with most surveillance, it's hard to know just how easy it is to gain access to user information. In 2012, Ars Technica found that it is highly unlikely that Apple could surrender encrypted data on an iPhone to authorities but noted that information in the cloud was much easier to obtain. (Since then, Apple, like Google, has actively encouraged users to migrate their iPhone's contents to the cloud.)