Is a Backlash Building Against Smart Glasses That Record? (futurism.com) 67
Remember those Harvard dropouts who built smart glasses for covert facial recognition — and then raised $1 million to develop AI-powered glasses to continuously listen to conversations and display its insights?
"People Are REALLY Mad," writes Futurism, noting that some social media users "have responded with horror and outrage." One of its selling points is that the specs don't come with a visual indicator that lights up to let people know when they're being recorded, which is a feature that Meta's smart glasses do currently have. "People don't want this," wrote Whitney Merill, a privacy lawyer. "Wanting this is not normal. It's weird...."
[S]ome mocked the deleterious effects this could have on our already smartphone-addicted, brainrotted cerebrums. "I look forward to professional conversations with people who just read robot fever dream hallucinations at me in response to my technical and policy questions," one user mused.
The co-founder of the company told TechCrunch their glasses would be the "first real step towards vibe thinking."
But there's already millions of other smart glasses out in the world, and they're now drawing a backlash, reports the Washington Post, citing the millions of people viewing "a stream of other critical videos" about Meta's smart glasses.
The article argues that Generation Z, "who grew up in an internet era defined by poor personal privacy, are at the forefront of a new backlash against smart glasses' intrusion into everyday life..." Opal Nelson, a 22-year-old in New York, said the more she learns about smart glasses, the angrier she becomes. Meta Ray-Bans have a light that turns on when the gadget is recording video, but she said it doesn't seem to protect people from being recorded without consent... "And now there's more and more tutorials showing people how to cover up the [warning light] and still allow you to record," Nelson said. In one such tutorial with more than 900,000 views, a man claims to explain how to cover the warning light on Meta Ray-Bans without triggering the sensor that prevents the device from secretly recording.
One 26-year-old attracted 10 million views to their video on TikTok about the spread of Meta's photography-capable smart glasses. "People specifically in my generation are pretty concerned about the future of technology," the told the Post, "and what that means for all of us and our privacy."
The article cites figures from a devices analyst at IDC who estimates U.S. sales for Meta Ray-Bans will hit 4 million units by the end of 2025, compared to 1.2 million in 2024.
"People Are REALLY Mad," writes Futurism, noting that some social media users "have responded with horror and outrage." One of its selling points is that the specs don't come with a visual indicator that lights up to let people know when they're being recorded, which is a feature that Meta's smart glasses do currently have. "People don't want this," wrote Whitney Merill, a privacy lawyer. "Wanting this is not normal. It's weird...."
[S]ome mocked the deleterious effects this could have on our already smartphone-addicted, brainrotted cerebrums. "I look forward to professional conversations with people who just read robot fever dream hallucinations at me in response to my technical and policy questions," one user mused.
The co-founder of the company told TechCrunch their glasses would be the "first real step towards vibe thinking."
But there's already millions of other smart glasses out in the world, and they're now drawing a backlash, reports the Washington Post, citing the millions of people viewing "a stream of other critical videos" about Meta's smart glasses.
The article argues that Generation Z, "who grew up in an internet era defined by poor personal privacy, are at the forefront of a new backlash against smart glasses' intrusion into everyday life..." Opal Nelson, a 22-year-old in New York, said the more she learns about smart glasses, the angrier she becomes. Meta Ray-Bans have a light that turns on when the gadget is recording video, but she said it doesn't seem to protect people from being recorded without consent... "And now there's more and more tutorials showing people how to cover up the [warning light] and still allow you to record," Nelson said. In one such tutorial with more than 900,000 views, a man claims to explain how to cover the warning light on Meta Ray-Bans without triggering the sensor that prevents the device from secretly recording.
One 26-year-old attracted 10 million views to their video on TikTok about the spread of Meta's photography-capable smart glasses. "People specifically in my generation are pretty concerned about the future of technology," the told the Post, "and what that means for all of us and our privacy."
The article cites figures from a devices analyst at IDC who estimates U.S. sales for Meta Ray-Bans will hit 4 million units by the end of 2025, compared to 1.2 million in 2024.
Glassholes (Score:4, Insightful)
Ìf I see one I will certainly let my feelings be known, on-camera or off.
Re:Glassholes (Score:4, Insightful)
The internet: At the time, it seemed like a good idea.
Yes because private citizens with a camera are somehow worse or more onerous than big business, your local government, or even your own devices.
I really don't get the backlash when 99% of the people who are noisy and complaining about this are doing so on devices and services that are *actually* bad for their freedom. I mean I can, today, wear a pinhole camera wired to something like an esp32 (or even some LoRA device) which transmits to who knows where and does the exact same thing, except I can't see it in real time.
Is it just because...you're more aware? I really don't understand.
Re: (Score:3)
Do you search people for phones and break those too? Or are wearables (or even just face-wearables?) a narrow special case of the one type of other-peoples'-computers that are unacceptable?
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Do you search people for phones and break those too? Or are wearables (or even just face-wearables?) a narrow special case of the one type of other-peoples'-computers that are unacceptable?
Silly lad, I look at someone recording me without my consent as teh same thing as say - groping my wife without he consent (of mine. And my reaction is most likely to be the same Or if someone is stalking.
If you had bothered to read my other post on the matter, if there is an event in public, like a birthday party, there is an implied consent, no one cares. So there is no need to accost them.
The phone is out, and we all know it. Not any problem at all.
Wearing surveillance glasses to record people
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I was listening to Spotify earlier by saying "Alexa play music". The algorithm eventually played George Michael (I think) rather than music. I realized at that point while hearing "sex is natural, sex is good, not everybody does it, but everybody should" that
'When did this become not shocking?" and "could you hear this playing in and old age home or even a church lobby on the radio and not care?"
We are numb.
Simply expect that sooner or later, active cameras will be in every bathroom o
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You're extremely naive.
I know, right?
Simply expect that sooner or later, active cameras will be in every bathroom or shower to let robots or highly trained sub-minimum wage workers can direct robots to flush for you.
Normalization of deviation is what you are trying to say, I think. Except there are much simpler and incredibly less expensive ways to flush the toilets. So that is a pretty strange statement.
I wouldn't be surprised if on day food companies produce food additives that monitor your intestines from the inside and transmit the data.
The guy who claims that Bill Gates put microchips in the Covid vaccines just checked into the discussion!
Privacy is dead and I'll gladly mock anyone who is naive enough to believe we live in a world where we can change any aspect of that?
Just be careful! You have the forbidden knowledge! You don't want to get kidnapped by the Bildebergers and sent through the Pizzagate node to the Area 51 compound where Hillary sends the little kid
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There are some people who need these kinds of things for medical reasons. Face blindness is a real thing.
There are already tools that do things like record audio and produce a real-time transcription. They usually don't store the recording, as facial recognition glasses probably wouldn't.
I get that people want privacy, and don't like being filmed either, but there should be a balance of rights for technology can significantly improve someone's life while only being a little bit annoying to you.
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I can, today, wear a pinhole camera wired to something like an esp32 (or even some LoRA device) which transmits to who knows where and does the exact same thing, except I can't see it in real time.
You CAN do it, but only a few people actually do, and the data is stored privately. It's a new problem when it becomes pervasive, with centralized systems creating an indexed database of everyone, tracking them across interactions with multiple people.
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People obviously don't mind being recorded, or else the "backlash" would have happened decades ago when cameras became ubiquitous.
What they hate, is seeing it. That's the difference with glasses and recording lights. Hide it and they're fine.
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>"People obviously don't mind being recorded, or else the "backlash" would have happened decades ago when cameras became ubiquitous."
Fixed cameras here and there are totally different than people walking around with always-recording-video devices IN YOUR FACE. And if they are recording audio as well, that is much, much worse. You think you are having somewhat private conversations and are not. Fixed cameras usually or often don't record audio and they are often far away from people, so there is a lot
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What difference do you see with doorbell cameras which also record bystanders? (I don't support any.)
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>"What difference do you see with doorbell cameras which also record bystanders? (I don't support any.)"
Everyone knows doorbell cameras record video/audio, and they don't follow you around, go with you to dinner, or to the public restroom, or watch/listen to you inside the house. There is a big difference.
Betteridge Subverted (Score:5, Insightful)
Consent at the law (Score:3)
I live in a two party consent state where audio recording in a place where there's an expectation of privacy is a felony. (And it has been enforced in the past.)
Video is easy to deal with. Just get some ultrabright infrared LEDs and wear them all over your body. The glassholes won't get anything but the glare from those.
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I live in a two party consent state
Are you sure that's *audio* recording and not telephone recording?
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It seems to vary by state.
Considerably. But it will only take one felony conviction to make the point.
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I seem to recall there often had to be some expectation of privacy. I can imagine that they'll do things to erode public expectation.
Anyhow good on young people for getting fed up with this nonsense. I hope they continue to get tired of shit.
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Yes.
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Except that modern optical sensors with IR filters aren't affected in the least by this tactic.
The current trend in security cameras is "night time color". The cameras no longer go into IR-sensitive night time mode with IR illumination. They are sufficiently sensitive to operate even in very dim white light. All infrared sources are automatically
Re: (Score:3)
IR LEDs aren't all that effective. Newer cameras are better at dealing with them and often have a visible light night vision mode for when IR doesn't work. To cover your whole body you would need a lot of LEDs, a lot of heat, a lot of energy to run them for a useful amount of time.
What year is this? (Score:5, Insightful)
My hope (Score:2)
Not that I really want that to happen, but there are people who might take violent exception, and I won't be too upset about it.
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Physical assault will probably have a bad outcome for both.
You could just grab the glasses and run or crush them which would be less violent and more effective.
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If I was being recorded in a restaurant by some glass-hole you bet I'm going to physically assault them with a punch right to the nose.
I bet this will happen, people recording with a phone at a get together is one thing. Everyone knows it. But clandestinely recording is sure to get people's unhappy attention if found out.
Re: (Score:2)
Which is a felony all by itself. Good luck with that.
This ship has sailed (Score:4, Interesting)
The last thirty years of technological advancement have proven that if a technology is cheap, easy to use, provides some perceived advantage to the user, and can by rationalized by the user as causing no real harm to others, then it will be used .... everywhere.
Railing against smart glasses that record video makes as much sense, and is just about as effective, as railing against security cameras recording you, or your cell phone company always knowing your location, or Google and Amazon tracking everything you buy and every place you visit.
It is already trivial for someone to surrepticiously record the audio of any conversation on a smart phone or smart watch, then run it through a speech-to-text converter to produce a transcript. Smart glasses are just the next logical step.
This is the world we live in now. You must assume, always, that any interaction with another human being who you do not implictly trust is being recorded. We can't unmake the computers or the software, and when the same people who rail about their privacy then make a point of posting their concerns on social media to draw as much attention to themselves as possible, then they implicity undermine their own arguments.
Re:This ship has sailed (Score:5, Informative)
These glasses and phone cameras are being *actively* used by a person staring at you in a place like a restaurant, which is just creepy, and there's a high likelihood that recording is going to be on Youtube or Tiktok, if they're not already streaming your dinner live.
You see the difference now?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I certainly see what you think the difference is, or perhaps what you think it should be. But give this technology five years, and you won't know you're being recorded, any more than you can know right now if the au
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Restaurants have been known to live stream their cameras. Anyone holding a phone could be recording audio and/or video, and live streaming it. Any bag could have a camera hidden in it. Any shirt button could be a camera.
It's way too late to get paranoid about cameras watching you.
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We can't unmake the computers or the software
we can't unmake guns either but ... oh wait.
google glasses got backlash because it is a problem. you are just saying "it's done, deal with it", and to some extent i get it. if we manage to avoid a new dark age at some point ocular implants will be trivial and accepted, but today that's not going to float easily. it will need general adjustment and if not managed you can be assured that it will cause plenty of unpleasant incidents, including violence. privacy is a sensible and hairy issue, and also a cultura
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Yeah all those things suck and we actually could have stopped it.
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Mod the parent up!
Glasses that record everything all the time are in the interest of the Tech Oligarchs. They want all that data! And as such devices get cheaper and cheaper they will be practically giving them away...
"For the children" to live in a safer more observed world.
You do know that it is pretty simple to make sure the "recording" light does not come on, don't you?
I'm waiting for the stories of the assaults of innocents simply wearing glasses.
And shirt buttons with cameras that talk to glasses tha
Re: (Score:2)
Railing against smart glasses that record video makes as much sense, and is just about as effective, as railing against security cameras recording you, or your cell phone company always knowing your location, or Google and Amazon tracking everything you buy and every place you visit.
I have the power to not use Google/Amazon. I exercise this power. I don't have the power to stop assholes recording everything with their glasses on behalf of Zuckerberg, so my only defence is to loudly protest such behaviour.
I dont really get the hate (Score:5, Interesting)
Just to be clear, I’m not a glasshole. It’s a shame that nobody can make any sort of stumble or mistake in public without worrying that they’re gonna go viral because some passing-by prick decides to record and post it.
Glassholes take it to the next level, sure, but it’s sort of like dialing the volume from 8 to 9. Things were already obnoxiously loud. One extra tick on the dial isnt a profound change.
Re: I dont really get the hate (Score:1)
I am sorry you feel this way. Obviously you have not had your daily allowance of Hate-Ee-Ohs. Please stay tuned so we can help you with that.
--the_party_of_peace (sometimes)
Re: (Score:2)
--the_party_of_peace (sometimes)
Which party is that?
Re: (Score:1)
In general? All of them. They all say it at some time. None of them mean it as anything more than a slogan. It's like the rule of law in that way. We as humans like to say it but almost nobody likes to believe it.
On this issue at this time however, it appears to be the far left (punch a Nazi vibe). Although I think it could easily be the militant right too if you came up with the correct issue to work them up.
Re: (Score:1)
If some of them rally around being pissed at this maybe some of those will stick around to get pissed at that.
Like duhhh (Score:2)
Let me have my glasses (Score:1)
If Google had a backbone during the Google Glass years the world would be much different today, and by that, I mean for the better. My sight is turning to shit and so is my memory. I, for one, more than welcome recording all aspects of my life as I see fit. I am and live in the US and I'm delighted we don't have privacy anywhere in the constitution and that in most states (if not all, recording, if I'm not mistaken, is a First Amendment right) video recording of any kind is allowed - and yes, I'm not just t
Society needs to grapple with this (Score:4, Interesting)
The surveillance culture that's been building since the combination of smart phones and social media has really pushed the boundaries of "there is no expectation of privacy in public" to limits that would have never been tolerated for most of the modern age. Just 20-25 years ago, if you had laid out how much ugly behavior this combination has enabled, I think even most civil libertarians would have called for drastic cuts in the right to film in public and publish.
The laws would have to start very simple and build up, but as a starting point I think it should be a federal crime to non-consensually record and publish to social media someone for the purpose of humiliating them when their conduct is neither a crime nor has traditional journalistic value.
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nor has traditional journalistic value.
Everyone is a journalist.
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The antics of naked children was once a thing for entertainment. Now, it upsets "think of the children" people (and is a crime in many First World countries). The consequence is deleting images of important events because a child was involved. See "Napalm girl".
Um... (Score:1)
The co-founder of the company told TechCrunch their glasses would be the "first real step towards vibe thinking."
Was this co-founder trying to make a case for why the company should just shudder its operations?
Re: (Score:2)
I think the word you're looking for is "shutter", referring to those wooden doors that people used to fold over their windows at night or in bad weather.
And I'm pretty sure that he was saying his company had a good visionary idea.
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I think the word you're looking for is "shutter", referring to those wooden doors that people used to fold over their windows at night or in bad weather.
You are correct, but my phone had a different idea than me.
And I'm pretty sure that he was saying his company had a good visionary idea.
That might be what he believes. But no.
No expectation of privacy in public (Score:3)
Every bank, gas station, railway station, ATM, Tesla films you 24/7 in public.
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On the public street, they can.
No privacy in public.
Re: No expectation of privacy in public (Score:3)
Which are you? (Score:2)
With a topic like this, it seems you can divide responders into two groups:
1. I want to gather and analyse the issues that make this a problem, and how we might strike the best balance as a society.
2. I'm immediately concerned about the trespassing on any of *my* rights.
There has always been a backlash (Score:2)
And hostility isn't a new phenomena. I remember some years ago a guy who foolishly had a camera surgically attached to his face received a beating from some French McDonalds employees who took offen
"first real step towards vibe thinking." (Score:2)
Consider the consequences (Score:1)
For those of you who talk about trying to take these glasses off of other people's faces, consider what the effect of gaining an assault conviction would do to your lives. If you have an issue with someone recording you via these glasses, call the police. If you try to "take care" of it yourself, you'll be the criminal. This isn't a case of someone physically assaulting you where you'll have the right to defend yourself but the person you're trying to do this to probably will have that right.
Good news, Ladies and gentlemen (Score:2)
I present the WalMart wonder glasses.
It will protect your eyes from harmful UV rays -- nothing more.
Still under $5, at the checkout counter.
The Meta ones are in the optical store. And "Meta" stands for "Me take your money, and your privacy" though not in that order