Smart glasses equipped with cameras, microphones, and AI are a creeping privacy and security nightmare, prompting backlash.
And rightfully so.
With Google glasses, it was this strange contraption over one eye, so it was easy to shun or shame them into taking it off when at a conference or in a public bathroom (saw it happen many times).
Problem with these are that the wearer can claim they’re prescription, even though there’s a camera and mic on them. And there are tons of stickers and covers you can buy online to hide the little recording indicator.
There were also stories that these would soon autorecord/stream everything, and use AI to transcribe what was said and identify anyone encountered. Presumably so you could later go back and review something that you missed.
What we have are essentially millions of portable Flock cameras with infinite storage and personal ID built in.
Creeper peepers
It was the first thing I thought of when I saw these glasses: 100% perverts are going to buy them.
Perverts and predators. I fully expect to hear about stalking and murder rates going up due to these-- and hopefully the makers will be sued out of fucking existence.
there’s already a booming market for disabling the recording light.
Well, yeah. You wouldn’t allow someone to film at a swimming pool with their phone. Stealth cameras of any form are immediately far more suspicious.
So the same thing smartphones are? It’s easy to run install and run spy apps on them that record everything.
Everybody is getting so anxious about new technology these days. Smart glasses are pervert glasses, AI is completely bad and cannot have any possible good use, etc. Maybe the problem isn’t with the technology, but with the companies and the corruption world wide.
It’d be easy with regulations to have LEDs to go along with recording functions to notify other users when they are, but it seems these technologies are being allowed to run rampant spying under the scummiest of companies who do want to record and obtain your private information. Nobody is putting up even the most basic roadblocks or bothering to be transparent about their software.
That’s a lot of words to out yourself as a pervert…
And yet your answer is exactly the right amount of words for the expected reading comprehension of the one making it.
Some people fight for rights. Others like yourself just fight for vibes. Also bears some association to the amount of words they can usually deal with.
Don’t call them that!
Slandering the innocent perverts of the world by association with Facebook isn’t gonna make 'em quit marketin spookware to assholes who oughta know better. =U
Yeah this problem goes far beyond Eugene and Rusty
You either get bought by Google as a start up, or live long enough to see yourself make all of Google’s mistakes.
I was hoping pedo glasses would catch on as a term but I can settle for this.
Because that’s what they are?
Not true! You could be a freelance CIA agent/pizza delivery man and world’s greatest swordsman (despite having never been in a real fight)
Yeah, and won’t someone think about those poor contractors over at Meta? How else are they going to meet their AI circlejerk quota and rank all of that increasingly disturbing novel content if they can’t watch it through their glasses on their train rides to and from the office? Let’s have some compassion here folks!
//end bit
Ugh, just typing that made me nauseous
I’d wear them if they didn’t have a camera - the idea of a little screen and the music/phone call capabilities baked into something I have to wear every waking moment anyways actually sounds really nice. I’d probably turn off the display after the novelty wore off, but the audio alone is still worth it to me.
Then why don’t you buy the Bose ones?
Bose needs to spend more on advertising, I’m the correct audience but I had no idea they made these.
Tell me if you need my info for finder’s fee?
Likely because they only do audio.
Don’t think you read last line of their original message?
yeah the camera is the troublesome part. Thing is it is useful for camera tracking.
No way, microphone is much worse
Eh. It’s already pretty easy to conceal a microphone. Harder to conceal a camera.
It’s actually pretty easy to conceal. there’s plenty of investigative reporting with hidden cameras and nobody’s none the wiser. The fact that they have to add a light to the glasses proves that even if you hide it in plain sight, people will still miss it.
microphone has many more basic uses. taking notes. voice command. I mean we all realize all the smartphones have both of these things right. I mean that is why I don’t really like them but I would more like AR although realistically not in a corp is controlling everything way. If it was open source and local and under my control that would be super cool.
The Even G2 is screen, audio and no camera. https://www.evenrealities.com/products/g2-a
I’ve never heard of these, will check them out
same way the monkeywrench got its name maybe
article is already a decade too late. I’ve perceived them as pervert glasses for years!
Despite the constant push to normalize creepiness, you were morally correct then and equally morally correct now!
Anyone wearing those are absolutely being a perv and playing dumb about it. Apple will probably come out with those next, and push them just like they have air pods so that they’ll have a camera to go with their always active mics! Fucking drives me nuts when people act like they’re so technologically savvy by using siri to call people on the phone.
eye pods
What the fuck do AirPods have to do with this? Any wireless earbuds are awesome. I can start playing a video on my phone, and it connects. I take a call on my laptop, and it jumps there immediately. I don’t have to fiddle with a cord that constantly gets tangled and then eventually just stops working because it’s been bent in the same spot for 2 years. I can connect my AirPods and my wife’s AirPods to my phone on a plane, and we watch a video together, and I didn’t have to remember to bring my headphone splitter. Wireless earbuds are not the same as a mass surveillance device.
Dude, you to offense like nobody’s business… I’m not dissing on wireless ear buds, I’m specifically calling out Apple brand for the “always active mic” which is a privacy concern in itself. And 2. Its the popularization of trying to make it a normalized thing that everybody wears. It wasn’t socially acceptable to otherwise wear them around all the time, but now it’s seen as a “status symbol” so now is OK to do…
Go ahead and keep spending exorbitant money on Apple products, they’ve clearly wrangled you into their ecosystem and I somehow hit a nerve lmao. I get the point to their functionality, too, you don’t have to explain magical wireless technology to me, it sounds like you’re trying to justify something to yourself.
The pair/brand I own don’t have an always-on mic, they don’t send data to the Mothership, and they probably sound a whole HELL of a lot better than yours trash apple product 😂
Cracks me up though, you’re spending $600+ on 2 SETS of airpods for a (2-4hour?) flight vs a <$10 headphone splitter… Who you convincing they’re great, yourself??
ANYWAY back to my point, I can see Apple trying to release their own version of these glasses and trying to normalize them, and poor fucking saps like you will gobble it up and continue trying to justify it all the same… I bet you have a pair of their $3500 augmented reality headset too…
Calling me offensive because I used “fuck”? It’s called poe’s law. Don’t assume people are mad just because of words. I was just trying to figure out what the heck you meant with AirPods. The always on is for the transparency mode. It’s all on device and not even sent to the phone. AirPods are t even that expensive and we use them for more than just a flight. We have jobs where we listen to music and work with our hands so we don’t get stuck in our cords.
But you’re the one being very extra and aggressive now, even going into name calling, which I never did. Take a step back. This is Lemmy, not Reddit or Xitter. Take a chill pill and engage in the conversation instead of spewing vitriol.
Also, why would I have the AR headset? There’s no use for it. You can’t even play games! 😂
It read angry and defensive. You made a lot of cases for why they’re “so great” like you had to convince more than me. Anyway, I know how they work, I’m a pretty big tech nerd myself, but at no point would I ever use their tech. This is a privacy group, so you can’t defend a company that’s known for spying on their customers. Apple might push themselves as privacy-focused, but maybe they just keep other “bad actors” from your data while they happily gather as much as they want and
sharesell to 3rd party partners.I’m going to need a source on Apple selling your data. Just one source is fine. They do push themselves as security focused, and they are very overpriced for what you’re getting. But I haven’t seen any news or sources of them actually breaking any of their privacy promises. They did give anonymized audio data to a third party contractor to quality grade their “hey siri” detection but this is something the user has to opt into. They have a better track record than Google, and back in 2009 when I was getting into smart phones, those were the only two options.
Totally understandable, and yes, Apple does have a better track record with consumer/customer data. They’ve pushed really hard to hang on directly to user data since they have their own ad platform now. They gather the same types of data that Google does, and Google goes to extra lengths to get even more. I get that.
I think it’s the verbiage I don’t trust in some of their privacy policy:
"## Apple’s Sharing of Personal Data
Apple may share personal data with Apple-affiliated companies, service providers who act on our behalf, our partners, developers, and publishers, or others at your direction. Further, Apple does not share personal data with third parties for their own marketing purposes."
So data IS shared, but not allowed to be used for marketing purposes, so it sounds great at face value, but they leave out what’s allowed… Again Apple has their own ad platform.
Cookies and Other Technologies
Apple’s websites, online services, interactive applications, and advertisements may use “cookies” and other technologies such as web beacons.
While they allow you to disable cookies, there’s still other tech at work… It later says:
In addition to cookies, Apple uses other technologies that help us achieve similar objectives.
I just don’t fully trust it. Apple has A VERY large legal team and they certainly have better wording to sound super great!! They do offer better privacy out of the box and settings to lock down or opt out, yes, 100%. But they do admit several times data is shared, be it personal or non-personal (anonymized).
They also allow Google to still remain the default search engine (for $12b) which then for millions of people all that data is gathered… And you KNOW Apple gets a slice of that data… So while Apple appears to take the high road on this one, I think they’re far from innocent. They’re allowing other companies to do the legwork for your data while maintaining its “pure” view. inserts Clever_girl.gif
Anyway, sources: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/
https://fossbytes.com/apple-data-collection-explained/
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-privacy-data-collection/
The gist: data is gathered, data is shared, days is allowed to be stored with 3rd parties “until they’re done with it” just don’t use it for marketing, that’s our space, etc… They’ve come a long way, but far from innocent!
I hate how these are being used, both by Meta and by creeps.
I bought a pair of them after trying out a friends (back before they had any AI capability, and had not yet been hacked to dox people) because they’re really good speakers and the exact same style of sunglasses that I’ve worn for 30 years. The first thing I did was disable the always on mic (which required me to log in to meta, which I had to make an account for using a burner email). The second thing I did was purchase lens covers so people could be confident I wasn’t recording them. Finding covers that worked for the lens and not just the light was a pain because I apparently everyone is doing the opposite thing with these that I wanted to. Also, I wanted to make sure that the lens cover could be removed because I wanted to be able to retain the ability to make hands free first person videos (in places without other people). It’s also super helpful for making footage of things that require you to use both hands.
I hope any future smart glasses (because there’s no way this product is going to go away) don’t just indicate when they are recording, but they make it obvious to others when they’re in a state that they cannot be recording (video at least). A built in lens cover solves that. If I was to buy another pair of smart glasses (which I currently have no plans to do), it would be an absolute requirement that people around me understand that I’m not making video of them, doxxing them, or in any way using an image of them.
There are a ton of great applications for this and other cameras. If you’re a woman walking around by herself it could help prove that an assault took place, for example. The problem is that the people buying these things are the freaks, not the innocents.
“Invading people’s privacy by recording them without their knowledge or consent is only wrong when a man does it.”
Nobody has a right to not be recorded in public spaces. Whether that’s a good thing or not I’ll leave to you, but nobody in public should ever assume they have any kind of privacy while in public.
Okay, so you’re pro-smartglasses and forfeit your right to complain about men being “creeps” in public. “Nobody has a right to not be recording in public spaces” “Nobody in public should ever assume they have any kind of privacy while in public.” Your words, not mine. Now let’s see you squirm to try to explain why actually that’s not the case whenever it’s convenient for you to contradict yourself.
You can’t read, can you?
Apparently you can’t
So obviously beside the point…can you not turn this into Reddit please? I don’t own meta glasses or film anyone in public without them being aware. The only situation in which I would, which I’ve already said I don’t, is if I’m alone and concerned for my safety.
And yeah men are more likely to use them for perverted reasons.So are we gonna normalize them and say they’re okay, or are we gonna say they’re an invasion of everyone’s privacy and shouldn’t be acceptable?
Because you can’t have it both ways unless you want to call yourself a hypocrite. This isn’t reddit, but that doesn’t mean you can flaunt your logical inconsistencies and expect no one to call you out on it.
By the way, I’m firmly in the camp of “these are an invasion of everyone’s privacy,” but if you wanna argue “well actually they have some uses” then I don’t want to hear you crying later when someone uses it to invade your privacy. Don’t be so short-sighted.
It’s not beside the point at all.
That’s not what I said at all. I think they could have uses if someone is camping in the back-country, especially someone from a vulnerable group. I don’t think they should be normalized. I said they’re attractive, even to non-perverts.
It seems you don’t know what the word ‘normalize’ means…
Have fun writing those regulations that somehow ban their use except for if you’re camping or a minority
Fucking drives me nuts when people act like they’re so technologically savvy by using siri to call people on the phone.
Years ago, I worked with this guy who would purposely leave his office and pace the halls only to stop in my doorway to say, “hey siri, call _____” with a huge fucking smirk on his face!
He was so annoying.
Don’t forget…Facefuck was found by a massive letch/perv.
I’ve had to inform all my boomer/genx peeps that have one about how they send video footage back even when you aren’t recording. Instances like people just putting the glasses down on their bedside table and some meta contractor ends up seeing your wife get dressed after a shower.
My beef, what about underage users?? Let’s say a high schooler gets frisky with his gf?? A kid at my kid’s school was bragging about using his glasses for school work, and they were joking about taking a poop, etc then a kid joked about walking into the girls bathroom with them on… Idk man, so many problems with them!!
One of the police officers was using it when I was in highschool, even in the restrooms I think.
I’ve always wanted a search in my glasses while I drive. Look at that building, it’s cool, what is it? What’s the name of that lake? How far away is that mountain from me? What kind of tree is that? How old is that collapsing building? Etc.
But I don’t want to be a pervert. I’ve made it nearly 50 years successfully avoiding that.
If only we could create some kind of machine that could be pointed at something to describe it. That way it wouldn’t be attached to your face all the time
While driving
Any such technology would be used to deliver ads, so imagine you have that capacity but it also constantly throws commercial at you while you’re driving.
The dream… /Jumps off cliff
I was calling them “stalker” glasses. Everything facebook (meta) does is about stalking humanity. Creepy, creepy weirdos.
Yes. Anyone wantong to hide a camera’s presence probably has a reason.
