Does Meta's New Face Camera Herald a New Age of Surveillance? Or Distraction... (seattletimes.com) 74
"For the past two weeks, I've been using a new camera to secretly snap photos and record videos of strangers in parks, on trains, inside stores and at restaurants," writes a reporter for the New York Times. They were testing the recently released $300 Ray-Ban Meta glasses — "I promise it was all in the name of journalism" — which also includes microphones (and speakers, for listening to audio).
They call the device "part of a broader ambition in Silicon Valley to shift computing away from smartphone and computer screens and toward our faces." Meta, Apple and Magic Leap have all been hyping mixed-reality headsets that use cameras to allow their software to interact with objects in the real world. On Tuesday, Zuckerberg posted a video on Instagram demonstrating how the smart glasses could use AI to scan a shirt and help him pick out a pair of matching pants. Wearable face computers, the companies say, could eventually change the way we live and work... While I was impressed with the comfortable, stylish design of the glasses, I felt bothered by the implications for our privacy...
To inform people that they are being photographed, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses include a tiny LED light embedded in the right frame to indicate when the device is recording. When a photo is snapped, it flashes momentarily. When a video is recording, it is continuously illuminated. As I shot 200 photos and videos with the glasses in public, including on BART trains, on hiking trails and in parks, no one looked at the LED light or confronted me about it. And why would they? It would be rude to comment on a stranger's glasses, let alone stare at them... [A] Meta spokesperson, said the company took privacy seriously and designed safety measures, including a tamper-detection technology, to prevent users from covering up the LED light with tape.
But another concern was how smart glasses might impact our ability to focus: Even when I wasn't using any of the features, I felt distracted while wearing them... I had problems concentrating while driving a car or riding a scooter. Not only was I constantly bracing myself for opportunities to shoot video, but the reflection from other car headlights emitted a harsh, blue strobe effect through the eyeglass lenses. Meta's safety manual for the Ray-Bans advises people to stay focused while driving, but it doesn't mention the glare from headlights. While doing work on a computer, the glasses felt unnecessary because there was rarely anything worth photographing at my desk, but a part of my mind constantly felt preoccupied by the possibility...
Ben Long, a photography teacher in San Francisco, said he was skeptical about the premise of the Meta glasses helping people remain present. "If you've got the camera with you, you're immediately not in the moment," he said. "Now you're wondering, Is this something I can present and record?"
The reporter admits they'll fondly cherish its photos of their dog [including in the original article], but "the main problem is that the glasses don't do much we can't already do with phones... while these types of moments are truly precious, that benefit probably won't be enough to convince a vast majority of consumers to buy smart glasses and wear them regularly, given the potential costs of lost privacy and distraction."
They call the device "part of a broader ambition in Silicon Valley to shift computing away from smartphone and computer screens and toward our faces." Meta, Apple and Magic Leap have all been hyping mixed-reality headsets that use cameras to allow their software to interact with objects in the real world. On Tuesday, Zuckerberg posted a video on Instagram demonstrating how the smart glasses could use AI to scan a shirt and help him pick out a pair of matching pants. Wearable face computers, the companies say, could eventually change the way we live and work... While I was impressed with the comfortable, stylish design of the glasses, I felt bothered by the implications for our privacy...
To inform people that they are being photographed, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses include a tiny LED light embedded in the right frame to indicate when the device is recording. When a photo is snapped, it flashes momentarily. When a video is recording, it is continuously illuminated. As I shot 200 photos and videos with the glasses in public, including on BART trains, on hiking trails and in parks, no one looked at the LED light or confronted me about it. And why would they? It would be rude to comment on a stranger's glasses, let alone stare at them... [A] Meta spokesperson, said the company took privacy seriously and designed safety measures, including a tamper-detection technology, to prevent users from covering up the LED light with tape.
But another concern was how smart glasses might impact our ability to focus: Even when I wasn't using any of the features, I felt distracted while wearing them... I had problems concentrating while driving a car or riding a scooter. Not only was I constantly bracing myself for opportunities to shoot video, but the reflection from other car headlights emitted a harsh, blue strobe effect through the eyeglass lenses. Meta's safety manual for the Ray-Bans advises people to stay focused while driving, but it doesn't mention the glare from headlights. While doing work on a computer, the glasses felt unnecessary because there was rarely anything worth photographing at my desk, but a part of my mind constantly felt preoccupied by the possibility...
Ben Long, a photography teacher in San Francisco, said he was skeptical about the premise of the Meta glasses helping people remain present. "If you've got the camera with you, you're immediately not in the moment," he said. "Now you're wondering, Is this something I can present and record?"
The reporter admits they'll fondly cherish its photos of their dog [including in the original article], but "the main problem is that the glasses don't do much we can't already do with phones... while these types of moments are truly precious, that benefit probably won't be enough to convince a vast majority of consumers to buy smart glasses and wear them regularly, given the potential costs of lost privacy and distraction."
Help him pick out a pair of matching pants... (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything, these kind of technologies should warn us against sexual predators, people with previous criminal convictions, prone to violence and, in general, against threats. But of course in the Meta world it is all about advertising and making us buy more stuff we really don't need.
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people with previous criminal convictions, prone to violence and, in general, against threats
Where I live in London, when it comes to criminal convictions or propensity to violence, it's not the person wearing the glasses you need to be worried out.
Re: Help him pick out a pair of matching pants... (Score:1)
Which is why I repeatedly turn down 6-digits jobs down South and comfortably live in the North. ðY
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Great story bro.
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Considering crime rates in places like US and UK, that would be deemed racist.
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Considering crime rates in places like US and UK, that would be deemed racist.
But I thought crime rates themselves were racist . . .
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Modern Marxists don't believe in facts, they believe in relative truths.
I.e. factual crime rates are irrelevant. It's people who observe them and dare to notice them and draw conclusions (truth related to inconvenient facts) from them that are racist.
Hence, crime rates themselves are irrelevant. It's the glasses that would make people notice them that are racist.
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Thank you for an example of "relative truth" as opposed to a simple fact or not fact.
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Considering crime rates in places like US and UK, that would be deemed racist.
Crime tends to be linked to poverty... The question is, why are minorities kept poor in the US...
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That is a progressive myth. Easily observable by comparing crime rates among poor Jews vs poor Africans.
It's almost like minorities aren't "kept poor" by the outsiders, but by their own actions dictated by their cultures.
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That is a progressive myth. Easily observable by comparing crime rates among poor Jews vs poor Africans.
if that's so easily observable i presume you'll have zero problem sharing the actual data where you did that comparison on.
Re: Help him pick out a pair of matching pants... (Score:2)
You'll excuse me if I don't hold my breath. It's pretty obvious bait. Anything to push their idiotic points and create issues in addition to the ones we already have. Chaos is to their benefit, so they create a much as possible. That way the adults are too busy minding the children as opposed to actually discussing solutions to very severe and obvious problems. I say deprive them of the attention that serves as their oxygen, their message deserves to suffocate in the hatred it's sourced from.
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Google FBI crime statistics, then search by racial groups.
This information is utterly uncontroversial and factual and has been available publicly for many decades. You have to be actively avoiding looking for it to not find it.
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I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're just woefully ignorant and not just being intentionally racist. The reason your conclusion appears racist is because you're being absurdly reductive and clearly ignoring any nuance or history. You're demeaning all black people because of a single statistic. That's clearly racist.
Obviously all the many nuances of this issue cannot be contained in a single post lest I fall into the trap of oversimplifying as you have, but I do implore you to look into some de
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>I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're just woefully ignorant and not just being intentionally racist. The reason your conclusion appears racist is because you're being absurdly reductive and clearly ignoring any nuance or history. You're demeaning all black people because of a single statistic. That's clearly racist.
This is the progressive mind when it encounters an inconvenient fact. It has to cease addressing reality, and shifts to emotional appeals to demonize those daring to notice said
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This is the progressive mind when it encounters an inconvenient fact. It has to cease addressing reality, and shifts to emotional appeals to demonize those daring to notice said inconvenient facts, usually by projecting one's own biases upon the speaker. Typical way is the one above: by attempting to initiate a Maoist Struggle Session against the one daring to notice the fact.
Hmm. . .my post directly dealt with the facts of your post and then you write this, where you stop addressing reality and start talking about Maoism and projecting biases and a bunch of other irrelevant nonsense. If you were going for intentional irony it would be funny.
For example, take the prima facie absurd attempt at ignoring reality that is present in point seven. It takes desperate measures to avoid counting easily measurable things, such as assaults per capita, or even something so utterly undeniable as murders per capita. Seriously, you don't need context here.
You don't need context for statistics? You accuse me of ignoring reality because I insist that statistics require context?
I don't know where you got all the red scare bullshit about me from, but I post on ./ enough and I know you post on ./
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>where you stop addressing reality
One of the main tools of forcing Maoist conformity is projection of Red Guard's problems onto the victim. I reject your projection.
>seriously, who the fuck in 2023 could be described as a Maoist?
Woke. It's Maoism with Western characteristics. It functions exactly as Maoism does, both by segregating everyone into Red and Black classes and using Struggle Sessions as a primary tool of enforcement.
For example, this is where your mind goes immediately:
>What happens to o
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If anything, these kind of technologies should warn us against sexual predators ...
Ummmm, I kind of like your idea; however, this instance of it is utterly worthless.
Have you ever lived in California? Then you are completely inundated with sexual predators. Seriously. I looked at the website showing all of that and there were over 500 'predators' within a 1 mile radius of where I lived. I examined other areas and some were more dense, but none were free of an excessive amount of sexual predators. I tried it in other states and it was roughly the same: 1 out of every 100 people have been c
Glasshole (Score:5, Interesting)
Greed prevents learning.
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Black eyes quickly teach lessons.
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Black eyes quickly teach lessons.
Your lesson is to automatically default to violence? What the fuck is wrong with you.
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Who says that was their first effort?
When reasonable conversation fails, violence is an effective fallback position.
We've mostly given the government a monopoly on violence (a.k.a. the legal system), but we regularly use (the threat of) it to coerce people into complying with the law when they'd rather not.
And illegal violence directed against the elites has in fact been the cornerstone of virtually every major advancement of freedom and liberty in human history.
When one party has a vested interest in not a
Not only sleasy (Score:5, Insightful)
Photographing people without their permission is illegal in many places in the world, so Zuckerberg may end up paying a lot for this new data collecting gimmick.
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No, Facebook's business model is immoral in many places in the world. It is however very much legal. Governments haven't just let it pass, you simply think the laws are far more restrictive than they actually are.
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This is wildly inaccurate. Photographing people without their permission almost everywhere is legal, but publishing the photo is often not.
There's a significant difference.
Re:Not only sleasy (Score:4, Informative)
You don't have to believe me, look it up. https://commons.wikimedia.org/... [wikimedia.org]
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Your link confirms my point. Though it's made difficult to parse, as categories of "yes (with exceptions)" and "no (with exceptions)" are useless, and yet that is how they choose to categorize it.
But details are visible once you go below the chart and start reading details on each country.
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You don't have to believe me, look it up. https://commons.wikimedia.org/... [wikimedia.org]
I feel like you didn't read your own link an inadvertently linked to a source proving what the parent said. Look in the left column, most of it is green. In fact your post would have been more correct in saying:
Photographing people without their permission is illegal in very very few places in the world. and your link confirms it.
Re:Not only sleasy (Score:5, Insightful)
Not publishing. Distributing.
Small but in this case highly important difference. You distribute that photo the second you hand it over to Facebook, which you invariably do, or why do you think Facebook created these?
Re:Not only sleasy (Score:4, Informative)
No, publishing. All publishing is distributing. Not all distributing is publishing.
Example: You can send a picture on your phone to your friend via a private message. That's distributing, but not publishing. You can't put it on a public web page. That's both distributing and publishing.
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Our copyright law specifies it as "Images of persons may not be publicly displayed or distributed in any other way that makes them accessible to the public" ("Bildnisse von Personen dürfen weder öffentlich ausgestellt noch auf eine andere Art, wodurch sie der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht werden, verbreitet werden").
And quite frankly, if Facebook has access to it, it's pretty much "accessible to the public".
The German copyright law is a bit more strict by omitting the "accessible to
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>And quite frankly, if Facebook has access to it, it's pretty much "accessible to the public".
Factually and observably false, with massive legal precedent backing it up. Example: Facebook has source code for its systems. Is it published?
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No, but in this particular case, Facebook also has no interest in publishing it.
Counter question, what about the data people stored on Facebook's server, willing or not. You think that's never been published?
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If you think facebook has any interest in publishing their most valuable secret, personal data collected from their massive user base based off which they sell most if not all of their actual paid services, I have a bridge on the Moon to sell you.
Heck, that's not sufficiently stupid. Let's go with bridge on the Sun instead.
>Counter question, what about the data people stored on Facebook's server, willing or not. You think that's never been published?
That depends on the data obviously. If this is surface
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Publishing is not necessarily "making available to the public": It's enough if you "publish" to a limited audience, for example the organizations paying you for the information.
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This is an utterly insane redefinition of words, and I know of no legal basis for this interpretation that exists in context of corporate secrets as being discussed here, as this conflates "disclose" with "publish" for some strange reason.
As in literally, we already have a well defined word for this sort of thing, and it's not "publish".
And even then, it doesn't work with example used, as facebook does not publish these corporate secrets for money. They may be legally forced to disclose some chunks of it, a
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Not publishing. Distributing.
No. There's no such separation about distribution. It's about publishing or about commercial use. The nebulous term "distribution" is something you made up yourself. I can take a photo of you right now and send it to specific people if I want and there's nothing you can do about it.
What I can't do is make it widely available. I.e. I can send it to someone in a Messenger message, but I can't post it on a Facebook wall. Except since this is an American story we're talking about, yes you absolutely can publish
Blue strobe? How about ... (Score:4, Funny)
You think the blue strobe effect is bad and distracting?
Just wait until it's time for your bi-minutely advertisement while you're trying to merge on the freeway.
Re: Blue strobe? How about ... (Score:2)
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You think the blue strobe effect is bad and distracting?
Just wait until it's time for your bi-minutely advertisement while you're trying to merge on the freeway.
Bi-monthly? Your optimism is cute, it'll be more like 3 times hourly.
Also with how little attention most steering wheel attendants (I cant call them drivers any more) already give to the road, I doubt we'd notice a difference.
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Please read closer. It says bi-MINUTEly.
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You jest, but they lately reported a 50% success level of their attempt to turn shit into butter, too.
Spread is on par. Taste still off.
Sounds like (Score:2, Redundant)
Glassholes 2.0 is here....
Just wait 'til these things get widely known (Score:5, Funny)
I have a hunch we'll be seeing a slew of really fun videos soon where you get a first person view of a punch to the face.
Awesome! (Score:2)
Can I cover the LED with tape? (Score:3)
Or fry it with microwave?
Will the device check itself to be sure it is flashing / lit when recording?
How does it react if it detects the wearer blocking the signalling light?
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Or fry it with microwave?
Will the device check itself to be sure it is flashing / lit when recording?
How does it react if it detects the wearer blocking the signalling light?
Supposedly it detects that, but the more interesting question is how the anti-tampering tech works. For example, there might be a light sensor near it that expects to see the pulse, but replacing the LED and sensor with a sealed optocoupler (possibly with a resistor) might do the trick, or creating a black plastic tube between the two that makes the LED visible to the sensor but not to anyone else.
Alternate headline: (Score:2)
Man in park finds out he can use Meta's glasses to do what everyone has already done with their phones and a million other special purpose products.
If you want to secretly film someone you will secretly film them. Complaining about the glasses is a pointless distraction from the underlying issue in society, both the issue of invasion of privacy, and the ignorance of how easy it is to do with things you already have.
it is going to flop (like before) (Score:4, Insightful)
Stupid review (Score:3)
"Ben Long, a photography teacher in San Francisco, said he was skeptical about the premise of the Meta glasses helping people remain present. "If you've got the camera with you, you're immediately not in the moment," he said. "Now you're wondering, Is this something I can present and record?""
This is a pointless idiodic point of view. I could copy/paste this kind of commentary for when cell phones first came out with cameras, or when the first digital camera was invented, or even when the first camera ever was invented.
Prediction - while this goes through the hype cycle, we will see all kinds of people posting random nonsense photos on it - just like when Instagram became a thing people posted so much random garbage - that no one does anymore (when was the last time you saw someone taking photos of their food at a restaurant?)
Gradually the novelty wears off and it will find its nieche.
A glasshole, just more anonymus. (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember Google Glasses, and the fact that everyone hated those wearing them.
But that was only when it was apparent that they had filming capabilities (plus they looked ridicoulus),
These recording glasses is nothing new, I've had a pair of them I bought from eBay like over 10+ years ago,
it recorded 30 fps in 1080p, and 60fps in 720p, battery lasted about 5-10 minutes (specs said 18 minutes).
They looked quite natural, except you could clearly see the camera in the middle. But most people didn't notice
anyway, so I could safely record with them. I ended up using it for around 2 hours in total, why? Because filming
this way wasn't interesting to me, I simply had nothing to film this way, I had no need to "spy" on anyone, and for
me it was a cheap fun novelty that wore out quicker than I'd anticipate.
I can't imagine Metas glasses to be any different, except they've really hidden the camera this time.
Maybe I can see SOME use cases for example gathering clear evidence when someone is bullied at school or
at a workplace, maybe issued by staff or police to replace prescription glasses, but no one is stopping you from
having already used glasses like these for the last 10+ years, it's just that no one really wants to.
Do you remember the big outcry when every smartphone got a camera? Politicians panicked, the public got paranoid,
people with a Camera Smartphone got shunned the minute they picked up a phone to read some messages because
people legit thought they were about to get filmed, and if you needed to really look at your screen it would look like you
aimed at them to film them, and you'd get in trouble real fast.
Now every kid on the block have super-cameras with them at all times, you can't walk anywhere without the possibility
of being filmed secretly, all they have to do is not to point it directly at you, and most of the before-mandatory-shutter sound
has now been possible to disable by default, not mandatory anymore - and people have gotten used to it. And unless you've
slept under a rock the last 5 years, you already have millions of youtube videos of people freaking out in public, being filmed
and totally unaware of this, ending up on youtube for someone elses entertainment for clicks, cash, and giggles.
Now - somehow, all that is acceptable.
So Meta does what meta always have done, see this as another possibility to gather more data to sell about you.
And at some point, you'll probably just "live with it" like we do with the Camera Phones today. It just becomes background
noise and no one bats an eye.
The REAL problem with this however is how complacent we all have become, we slowly accept every little privacy bit of our lives
being taken away from us and sold to the lowest bidder, because we feel there's nothing we can do about it. Well - there is, but
you ain't gonna, no one will.
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So false.
The biggest problem isn't our self-obsession, world-owes-me attitudes and bad behaviour becoming entertainment and permanent data: It's cancel culture and deep fakes. Now, our past is judged by today's rules and we are perpetually punished, same as a convicted criminal. While Google is advertising photo-shopping faces as a bonus, a common nefarious use is pornographic images. Now, something a woman never did, is a part of her permanent data.
You're an asshole (Score:2)
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While I don't like the concept the description of it sounds like he's been doing it as a proof of concept and no one will actually ever get to see the pictures - he is simply checking if the product he's reviewing does as advertised.
If the images get posted, however - that's a whole other ballgame.
Shutter sounds (Score:2)
This sounds to me like exactly the sort of person laws requiring mandatory shutter sounds on cameras were made for. And Maybe the whirring of an old reel-to-reel audio/video camera when recording?
Okay, maybe slightly less "sexual predator" than the primary target of many, but still. Don't be a fucking asshole.
I *hate* such artificial nuisances... but when people not only engage in covert recording but then gloat about it online? I'm thinking it may be time to invoke "this is why we can't have nice things
Illegal to possess in Germany (Score:2)
These count as "covert listening devices" and mere possession is already illegal.
Smartphone swatter (Score:2)
..works great on smartglasses, too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]