Comment by acd
4 hours ago
We should together stop calling devices which film in dressing / locker rooms smart.
These devices record video & sound track serve Ads and do Data fusion
What if you took a cam corder to a locker room? People would be upset, that is not allowed. That would not be nice. This is not nice either
Much like a cell phone, nobody would even really care if you brought a camcorder down so long as you aren't operating it (which is very obvious).
What makes these things gross is that it's not obvious when someone is recording.
Which Meta Glasses try to counter by making it obvious when someone is recording with the recording light; arguably more obvious than cell phones.
> As he films them from multiple angles, the predominantly English-speaking employees ask the presenter questions such as, "What are you doing?" and "Are you filming me right now?"
Meta employees themselves couldn't tell if he was recording!
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There's a technology that can hide an LED light, it is called "a small piece of tape."
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And the next generation of "smart glasses" made by companies that aren't so reliant on public image will just forgo this entirely voluntary nicety.
They are designed to be easy to bypass. Plenty of tutorials exist online and I can't imagine that Meta engineers didn't know about it beforehand.
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You have to hold up a cell phone to film people with it. It's a very obvious action. Definitely not intentional in the design but it's an accidental feature.
I agree we should do something in this instance, but with the speed of which things are changing? Eventually, this tech is going to be undetectable.
"Oh no that's sci-fi and decades away", I really don't think so. I think neuralink, and competitors too, will next move on to reading the visual cortex. They already have plans to push data to the visual cortex, to enable the blind to "see", reading in healthy people seems quite doable.
I expect something like this to happen before 2030.
Regardless, I agree for now? Yes. But the future? I don't see it as blockable forever.
There are two ways we decide how severe the punishment for broken laws is. One is to enable just punishment. The other is deterrent. This may fall into "deterrent is the bigger part of the sentence", where people posting private information receive years in jail as a result.
There is a little bit of a conversation about this here:
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/cndii-cdncii...
And the above certainly covers Meta glasses too.
I think it won't be long before it's the posting of non-consensual imagery that is so criminal, that few will do so. For years in Quebec, sharing of images captured in public isn't really legit. You control "images of yourself", regardless of where they are taken, public places or not:
https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/capsules/your-right-to-control-pho...
And they're so worried about problems with image sharing, they've almost automated the process to deal with it:
https://www.quebec.ca/en/justice-and-civil-status/support-vi...
So this is already being criminalized in a lot of places.
> "Oh no that's sci-fi and decades away", I really don't think so. I think neuralink, and competitors too, will next move on to reading the visual cortex. They already have plans to push data to the visual cortex, to enable the blind to "see", reading in healthy people seems quite doable.
> I expect something like this to happen before 2030.
I think 2030 is too early for that, medical tech is slower than most people expect. What may happen by then is retinal implants connected to external cameras, as the early tests of that kind of thing are now well into the past.
The non-medical surveillance risk is higher. The smallest camera (as of 6 years ago) was already small enough to be easily missed amongst makeup sparkles if you were so inclined: https://originalpricing.com/ov6948-medical-camera-sensor/
Low resolution? Sure. Expensive, too. But I can easily see this being embedded in someone's nail lacquer, or eyelashes.
There have been hidden cameras of various kinds for a lot longer than that, hidden in buttons etc.
Between this and how easy it is to use AI to fake a picture of anyone you choose, anywhere you choose, doing anything you choose… I have absolutely no idea what will happen to consensus reality and shared social norms next year, let alone by 2030.
>to enable the blind to "see"
Please watch this ad to enable 5 minutes of premium color vision!
> Regardless, I agree for now? Yes. But the future? I don't see it as blockable forever.
It's increasingly necessary not to allow guests to bring their devices into your house or establishment. Somebody should go into business doing courtesy phones, where you can switch your sim/esim at the door to a dumbphone owned by the business.
When it comes to smart glasses, if they're prescription you had better have spares or you're going to be blind.
Canada's censorship solutions are no solution; you can't stop people from doing things by cracking down on civil liberties, people will just ignore you and do it anyway. Then you're stuck chasing anonymity, now your entire society is totalitarian and everything is rooted. In order to fight the totalitarian surveillance and tracking instituted because you wouldn't tell some pervert to take his robot glasses off, the electorate makes MechaHitler your PM, and it's now in control of your surveillance system.
It would be very funny if Skynet took over because people elected it, like Hitler did.
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They're basically Flock Cameras, except they could appear anywhere. Nobody wants mobile surveillance potentially brought into any room.
Yep, they're spy glasses / perv glasses.
I don't like it but it's totally normal, especially for youth, to have their cell phones out in locker rooms. Targeting only glasses with this concern is largely out of touch with current behavior.
My children's school have an interesting way of dealing with the ever growing list of devices they need a policy for. They borrowed the police term "data carrying devices" and wrote a policy based on that. When Metas glasses started to be come a problem no policy change was needed for the school, they were automatically covered.
That's probably the best solution, deal with the functionality, not the device type.
That isn't normal and it's actively enforced against in gyms and pools where I live.
Glasses are passively recording. Recording with a phone is active (for the most part). You need to take it out and point it at what you are recording...
> That isn't normal
Every gym I've been to is full of people with phones out in the locker room, from cheap chain gyms to the nicer athletic club I currently go to. My experience is much closer to GP.
> Glasses are passively recording
All the smart glasses I know of have a light on when recording. My phone does not and can be much more discreet (subject to the fact that everyone has a phone out already).
I agree that if a location is actively banning phone use patrons should absolutely also be asked to take off smart glasses.
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