I know this will get DVed but this seems like one of those things we'll look back on in 20yrs and "mostly" wonder what all the fuss was about.
AR cameras seem inevitable. They're strange today but ask any 2006 non-techie if they'd consider carrying a pocket computer and they'd laugh at you. Now they all have one and you'd likely only get them to part with it from their cold dead fingers.
The privacy issues are a huge consequence but IMO they won't stop the march of progress. Too many positives. First is they enable AR which full sci-fi AR seems eminently useful. 2nd, they'll likely help prevent all kinds of crime, especially once implanted or put in contact lenses. Rape, Muggings, theft, seem like they'd all go down in a world where AR cameras are as ubiquitous as smartphones. How do backroom deals, government conspiracies, corporate malfeasance stay private when everyone in the room is recording it? You could say "they'll be told to turn it off to participate" but I suspect as we get more and more dependent it will become near impossible to ask people to turn off their connections. They won't be able to effectively participate in the meeting with all referencing all the stuff their AR display gives them access to. Police brutality? All of it recorded.
Further, as a 2021 person used to privacy it scares the crap out of me for all my private activities with others to be recorded. But a generation of people that grew up with the AR will likely have no such reservations. They'll be used to having every sex act recorded.
So, while the privacy issues are real I feel like it's mostly like commanding the waves to stop crashing. Impossible. Better to just accept that it's coming and figure out how best to deal with it. I don't believe laws telling people they can't have it or use it will work. I know if you value your privacy that sucks but I doubt anything can be done to stop it from coming and I so I think it's better to embrace its arrival.
The world you're describing sounds like hell to me. I'd rather become Amish than live in it.
Also, I would point out that the advent of police cameras has by no means ended controversies over police brutality. It has simply revealed what should have been obvious: we do not agree about what constitues police brutality. I expect the same would be true when it comes to sex.
> Better to just accept that it's coming and figure out how best to deal with it.
No - I massively disagree with this
we're still at the forefront of the internet revolution , if we simply cave in on things like this, then all the subsquent generations will get the pain.
We can stop it if we say no - it is 100% NOT inevitable, we can choose as a society
Violence is always an option and ability for most humans, but we have laws and culture that prevent humans from doing those actions, and some places are better than others than this because of those legal and social differences. Similarly we can choose a similar future in regards to privacy, even with newly evolved tech with their privacy issues.
There is one example of a technology which was curbed because it infringed on privacy: high iso + IR video cameras in daylight. Sony had come out with a “camcorder” whose functions allowed people who wanted to take surreptitious up skirt videos (it was good under low light conditions and added IR light). This was a big problem in Japan so Sony took it off the market.
Now all cameras with IR suppress IR in good light conditions so as not to allow “see thru” capabilities.
> Better to just accept that it's coming and figure out how best to deal with it. I don't believe laws telling people they can't have it or use it will work.
Two things:
1. I will never accept this. Hell no. And under no circumstances will I give in to let them do their thing just because it's easier.
2. Laws telling people they can't use/have it will work. That's why we have laws, to coordinate certain behaviours when people refuse to act respectfully. Mask mandates and GDPR have been some very recent examples that had a drastic impact on how things are done, providing these laws are actually enforced. If they aren't enforced, that's a problem with your enforcement and not the laws.
And yes, to echo the sentiments of others in this thread: if everyday life becomes saturated with these invasive devices, I will be the one person asking them to switch them off during s conversation. Or run to the hills.
Sounds terrible. I'd love to see someone following Facebook employees around Surveillance Camera Man style, at the grocery store and as they eat dinner outside. I'm sure they wouldn't react poorly.
> ask any 2006 non-techie if they'd consider carrying a pocket computer and they'd laugh at you.
That depends on the question you ask, if you ask them if they want to carry a bulky device they will say no, but if you ask that the device will be very small, light, sleek and you can make calls and check email and browse the internet, almost everyone will say yes.
This is exactly what I thought when I first saw them. The LED can be easily covered, and they look too much like normal sunglasses for the average person to notice.
Yeah, this reminds me of a product you'd find in a spy museum.
Cue the chilling effect of having to worry about being recorded whenever you're talking around someone wearing Raybans in public. And before the claims about it not being worse than everyone having a smartphone, etc, it absolutely is - it's far more obvious if someone has their phone in hand.
It's not FB. It's progress. You can replace them with any other name in the world. It just happens to be that Facebook announced this rather obvious technology.
Unfortunately Facebook is far from the only company that regularly invades and has contempt for privacy.
That contemptuous attitude and attempts to profit from privacy invasion is almost omnipresent among companies these days.
On the subject of glasses that can record what you see, wasn't Google the first company to market them? There was a similar backlash against them too back then.
I don't mean to go too much against the narrative in this thread, but aren't cameras on glasses necessary to achieve AR? Are people concerned about these glasses just because it's Facebook, or is there broader opposition to AR technology?
It's possible to do AR without at the same time streaming and recording the video stream to a social network.
Almost nobody will feel violated if a blind person has camera-based prosthetic eyesight... unless it's also recording for others to gawk at later.
I think the key privacy distinction isn't whether there's a device using a camera to augment vision. It's whether the glasses are recording for publication via Facebook at one extreme, versus just processing locally to perform AR and discarding the stream at the other extreme.
Where personal information may be involved for functionality, ideally it should use sophisticated privacy-preserving data queries, for example looking up faces and gaits without revealing to the cloud who is being looked up (technically challenging but undoubtedly possible to build).
Even if the video is not published, but it's streamed to Facebook for, say, demographic manipulation analysis, race estimation, genetic healthcare analytics (affecting other individual people's insurance premiums based on what it sees), juicy gaffes that are "recommended" by ML to be posted as probable high-engagement rage-tweets, customer service profiling, that sort thing, it's going to make being around a person wearing these things high-anxiety for a lot of people. The list of possible dark applications is endless. For good reason: It has the power to ruin someone's life, and certainly end or prevent a career, should someone else wish to do that.
Just recording the video (or even audio) without publishing it, purely for the owner's use, could be a problem if it's pervasive. It might be used later against you when you thought you were ok being relaxed and informal without paying heightened attention to your every action. Perhaps someone you thought was a friend decided later to use their private recording as evidence for a character assassination campaign or whatever. Imagine if everything you said, every gesture, every eyebrow movement might be plucked out of context and turned into an outrage tweet at any time after it happened. Panopticon is a problem. People need informal contexts where it's ok to not be on heightened alert at least some of the time.
For me, it’s because Facebook. They have no track record of trust. I work for a significant Silicon Valley tech company and have seen up close the types of shenanigans that have been attempted by Facebook — especially with their mobile apps. Don’t trust them.
For AR they will need some ability to interpret the world around them, but high res photography isn’t the only way. Think Lidar and the like already used to get a spatial understanding, or the infrared dots used in some face/body recognition. I expect that companies that are more “privacy” focus will avoid a camera, or at least any ability for apps to directly access the images from them if they do have them.
The problem with these is that they're essentially masquerading as normal sunglasses. I don't think most people in public will even notice that these aren't normal Ray Bans. Google Glass wasn't effective in part due to the fact that they were obvious to those around the wearer. That's not the case with these, which is frankly terrifying.
For those who worry about the camera and your privacy, how do phone cameras differ in this respect with everyone taking and uploading pictures, videos, snaps, and tiktoks in public spaces?
I have no skin in this game but the most common answer to this is that it's a lot easier to tell when someone is pointing a phone at you, unless they're REALLY being sneaky. With glasses this becomes impossible.
There is no substantial difference, but the glasses hide it better and therefore have more nefarious uses. Making pictures of someone without consent is prohibited by law in most European countries (Edit: Not quite right, only in some), and people will react negatively if you try to do it.
Glasses that looked almost identical to these Ray Bans used to be available from Chinese wholesale sellers. It has always been hard for me to imagine them getting used by anyone else than creeps for making pictures of women on the beach, etc. Just because they're Ray Ban doesn't suddenly make them noble, on the contrary the resolution is probably higher, which makes these even more problematic spyware.
I don't even understand how this got past the first whiteboard meeting "yeah right you want this to perv at the beach, park etc". It's just a creepy hidden camera.
Why are people up in arms about this? Imagine a transhuman future where we all have superhuman memory and have integrated mind machine interfaces, able to perfectly transfer information between ourselves. Would you insist that people's memories be degraded to be close to the average memory quality? Or would you prevent them from transferring the information via things like degrading their perfect drawing skills? (Or maybe just make drawing people's faces from memory without their consent illegal? Presumably while also making it illegal to do things like sharing a high fidelity memory with a friend or spouse)
How about a light, a beep, and an RF broadcast? When the camera is on, the LED on the glasses lights, the glasses beep, your phone beeps, and the glasses send an RF broadcast to all nearby phones so those phones beep. In fact, the nearby phones could reply with a message that says "do not record" preventing the glasses from recording. Everyone within range would have to approve the recording. If someone new moves into range their approval is also needed, so the glasses must continually send "can I record?" queries to surrounding devices. Anyone who does not want to be recorded can get a cheap RF badge that replies to all "can I record?" messages with "No". The RF could be range limited so that people far away do not get a vote. Maybe the RF range would have to vary depending on whether the glasses camera is zoomed in or not. All cameras could have this approval system making approval/disapproval automatic. The same could be done for audio recording.
"Virtual Walls: Protecting Digital Privacy
in Pervasive Environments"
You know these kind of aggressive under the alcohol or party drugs people who will start a fight with zero hesitation if they think someone looks at their partner?
If these individuals just think you are filming them or their partner or families, this will end ugly.
This depends on the location and culture, but I have seen people having a gun stuck in their face for a single wrong look.
This is just one of the many, many potentially disastrous outcomes, not even mentioning the smart glass users with malicious intent.
My prescription glasses are ray bans, I need a new pair and I’m quite tempted to get these. I like the built in headphones and I’m interested in being able to take pics of my kids easily or even anything else to be honest, but I’m not a creep and have no interest in taking pics of random people.
Yet, will it be assumed I am a glass hole for wearing these, peer pressure from the paranoid! Done nothing wrong yet judged and punished ...
[+] [-] pronlover723|4 years ago|reply
AR cameras seem inevitable. They're strange today but ask any 2006 non-techie if they'd consider carrying a pocket computer and they'd laugh at you. Now they all have one and you'd likely only get them to part with it from their cold dead fingers.
The privacy issues are a huge consequence but IMO they won't stop the march of progress. Too many positives. First is they enable AR which full sci-fi AR seems eminently useful. 2nd, they'll likely help prevent all kinds of crime, especially once implanted or put in contact lenses. Rape, Muggings, theft, seem like they'd all go down in a world where AR cameras are as ubiquitous as smartphones. How do backroom deals, government conspiracies, corporate malfeasance stay private when everyone in the room is recording it? You could say "they'll be told to turn it off to participate" but I suspect as we get more and more dependent it will become near impossible to ask people to turn off their connections. They won't be able to effectively participate in the meeting with all referencing all the stuff their AR display gives them access to. Police brutality? All of it recorded.
Further, as a 2021 person used to privacy it scares the crap out of me for all my private activities with others to be recorded. But a generation of people that grew up with the AR will likely have no such reservations. They'll be used to having every sex act recorded.
So, while the privacy issues are real I feel like it's mostly like commanding the waves to stop crashing. Impossible. Better to just accept that it's coming and figure out how best to deal with it. I don't believe laws telling people they can't have it or use it will work. I know if you value your privacy that sucks but I doubt anything can be done to stop it from coming and I so I think it's better to embrace its arrival.
[+] [-] slibhb|4 years ago|reply
Also, I would point out that the advent of police cameras has by no means ended controversies over police brutality. It has simply revealed what should have been obvious: we do not agree about what constitues police brutality. I expect the same would be true when it comes to sex.
[+] [-] 123pie123|4 years ago|reply
No - I massively disagree with this
we're still at the forefront of the internet revolution , if we simply cave in on things like this, then all the subsquent generations will get the pain.
We can stop it if we say no - it is 100% NOT inevitable, we can choose as a society
[+] [-] MrPatan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mLuby|4 years ago|reply
> Rape, Muggings, theft, seem like they'd all go down in a world where AR cameras are as ubiquitous as smartphones.
A simple mask stops the second two. And it'll take a generation at least until wearing camera sunglasses indoors leads to sex/rape.
> How do backroom deals, government conspiracies, corporate malfeasance stay private when everyone in the room is recording it?
The powerful will be the last people this affects. Thus, privacy will be seen as a mark of status.
[+] [-] novok|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|4 years ago|reply
Now all cameras with IR suppress IR in good light conditions so as not to allow “see thru” capabilities.
[+] [-] selfhoster11|4 years ago|reply
Two things:
1. I will never accept this. Hell no. And under no circumstances will I give in to let them do their thing just because it's easier.
2. Laws telling people they can't use/have it will work. That's why we have laws, to coordinate certain behaviours when people refuse to act respectfully. Mask mandates and GDPR have been some very recent examples that had a drastic impact on how things are done, providing these laws are actually enforced. If they aren't enforced, that's a problem with your enforcement and not the laws.
And yes, to echo the sentiments of others in this thread: if everyday life becomes saturated with these invasive devices, I will be the one person asking them to switch them off during s conversation. Or run to the hills.
[+] [-] vangelis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] judge2020|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sumedh|4 years ago|reply
That depends on the question you ask, if you ask them if they want to carry a bulky device they will say no, but if you ask that the device will be very small, light, sleek and you can make calls and check email and browse the internet, almost everyone will say yes.
[+] [-] maccolgan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] shever73|4 years ago|reply
Day after day, my loathing for Facebook grows.
[+] [-] noptd|4 years ago|reply
Cue the chilling effect of having to worry about being recorded whenever you're talking around someone wearing Raybans in public. And before the claims about it not being worse than everyone having a smartphone, etc, it absolutely is - it's far more obvious if someone has their phone in hand.
[+] [-] FridayoLeary|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmoriarty|4 years ago|reply
That contemptuous attitude and attempts to profit from privacy invasion is almost omnipresent among companies these days.
On the subject of glasses that can record what you see, wasn't Google the first company to market them? There was a similar backlash against them too back then.
[+] [-] ryan-allen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aierou|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlokier|4 years ago|reply
Almost nobody will feel violated if a blind person has camera-based prosthetic eyesight... unless it's also recording for others to gawk at later.
I think the key privacy distinction isn't whether there's a device using a camera to augment vision. It's whether the glasses are recording for publication via Facebook at one extreme, versus just processing locally to perform AR and discarding the stream at the other extreme.
Where personal information may be involved for functionality, ideally it should use sophisticated privacy-preserving data queries, for example looking up faces and gaits without revealing to the cloud who is being looked up (technically challenging but undoubtedly possible to build).
Even if the video is not published, but it's streamed to Facebook for, say, demographic manipulation analysis, race estimation, genetic healthcare analytics (affecting other individual people's insurance premiums based on what it sees), juicy gaffes that are "recommended" by ML to be posted as probable high-engagement rage-tweets, customer service profiling, that sort thing, it's going to make being around a person wearing these things high-anxiety for a lot of people. The list of possible dark applications is endless. For good reason: It has the power to ruin someone's life, and certainly end or prevent a career, should someone else wish to do that.
Just recording the video (or even audio) without publishing it, purely for the owner's use, could be a problem if it's pervasive. It might be used later against you when you thought you were ok being relaxed and informal without paying heightened attention to your every action. Perhaps someone you thought was a friend decided later to use their private recording as evidence for a character assassination campaign or whatever. Imagine if everything you said, every gesture, every eyebrow movement might be plucked out of context and turned into an outrage tweet at any time after it happened. Panopticon is a problem. People need informal contexts where it's ok to not be on heightened alert at least some of the time.
[+] [-] jayd16|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] briandear|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macrolime|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] billti|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trebligdivad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foobaby|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
Let's call them "fDweebs". ("iDweebs" were those Apple earbuds with white wires.)
[+] [-] rsynnott|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rusk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 13415|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Y_Y|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siva7|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] verdverm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bussierem|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 13415|4 years ago|reply
Glasses that looked almost identical to these Ray Bans used to be available from Chinese wholesale sellers. It has always been hard for me to imagine them getting used by anyone else than creeps for making pictures of women on the beach, etc. Just because they're Ray Ban doesn't suddenly make them noble, on the contrary the resolution is probably higher, which makes these even more problematic spyware.
[+] [-] bennysomething|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] annadane|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] concordDance|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rapjr9|4 years ago|reply
"Virtual Walls: Protecting Digital Privacy in Pervasive Environments"
https://homes.luddy.indiana.edu/kapadia/papers/walls_pervasi...
[+] [-] jsudi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andylynch|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yawaworht1978|4 years ago|reply
This depends on the location and culture, but I have seen people having a gun stuck in their face for a single wrong look.
This is just one of the many, many potentially disastrous outcomes, not even mentioning the smart glass users with malicious intent.
[+] [-] kmlx|4 years ago|reply
https://www.spectacles.com/
[+] [-] siva7|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wortelefant|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guilhas|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yawaworht1978|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meh2frdf|4 years ago|reply
Yet, will it be assumed I am a glass hole for wearing these, peer pressure from the paranoid! Done nothing wrong yet judged and punished ...
[+] [-] anderson1993|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] croes|4 years ago|reply