DEF CON bans Meta-style 'pervert glasses'
theregister.com
theregister.com
Meta smart glasses in particular are known for their LED.
So DEF CON has restrictions for photography, but as long as you do not hide your smart glasses' activity LED, you can just walk around and record everything as audio and video?
Full text at https://defcon.org/html/links/dc-photo-policy.html:
«Smart glasses and other devices that can record audio or video with no consistent way to understand if they're recording or not, are prohibited at DEF CON, they erode trust and invade people's privacy.»
(Last paragraph. The other paragraphs refer to photography.)
The LED is neither obvious enough nor reliable enough and by the time you see it, you've already been recorded.
It almost seems like personal Paparazzi.
Google's device also suffered from making the user look ridiculous, like a gargoyle out of Snow Crash, but at the end of the day most people had the same core issue with it as they have with the Meta glasses which is that people don't like the idea of being filmed in public, especially when the filming is somewhat surreptitious (since you don't have to hold bulky camera gear, or at least a phone-sized device to do it)
Of course you have the legal right to film people in public spaces in many jurisdictions, but you're likely to be socially ostracized for it (and IMO rightfully so).
But they look less stupid than Google Glass did and even if they didn't look stupid, people would still consider them "pervert glasses".
In fact, I think the more indistinguishable these types of devices get from regular glasses the more people will be upset by their existence. The less immediately obvious they are, the more you seem like a creepy pervert for using them when the core problem is people don't want you filming them without their knowledge or consent.
My fear is that these spy glasses will actually become indistinguishable from corrective glasses. I don't look forward to a future where everyone wearing any sort of glasses will be immediately suspect.
I don't think that this can be the main issue, given how nobody really cares about security cameras in public spaces or all the cameras modern cars can come with, nevermind dash cams.
Someone filming/shooting in a park with a kit 18-55mm lens is fine. Swap that with a bulky 300mm or more and you are bound to get some questions asked.
A content creator casually shooting content in a mall is fine but if you start interviewing people, aiming your camera directly at them, it's at least common courtesy if not legal requirement to ask for permission.
Personally speaking, I wouldn't mind someone wearing these creeper specs in public but if they talk to me or if we eat at the same table, I would expect the courtesy of them putting the glasses away.
Oh, people care. They just feel helpless about it all.
I definetely don't want a camera in there.
Not sure if such a beast exists. But due to Meta/Google screwing up with cameras, I may never get my display glasses.
But they will come and will get better. Apple is also supposedly still working on some and they'll likely try to get rid of the "camera issue". Or maybe they'll try to make it the new normal. But they already exist and there will be more of them in the future - with and without cameras.
Unfortunately due to meta's perv glasses they are getting a bad name too, it happens when I'm using them that people think I'm recording them. They are more bulky and clearly tech glasses, and many people understandably don't know the difference. They're more noticeable than meta's glasses.
I had that last time on the plane. It's really annoying because they have no camera nor microphone. They're great displays and can even do 3D. But meta is ruining that for us now too.
But yes, they are bulky.
But they announced the Aura which has 3 cams no less: https://www.xreal.com/es-en/aura
And also two of them are in the same spot as Meta's so it will be really hard for a layman to distinguish them.
Personally I don't really like the tracking because it means I have to point my face in a very specific spot to see the whole screen. Or I have to make it smaller and lose resolution. I like the way it stays locked to my vision with the cheaper ones, and the price of 200 euro makes it great to just carry around without worring too much (even though that's still a lot of money for me). I wouldn't pay 600-800 for something like this.
Not at DEF CON, no.
They don't care if it succeeds. They just don't want to lose.
But the newer ones use cameras for 6DoF tracking too so they're even more likely to be viewed as perv glasses. I hope they keep making ones without, I never use the tracking anyway.
But the camera takes this to extreme anti-social levels.
The only thing I object to is the facebook association.
That "hilarious" and embarrassing misspeak or fall becomes a lot less so when it's a dime a dozen.
It's weird because it is (right now), not because it's some fundamentally weird thing ordained that way forever during the big bang or whatever.
Like, people don't like being watched when working, yet they'll sometimes outright forget they're screensharing. I know I do at least.
If everyone did it, welcome to 1984 beyond Orwell's wildest imagination, where the Flock cameras have legs and look human. Who needs an elaborate entrapment operation when you can observe up close how someone twitches upon mention of Dear Leader's name?
You are thinking of a very shallow America's Funniest Home Videos scenario without considering that there is a lot of daily-life scenarios that rely on the assumption that you are not being filmed by some rando.
- In a lot of places where there is still stigma on various health issues, this kind of implicit privacy could be the difference between people seeking help or not.
- We give off a lot of small but probably "confidential" signals just because we can reasonably assume we are not being recorded. From simple allusions during casual conversation to maybe a quick still frame of someone's notes. What would've been an innocuous statement could become NDA violations when recorded at the fidelity usually reserved for deposition hearings.
- And speaking of innocuous, as anyone who's spent any length of time in the internet would know, it's so easy to take thirty seconds of a two-hour conversation out of context. Now you are giving everyone an eat-all-you-can buffet of your life to take out of context. Company valuations have been decided from less.
All in all, these perv glasses would make society more guarded and less open, and that in an age when people already have a hard time forming relationships.
Most of those were staged anyway. Just like all the skits on tiktok and Instagram are staged.
It's not like these are real life situations. You might as well record them with a big movie camera.
Doing all of those things you mention is entirely optional. And so what I'm proposing is if everyone had this leverage, culture would adjust accordingly, and not abusing this would become respectable first, then an expected common courtesy later.
It's not unlike how honor systems are abusable, and their entire point is that they aren't abused despite that.
There's also the side to this where I do believe that people would reevaluate what things are benign.
Regarding the inevitable Orwell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance - one could reasonably argue in light of this is that being able to record what happens to oneself should be an inalienable human right rather. If someone is abused, they should not need the consent of their abuser to gain evidence of that.
This doesn't wash the Meta glasses however, exactly because of what the top parent comment explains as well, that its data sharing isn't actually user governed. This is prohibitive of people progressing through the aforementioned social adaptation to it, as people viscerally know by this point that these devices cannot be trusted that way (and they are correct). The rest follows.
No. It would just make the situation totally intolerable.
!!!Exactly!!!
If Apple comes up with smart glasses then user privacy will be job one. For meta it's all about collecting data to sell ads. Period.
Most people don't want this. Dash cams are for safety and legal liability in a very specific and dangerous domain. These "smart" glasses are for wealth signaling and surreptitiously invading others' privacy. Try walking around with your phone camera recording everywhere you go amd see what kind of response you get from people. Meta's device just obscures the fact that that's what the wearer is doing.
And it makes a bad situation even worse. It's already very difficult to avoid surveillance systems. I am cautious about what routes I take and where I go in order to minimize my exposure to these systems. If these spy glasses actually approach being common, then it just further reduces where I can safely go in public. At some point, going out in public at all will become infeasible.