College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time
Privacy will always be a major concern with smart glasses.
What's driving me nuts is that people will focus on the glasses.
Yes, the glasses ARE a problem because Meta, despite being warned by experts like AccessNow to SHOW when a camera is recording, you know with a bright red LED as it's been the case with others devices before, kept it "stealthy" because it's... cool I guess?
Anyway, the glasses themselves are but the tip of the iceberg. They are the end of the surveillance apparatus that people WILLINGLY decide to contribute to. What do I mean? Well that people who are "shocked" by this kind of demonstrations (because that's what it is, not actual revelations) will be whining about it on Thread or X after sending a WhatsApp message to their friends and sending GMail to someone else on their Google, I mean Android, phone and testing the latest version of ChatGPT. Maybe the worst part in all this? They paid to get a Google Nest inside their home and an Amazon Ring video doorbell outside. They ARE part of the surveillance.
Those people are FUELING surveillance capitalism by pouring their private data to large corporations earning money on their usage.
Come on... be shocked yes, be horrified yes, but don't pretend that you are not part of the problem. You ARE wearing those "glasses" in other form daily, you are paying for it with money and usage. Stop and buy actual products, software and hardware, from companies who do not make money with ads, directly or indirectly. Make sure the products you use do NOT rely on "the cloud" and siphon all your data elsewhere, for profit. Change today.
Several states have anti-spying laws that require disclosure that you're recording them. I expect we'll see an uptick in lawsuits about this issue, which will force Meta to revise their device or will cause a chilling effect on their sales.
I recently had to explain to my boomer mom why a Ring doorbell was a bad idea. She didn't seem to get that the system is cheap because it's constantly feeding whatever it sees to both Ring and your local cops.
Yeah but like everything in life, it's a trade off. Most people cannot maintain their own home surveillance system without the help of a company like Amazon or Google. These people have to decide between no security cameras or security cameras with caveats. I don't think it's fair to criticize people who choose the latter. The unfortunate truth is maintaining a security system that works well is very difficult, time consuming and can be unreliable. Even most of the tech savvy people I know just end up paying a company like Amazon to do it.
Can the doxxing tech be used to ID law enforcement officers? A lot of them are assholes and bullies knowing their IDs will [be] protected by state and corporate interests.
And police in the US are more than eager to use facial recognition and ALPR services to bypass our fourth amendment protections.
This is kind of the ironic catch of surveillance technology. There's way less people in positions of power and authority that the tech can be used to surveil. Honestly the bourgeois is better far not advancing it and just using old fashioned violent coercion.
People lost their shit about Google Glass, claiming users would be able to take pics of them without their knowledge, yet they didn't bat an eye at the established creepers doing that already with smartphones and they sure don't seem to care much about Meta putting forth Glass 2.0, now with more invasiveness! An article about it is a good first step, but articles like this about Glass were everywhere, along with a general negative sentiment in the public (and there even were some assaults on people using those things!), yet I rarely hear about these even worse glasses. Do people just not care about privacy anymore?
Google Glass was way back in like 2013, 10 years later people just expect to have cameras everywhere in public since nearly everyone now has a good camera in their pocket that they're also using to actually take pics and videos all the time of food, places, buildings, scenery, selfies etc.
Each one of us is probably in the background of who knows many peoples pictures by now
I think the problem lies in the underestimation of the potential for that level of personal data. The privacy counter-argument is usually “nothing to hide.” Psychographic profiling is the incredibly accurate practice of predicting an individual’s engagement based on previous choices, and is far more invasive than “telling secrets.”
They care, but Google Glass was a lot more obvious to the casual observer than these new smart glasses are.
I didn't know these were a thing until just now
I feel like google glass was more bad timing, people weren't as used to everyone and their dog carrying a camera all the time back then.
Do people just not care about privacy anymore?
Correct. Older people still do, but it’s 20 years later now and there are two generations of people who have never had privacy at any point of their lives. So they don’t understand what has been taken from them, and openly declare that they don’t care.
Personally, I also hadn't even heard of these until now. Maybe they're just not being marketed to the tech enthusiast crowd as we're the sorta people who'd diss it for the privacy implication?
yet they didn’t bat an eye at the established creepers doing that already with smartphones
I don't think anyone's happy about that either, but the problem with Google Glass (and now even worse with the Facebook ones) is that they're pretty damn subtle. You notice someone taking out their phone to take a photo of you, but just looking towards you with sunglasses on? Welllllll yeah.
Pretty sure this was described exactly in Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson, 1992).
Fucking gargoyles.
My first thought was Daemon by Daniel Suarez.
Oh man thank you so much for mentioning him! I've been struggling to remember a book of his that i read a while ago
Same. Could use a reread. What a great book.
When can i haz drone swarm?
This tech could easily work with any type of camera too, that's a lot harder to identify than glasses with a light that turns on when its recording. Hidden cameras on pins, necklaces, clothing, etc.
For its part, Meta cautions users against being glassholes in its privacy policy
Lol
Glassholes was coined back when Google was working on Google Glass about 10-12y ago and people kept theirs on and recording while in public
Only they are allowed to do that!!
Welp, guess it's time for IR reflective tattoos to defeat facial recognition
So... Add high-contrast uniquely identifiable markings to yourself?
Seems counterproductive.
Relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/1105/
Yeah, and hard to change.
These anti mask people are crazy!
(Please. It's a joke)
it can work if everyone does it. Unfortunately we can't even do a boycott on a product properly so no chance for that to happen.
*glasses
The sad thing is, facial recognition glasses would be really useful to people like me with prosopagnosia (face blindness), but I would only want them if the processing is done locally on device.
As with most bleeding edge technology, all the danger comes from capitalism, and not the technology itself.
Surveillance society is a bad idea, period.
It would be also really useful to have a database of oil company executives and other shitty people that aren't easy to recognize but worth refusing service etc.
Not sure if the trade offs are worth it. It means making up a database of all people. Maybe it could work if your friends and family agree to be in your local database, but not worth it if everyone needs to be in a massive database.
Correct me if I'm wrong but this isn't doxing? It's pulling already public info and not sharing it with the world.
Aaahh, I want out of this dystopian timeline, I did not sign up for this!
The good news is that I have noticed a lot of people saying this. I think even the least tech savvy are starting to wake up.
Huh. Who saw this coming besides literally everyone?
That's a great school project
Leave it to college kids to abuse the system
They didn't release the code, and they did this project to warn us. Thats not abuse.
I really wanted these glasses but I don't think people will be able to reverse engineer them anytime soon to take out the Meta part.
Photo caption: a woman smiling like a maniac,performing for a social media photo. Screenshot of television series Black Mirror, from an episode about social media dystopia
I don't think its a dox unless you prepare a dossier. Just learning someone's PII isn't doxing them
You are kind of wrong in two ways. First Doxxing is where you reveal someone's information to the public without there consent. Usually this is done to get members of the public to harass or harm the victim in some way.
The second part of where you are wrong is the use of the term PII. PII is does not include active surveillance. It is things like your birth date, SSN and records.
Also phone number and address, none of which is being exposed like so, save name and maybe birthdate.
Your name is PII. Your address is a PII. This attack is getting PII from looking at someone.
I know what doxing is.
This is why I don't use my real name on the internet, nor do I post selfies.
Meta glass, not Google glass? What did I miss?
Anyone have a link to the video that's not behind an authwall?
simple. ban imaging sensors in the public
That's not simple :P
