Meta sparks privacy fears after unveiling $299 Smart Glasses with hidden cameras: ‘You can now film everyone without them knowing’::These stylish shades may look like a regular pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers, but they’re actually Meta’s new Smart Glasses, complete with two tiny cameras and speakers implanted in the arms. The wearable tech was unveiled by Mark Zuckerberg Wednesday at the 2023 Meta Connect conference in Menlo Park, California, sparking a frenzy online.
“They trust me — dumb fucks,” says Zuckerberg
Always good to keep in mind
Alt headline: Dude with boundary issues makes least surprising glasses ever
A quick search on Amazon for “spy camera” finds a bunch of devices small enough to easily conceal inside clothing, built in to pens, and built in to watches. A search for “spy camera glasses” finds exactly that, and most of them are well under $300. We’re already well into the era of being able to film everyone without them knowing.
They aren’t directly connected to a social network and promoted with vast marketing resources however.
I remember playing with one of these about 10 years ago that looked like a car key fob, it recorded somewhat subpar footage in a weird format to a microSD card. A neat novelty but not very practical to use unless you really had a need to do covert surveillance of something, which most people don’t.
However if it’s made to be effortless to push watchable footage to social media, and people are heavily encouraged and incentivised to do so and it’s a different proposition.
I think it is just a matter of convenience. Very few people buy lasers to aim them at airplanes. Give everyone a laser and you’ll get a thousand reports of people aiming lasers at their plane.
Those at least don’t automatically sync to Zuck.
People aren’t a fan of those existing either, but not much you can do about it. At least, you can assume that it’s only a tiny fraction of people who own these devices, let alone carry them around, ready to go.
With these glasses, more people will own them and will have them ready to go, on their nose.Smart glasses outside of specific applications were a fad when Google did them and will continue to be, at best, a fad.
Those cameras only record locally.
These glasses presumably upload every frame to corporate data centers to be cataloged and used to profile the people in the images.
Hidden cameras? They’ve got big ol fuckin cameras on them and apparently a red LED that lights up when in use lol. It’d be easier to secretly film someone by pretending you’re texting on your phone. More ragebait.
You seriously think it wouldn’t be trivial to disable the LED?
And by the time you notice the LED you’ve already been filmed.
It would be trivial to just buy spy cameras already built for spying. The tech already exists
Buddy, have you been on Aliexpress recently? It’s trivial to wire tiny cameras all over your body if you really wanted.
Not that it matters, I can point an 8K cinema camera at you in public, and you don’t legally get a say.
Not that it matters, I can point an 8K cinema camera at you in public, and you don’t legally get a say.
This isn’t the case everywhere. Some places have laws with likeness rights if you try to use the footage in commercial productions.
Two-party consent states also attach legal consequences to secret voice recordings.
This is strictly legally speaking. People can and do violate the law.
The LED detects when it is blocked and the device refuses to function until it is unblocked. So no, working around that won’t be trivial, at least until somebody has found a workaround.
If Meta wanted to be really throughout with this, they could also keep record of how often there is an issue with the LED and brick the device and close your account if they detect tempering. The whole “trivial to disable” doesn’t fly in a world of closed ecosystem, locked down hardware and accounts requiring a real ID.
Also you can get spy cameras for $5 from Aliexpress anyway, so why even bother hacking this. Snapchat has some video recording glasses too if one needs an alternative.
The led is a simple transistor that happens to glow, just replace it
Again you can record already without any led while “reading your messages” with your phone. Like I feel they did the expected and necessary.
Plus is not like there isn’t already available pens, USB chargers, watches or whatever they can come up secret cameras, like if the intention was to secretly record somebody they wouldn’t go with this ones disabling the led… plenty of better less suspicious alternatives.
Ray ban have had them for years. I hate meta but it’s not just them.
To be fair that was also a Facebook partnership. This is less news and more product revision
It took me a 3 second google search to find that it doesn’t work with the LED covered.
By the time you notice someone’s phone is out you’ve already been filmed. That’s status quo these days, it isn’t any creepier than every single person walking around with a camera in their pocket.
I imagine it wouldn’t take long until someone finds a way to disable that LED.
looks like a sharpie would do the trick
Doesn’t work while covered, there’s a sensor in the light
Spoof the measured sensor value
Right, trivial. Or just buy a tiny $4 spy camera off AliExpress lol
Exactly. The pearl-clutching over smart glasses is so misplaced. You’re already being recorded constantly in public, what’s the big deal?
Pearl clutching over new tech is the satanic panic of modern times
Y’all use the same vocab religiously, I’m just gonna start training models and feeding it to bots to auto respond to y’all lmfao
I miss when CCTV was a world ending privacy concern. Its gotten so much worse in the last decade.
Perhaps one of the biggest advances in human knowledge is in how to make ultra-slick slippy-slopes for abstract ideas. It seems to me that the most common reason people give for accepting some new bullshit is that we already have some other bullshit which is worse. But it is the accumulation of additional bullshit that has gotten us into this mess. I’m referring mostly to sacrifices of privacy; and to loss of freedom of use in products and software; the ownership being replaced with ongoing fees and subscriptions. That kind of thing.
Incredibly funny to see the NY Post pretend that these glasses were just now “unveiled”. This line of camera-equipped glasses has been around for 2 years now.
It’s not funny. It’s predictable. They’re reporting it because Meta did it. Any time a large corporation does anything, it’s NEWS.
Meta did it last time also.
You’re being filmed everywhere you go and you probably don’t even know it.
Doesn’t make it ok.
Not right in your face at the bar while drunkenly discussing your most regretful one night stands tho.
Not everywhere - not yet.
We’re all part of the Truman show.
Not a thing was learned from Google Glass huh? Alrighty then.
I almost like the idea of augmented reality with similar tech. I’d love it if I could look down the street and see historic photos of building overlaid perfectly.
The issue isn’t the technology, it’s the people who are supplying it and it’s connection to the Internet and sharing. I don’t trust Google and I don’t trust Meta.
I was referring to the privacy issues of Google Glass. I’m with you on the trust factor of these two companies.
Would be cool if we got some open source glasses. If Niantic made glasses for Pokemon Go, Google is their parent, no bueno.
Niantic’s been an independent company since Alphabet was formed almost a decade ago and they were spun out.
It’s not even that for me. Just don’t put a camera on the front.
That defeats the purpose of augmented reality glasses if they can’t see in front of you.
They still have GPS, gyro, and a screen (well, Glass did, not this FB thing), they know where you are and can access local geodata. These things aren’t proper AR anyways like the Microsoft or Apple things that are set up to superimpose virtual content on top of IRL content, Glass was basically just a smartwatch for your face.
I think the lesson they learned from Google Glass is that the glasses have to be cooler, not make you look like a nerd, and the technology has to be way better.
Google Glass at least had a screen. This appears all phony based
Cant believe I had to scroll down to see this.
I read the headline and thought, “this again?”
Google glass 2.0
We were rightly worried about Google glass, we had no idea there was something even worse on the horizon
Just saying, hidden cameras have been a thing long before the internet was invented
Bad people doing bad things is nothing new.
But these things allow good, otherwise well-intentioned, people, to become unwitting moles for Meta.
This is an excellent point +1
Already done by having Facebook, Threads, or Instagram on your phone
But even if I don’t, others will infringe on my privacy if they wear those glasses in my vicinity
Same if they record you on their phone.
I would argue that that’s more obvious, the phone/gopro/cemera is up there and you know you are potentially being recorded. Also that’s in the user’s control (i.e. they’ll need to intentionally record).
Here, given Meta’s greed, we could have a potential subtle and not so obvious recording/surveillance. How would you tell if someone passing by is recording, wearing glasses is pretty common.
So the tldr is that I argue it’s not the same because it’s not obvious and/or frequent as it is with a camera/phone
My argument is that there are not only things that people intentionally publish, but also audio and video recordings that may be being collected on people without their knowledge and could also capture other people near them.
The NY Post? Why not link to The Crackpot Gazette while you’re at it?
That’s not even a real thing!
I can’t imagine being friends or even acquaintances with a person who would want to live stream their POV as a day to day activity.
I wouldn’t either, although I can see the appeal for moment capture and some of the other cool features.
However I would never even consider this product, because it’s meta spyware garbage.
NYPost is right wing trash.
‘You can now film everyone without them knowing’ Implying that we dont already have cameras always with us, and can perfectly do that.
Yeah I’m confused. I can already do this and no one notices. Start a stream on my iPhone, slip it into my shirt pocket with the camera facing forward. Never had anyone complain, and it’s easier to talk to my spouse about what they want from the store.
Not all surveillance is created equal.
Are you referring to phones or the CCTV monitoring culture…?
A bunch of corporations been recording me and using my data for their own gain for a decade. Now you tell me some normie is going to record me? Do I care?
NYPost.
come on now
My cyberpunk future of me using a full head mask every time I’m out in public is getting closer.
