Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The man who drove a pickup truck into a crowd of people in New Orleans on New Year's Day, killing 14, wore Meta's smart glasses to scout out the location prior to the attack, according to the FBI.
These camera-fitted glasses allow users to capture photos and video hands-free, and also allow video streaming.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, identified as a US Army veteran who carried out the deadly attack on Bourbon Street, used the glasses to conduct surveillance while riding his bike around the French Quarter in the months leading up to January 1, according to FBI special agent in charge Lyonel Myrthil.
Jabbar, we're told, made at least two trips to New Orleans to plan what the Feds have called "an act of terrorism."
For at least two days beginning October 30, 2024, Jabbar stayed at a rental home in New Orleans. During this time, he rode a bicycle through the French Quarter while wearing the Meta glasses, Myrthil told reporters on Sunday.
Also during the press conference, the FBI released a video taken during Jabbar's October trip with the smart glasses.
While Jabbar wore the glasses during the January 1 massacre, he did not livestream the attack.
"Jabbar was wearing a pair of Meta glasses when he conducted the attack on Bourbon Street," Myrthil said. "But he did not activate the glasses to live stream his actions that day."
[...] In September, the tech giant teased a new, augmented-reality version of the glasses dubbed Orion.
"We're not too far off from being able to deliver great looking glasses that let you seamlessly blend the physical and digital worlds so you can feel present with anyone no matter where they are," Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg told investors during the company's most recent earnings call while touting his metaverse dreams.
But even prior to the wearable tech being used for evil, a pair of Harvard undergraduates warned about serious privacy and physical safety threats posed by the Meta gear. The two demonstrated how the glasses could be used to automatically identify anyone in view of the device's camera and return an AI-generated dossier on them — essentially allowing miscreants to dox anyone in seconds.
"Anyone who can run some simple web automations with ChatGPT can build this," AnhPhu Nguyen told The Register in October. "It's astonishing that you can build this in a few days – even as a very naïve developer."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Friday January 10, @01:55AM (31 children)
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aafcac on Friday January 10, @02:40AM (29 children)
Yes, the photos I've seen of them look more or less exactly like regular Rayban Wayfarers if you don't look too closely. They do have visible cameras in the frames, but a bunch of people might not even see them.
IMHO, technology like this ought to be outright banned. It can be hard enough with cellphones to know if somebody is using them to record people without permission, these are meant to be worn for longer periods of time and are presumably available in prescription lenses, so not even that easy to remove.
I do like the idea of head mounted cameras for some things, but it's really concerning that companies are making things like this that are intended to be subtle enough that some people may not even notice that they're being recorded if they don't look closely. And, from a distance, it might not even be clear that there are cameras built in. Without audio it appears to be generally legal except in places like locker rooms, restrooms or if there are genitals or privates that can be seen. With audio, would likely run afoul of rules related to recording audio of other people in some states.
I do think that there will need to be laws to address this in the near future because it's really gotten out of hand. It's one thing to say that people have a right to see what they can with their own eyes aided only with standard glasses from any places they are legally allowed to be, and quite another when you start saying they can have cameras that aren't easily identifiable to people being filmed and where the resulting recordings can be widely distributed without permission.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 10, @02:58AM (12 children)
I just saw a friend wearing these at work, says he got a deal on them around Christmas and that he wears them for the blue blocking and as a more convenient camera than pulling out his phone, but there is about a 2 second delay between triggering it and it actually taking the photo. He gets about 6-8 hours battery life while wearing them and and the case includes a battery to add some charge.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Friday January 10, @03:45AM (9 children)
I'm kind of tempted to get a pair for documenting projects, but I don't think these should be allowed to take photos in public. It's just too hard for people to avoid being recorded without consent.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10, @10:49AM (3 children)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 10, @03:36PM (2 children)
This tech has the potential to enable worse bigotry than ever. If those glasses can dox anyone in view in a matter of seconds, the details a bigoted wearer could want are instantly available. Might tell whether the individual is Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, or some other or no religion, is a college grad, how rich they are, details on number and ages of their children, how many guns they may own, and where they are on the political spectrum. This is virtual versions of the yellow badges forced upon Jews in the years before WWII.
Bigots being able to dox people that thoroughly, I find scary. I can pass as a fairly ordinary and uninteresting person, no way to know or care whether I vote Republican or Democrat or where or whether I go to church, unless some damned glasses out me. The criminal minded could case the heck out of me and everyone else. Maybe such tech can also assure that crimes have no chance of success, but bigotry is harder to shut down. I have become more aware of the tricks in the bigots' bag. Any tiniest bit of authority or knowledge they have, they use maliciously. Routinely lie to the people they're prejudiced against that whatever they want is not available, or that they have to jump through more and higher hoops to get it. Falsely assert that the targets of their bigotry have broken some rule, or deserve blame for causing something that is supposedly a problem. Always go on the offense, make you defend yourself from accusations, while never having to fend off accusations against themselves. Sometimes they skip all that bull, and plain tell their targets to leave, or else. Those glasses could fuel a civil war. Seriously!
For anyone thinking that doxing could backfire on the bigots, instead outing them as bigots, the problem is much like the problem of fitting into high school socially. It doesn't help much to have the goods on others, when it is you who are in the minority, and everything is already biased against you. There are a lot of bigots in the world. Too many, I fear. The sheer weight of their numbers can corrupt anything intended to promote fairness. When they can simply assert that up is down and day is night, gag and silence all opposition, and get away with it because the majority is with them, they can do any arbitrary and unfair thing they want. Run their victims through a kangaroo court to give a very thin appearance of justice, before dropping their victims in a deep hole. When they are powerful enough, they can skip the kangaroo court, and get straight to the point: kill you to make more available for themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11, @01:20AM
If the bigots are the majority you're screwed anyway, glasses or not. Look at the US back in the slavery days.
Whereas if the majority are pretending to not be bigoted, many people's videos showing that a bigot is being bigoted will cause more problems for the bigot.
Or are you claiming "cancel culture" is not real? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11, @02:20AM
2) A potential issue would be like those anti-spammer lists.
Say you are found "guilty" by the court of public opinion and get put on various lists. You might have difficulty removing yourself from enough lists... Even if you make lots of "donations".
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday January 10, @12:03PM
The only reason these are likely to get laws controlling them is because they might make people aware of just how much they are already being surveilled. If any laws do come in watch for exceptions for "legitimate authorities".
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 10, @12:23PM (3 children)
I respect your sentiment, but submit that you are 20 years later in registering your complaint.
1984 was fiction.
By 2004 ubiquitous video surveillance was already becoming reality with an obvious explosive growth trend.
By 2024, you could expect most residential front doors and businesses, as well as police cars, police officers and low flying aircraft of all sizes to.be video recording everything in their field of view.
Even by 2014 hospitals, banks and any medium to large business operations were considered negligent if they didn't have recording video surveillance of entrances and other key locations.
As a home owner, I have 3 PoE streaming video cameras all with night vision, constantly monitoring the outside of our home, but I question whether video recording of those streams in any way improves our lives? Like my step father who concealed carried a handgun for 40 years, but never had a reason to use it...?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormreaver on Friday January 10, @12:39PM (1 child)
A few years ago, someone threatened to sue my family for something that never happened. Once they realized our security camera had recorded the entire incident, they went away. The $200 security setup saved us many thousands in legal bills. The beauty of the whole situation is that I had installed the security system one day prior to the incident.
Given the fucked up U.S. legal system, security cameras here are a must-have. I hate them and love them at the same time.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 10, @01:06PM
Like the handguns, I wonder if the threat of security cameras is more valuable than the video footage itself.
I suppose I should keep my video loops longer than I do, but anytime I have seen anything on them "of interest" it has been better for all involved, especially us, to just let it pass as if it were never seen.
I do believe the active IR illumination from the cameras serves as a "heads up" to any potential thieves in the night, at least those smart enough to check for such things with their phone camera.
Moreso than even backup cameras, I think having universal "dashcam" recording black boxes on new cars would be a net positive for truth in justice, but on balance - does the truth based justice for every infraction improve our lives?
Like so many other "continuous automated monitoring" experiences of my life, I think the world needs to take two giant steps back in its definitions of what is "unacceptable" when 24-7-365 high definition recordings are available of EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11, @01:23AM
There are dash cams too. And Google streetview https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyxdxrm339o [bbc.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by pe1rxq on Friday January 10, @08:14AM (1 child)
Is he really a 'friend' if he points a camera at every person he speaks to or looks at?
(Score: 4, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 10, @12:24PM
He never did make very much eye contact.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10, @11:59AM (5 children)
What nobody seems to realise from this is just how much better privacy laws used to be. Back when those laws were enacted, audio recording was possible (hence the laws) but surreptitiously recording video was so laughable they didn't even consider it. It's a shame we don't have that calibre of politician these days.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 10, @12:28PM (4 children)
Like proof of intent, two party consent is not practical to prove.
What two party consent does do is keep objective evidence out of court, keeping the old standard of witness testimony. It's less upsetting to the status quo, but is it really better for truth in justice?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday January 10, @02:51PM (3 children)
Well, not is everybody has equal access to the recorded data. But do they?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 10, @05:43PM (2 children)
>Well, not if
severybody has equal access to the recorded data. But do they?I guess that's what discovery is for in pre-trial preparations.
Also, at this stage: anyone with a smartphone is more than capable of recording just about anything.
I recently had a "tense interaction" with a group home we had entrusted to care for our profoundly Autistic, non verbal 23 year old son. They had proven themselves to be unrepentant liars, among other things, and so when we went to remove him from the home I put my phone on voice record - which comes with auto-transcription these days. It was just in my shirt pocket, but it clearly caught and transcribed everything I said and everything that anyone in the room replied to me, as well as background talking. I am in a 2 party consent state, but in cases of abuse of non-verbal parties, such as this was, there have been exceptions to the 2 party consent law. As it turned out, they didn't do anything particularly outrageous during the recorded interaction. In addition to my concealed recording, which you'd have to be an idiot to think wasn't happening - but then the caregivers had been acting like idiots in lots of ways - up to and including killing a client by leaving him sitting in a van in a sunny parking lot in July - rambling on: we brought a large / tough / younger woman outside our family friend to help with taking him out and witnessing the process. Nontheless: they did choose to lie about what I said during pickup, nothing of tremendous importance in our big picture, nothing that I needed to whip out the transcript and sue in court over, but they stated that we told them we were withdrawing him from their care permanently, which we explicitly did not state, actually we explicitly stated the opposite: "we're keeping him overnight, and we'll decide after that how to proceed." I said that clearly, 3 times to the various group home employees. We ultimately did decide to withdraw him, but certainly hadn't reached that decision by the time they terminated their responsibility for his care based on their account of our statements.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday January 11, @01:21AM (1 child)
That's one context, but definitely not the only one. There are lots of contexts where the defense attorney only has access to the information if it is provided by the prosecuting attorney. Often the law requires the info to be provided, but somehow it just doesn't happen in a timely manner (or, occasionally, at all).
And even THAT requires that you have sufficient funds and knowledge to hire a decent lawyer. E.g., many people in "care homes" don't have a knowledgeable and interested outside party who will stand up for them.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 11, @02:02AM
>Often the law requires the info to be provided, but somehow it just doesn't happen in a timely manner (or, occasionally, at all).
And, if you have deep enough pockets, that's basis for a mistrial...
We looked into lawsuit over all the laws that are regularly being broken by that company, but it's deeply into more trouble than it is worth territory.
First, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have essentially no value under the legal system of damages, so you are left with attempting to get a jury "of your peers" sympathetic to the pain and suffering and deeming that to be worth significant monetary award. Our position is that their illegal use of chemical restraints (sedatives) on our son effectively takes away what limited ability he has to communicate his needs, desires and rights under law. Common opinion in the community, and practice by the company, is to increase dosage until the clients become completely passive. If that means regression into diapers, oh well, that's just a higher level of supports that they get paid for. There's also some legal precedent about "standard of care" and being the largest provider in the region, the company is essentially the defacto standard of care.
Early on in his stay I decided that we were trying to develop an acceptable working relationship between him and the home/day program, not win a lawsuit.
He had an iPad in the home and we FaceTimed every night for a few minutes. I could easily have rigged some kind of nannycam feed out of his iPad and proven all sorts of violations of law, but I don't think a truly valuable settlement or judgement would have resulted, even if all the video were permitted into evidence.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by number6x on Friday January 10, @02:55PM (6 children)
Banned, for the most part...
I can see legitimate use cases for products that aid the disabled. Beyond just vision and hearing enhancements, there could be products to help people with dyslexia by producing audio of the printed word, or people with other types of synesthesia.
I agree that we definitely need some limits.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aafcac on Friday January 10, @03:24PM (5 children)
Speaking as somebody that struggles to recognize himself in a mirror, I'm still against this even though it would likely help me a lot at times. There are things that could be done to make this less problematic, like barring them from saving images and limiting the names and information about people that it reveals to roughly what normal folks have access to unassisted.
The problem is that this is the second company to offer something along these lines and by the time there's any action to regulate this, it'll be like webcams that people cover because the engineers made early ones possible to enable without guaranteeing that the user knew it was active.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 10, @05:49PM (4 children)
>the engineers made early ones possible to enable without guaranteeing that the user knew it was active.
This will virtually always be the case. Even if the circuitry is designed to always illuminate an LED when recording is active, the circuitry can still be modified without the end user's knowledge.
The way virtually everything in this world is implemented, the LED is somewhat independent of the recording function of the cameras. I would prefer a world where this were not so, one in which the LED always illuminates when there is sufficient power applied to the camera for it to function (mechanical sliding cover over the LED to be provided), but that's not how things are done.
Along the same lines: devices like routers, cameras, low level BIOS on computers and others which have remote update-able firmware _should_ require a physical action on the part of the user to enable firmware update: pushing a button or at least setting a switch (users who _want_ unattended updates could leave the switch in "updates enabled" position), but that's nowhere near a reality either.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Friday January 10, @08:13PM (3 children)
It can be, although I can't imagine modifying a 3rd party's hardware without their knowledge is ever going to be common in the way that would lead to this being a problem.
And for individuals that modify their own to get around things like that, just make it a felony on top of whatever else they're doing. Pretty much everything else that private citizens do these days is criminal. I do think that for things like this we shouldn't have activity lights, we should have lights that indicate that it's being powered. There would be false positives in terms of it saying that there are recordings when there aren't, but if you're that concerned about being taken to task for recording, perhaps you shouldn't be recording.
As for firmware, I'm completely on board with that, and I have suggested doing so on various sites at various times, the issue being that i have absolutely no power to even get the suggestion to the people making the decisions, but with the way that there are now malware attacks which get into chips that survive reinstalls, any hardware manufacturer that doesn't implement such a switch to allow for a completely clean install should be liable for the consequences. Really, it should be a mode that doesn't even allow for the hard disk to be accessed.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 10, @08:41PM (2 children)
>Pretty much everything else that private citizens do these days is criminal.
Interesting thing about that vs enforcement of the law... I kept a boat in my front yard, clear violation of city code, for years. Neighbors complimented it, thought it gave the neighborhood a more cool waterfront feel than just the standard row houses with no boat like that visible anywhere. One day some neighbors started slinging "just enforce the law" at each other over a tree trimming, and my boat got written up as a violation, because it is, but had never raised a complaint.
So, a visit to the code enforcement chief yielded this solution to me: put up a fence so the boat isn't visible from the street. If the code enforcement officer has to enter your property to see the violation, they cannot write the violation without a prior valid legal code enforcement related reason to enter your property. Even if they do see the boat incidentally, I think the violation is instantly voidable if the boat cannot be seen from public space.
All sorts of laws are like this: what you do inside you private property may be illegal, but many of those illegal things cannot be prosecuted without a proper legal chain of reasoning about how law enforcement came to know about those illegal thins happening inside your private property.
I have heard the saying "Isn't it most convenient to rule a society wherein everybody is breaking the law all the time?" attributed to Hitler - seems doubtful that is historically accurate, but the sentiment rings true.
>it should be a mode that doesn't even allow for the hard disk to be accessed.
Our products' Windows systems operate in HORM Hibernate Once Read Many mode. Every power on starts with exactly the same C: drive image (variable data stored on D:).
Various Linux distros are claiming "immutable disk image" capability, but so far every one I have dug into quickly confesses: "well, not really..." for various reasons, either it's not very immutable, or lots of stuff you'd expect to work even in an immutable scenario, doesn't. Ubuntu Core is promising to develop immutable images, but every time I read into how Core is being deployed I throw up a little.
Stuff burned on EEPROM? No excuse whatsoever to not put a physical switch on the physical Write Enable line.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Friday January 10, @10:15PM (1 child)
I've been getting a bunch of court videos popping up in my feed recently. One of the reasons why the 4th amendment exists is that if the government can come into your home any time they like and look for stuff, there's a pretty decent chance that there will be something that's technically illegal in there, even if it's a law that remains on the books merely because nobody thought to remove it.
I really don't like the fact that the cops can just get video from randos that have it, just because you're in a public place, without having any sort of process to justify it. I'm not surprised that they started to get warrants to cover every phone within a given area at a given time as that's mostly just another step along that pathway.
Really, unless we're talking about somebody who has themselves been victimized by somebody, the cops probably shouldn't even be allowed to look at the tape without some sort of approval to do so. Especially since in so many instances the footage is so blurry as to be barely usable. From what I can tell, these eye glass cameras beat the security footage that had been the standard n the past, even if it's for a shorter duration due to storage and battery life.
As far as computers with unwriteable memory goes, if that's what I personally want, I'll just use an optical disk. Sure, it makes it a pain to update, but a CD-R or DVD-R is can't be messed with once you've got it burned. Although, I'm not personally quite that paranoid. At some point, there's just not much more you can do. I haven't bothered to look into it, but I do wonder how FreeBSD's run levels compare as certain disk operations aren't permitted in more secure runlevels at all.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 10, @10:45PM
What about when the randos file complaints? In any given crowd you will find plenty of annoying actors.
Even 15 years ago serious security cameras were going to 4k resolution, and they continue to improve. I believe the recent AI onboard enables one wide view stream and another digitally zoomed the area the AI considers most interesting. The bandwidth and storage required for ultra high def streams is more costly / challenging than super high res camera sensors, lately.
Whether you are on a SSD mounted read only or optical the same problems of software compatibility with immutable files is the same, optical is just slower.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Friday January 10, @05:54PM (1 child)
In most cases, in public it's quite legal to record anything you want including people (and cops). Or, you could avoid going outside.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Friday January 10, @07:15PM
Right, which is part of the problem. When people were using massive cameras like the early ones were, or the camcorders of the '80s, it wasn't much of an issue because you could see it and address the issue. There also wasn't the ability to distribute the recordings widely in most cases.
Having laws that were set up with that in mind doesn't really make much sense when a camera is tiny, can take pretty decent video discreetly and be uploaded in a matter of minutes. There are things that can be done like requiring an audible click when taking photos, but at the end of the day, the view we've got that if you're in public that you don't have any rights in terms of not wanting to be recorded is naive to say the least. These cameras are just closer to the end stage where recording devices can be small enough that you never know if anybody is recording what's going on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 11, @01:26AM
If you keep (legally) playing copyrighted audio while going about your daily stuff and people record you, would it be copyright infringement if they tried to redistribute it with the audio?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 11, @10:03PM
why does it seem that there was no similar backlash against them
Maybe I'm not the only one who didn't know Meta was making them? I wonder how much they cost, although I'd bet a dollar Meta would require a subscription to use them, on top of a ridiculous up-front price.
They would be better than a dashcam if somebody ran a red light, swerved out of their lane and hit you, etc. Great for driving.
A man legally forbidden from possessing a firearm is in charge of America's nuclear arsenal. Have a nice day.
(Score: 3, Touché) by digitalaudiorock on Friday January 10, @04:38PM (2 children)
I'm pretty sure that the Meta "community notes" will flag this story as fake news. Problem solved!!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 10, @05:51PM (1 child)
I wonder to what extent the various Meta communities will be allowed to develop conflicting standards as to what is and is not "fake news" within their domains?
Would be informative to track this, but unlikely that anyone outside select Meta staff will be granted sufficient access to do so.
There's supposed to be quite an internal uproar at Meta about their rule changes, probably mostly among those California based moderators who are about to get the axe, but does that lessen the validity of the concerns they are voicing?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Friday January 10, @08:21PM
The whole thing just amounts to Zuckerberg kissing Trumps ass by shit-canning fact checking...period. He wants to keep Trump off his ass...he gets to make his money...and he gets to save time and money on the fact checking and everyone he can lay off who was doing it.
Problem solved, but not for anyone except Zuckerberg and Trump. The irony is that the "community" that's deciding what the "truth" is will now be getting orders of magnitude more disinformation to use for the new alternate fact checking...rinse...repeat.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jasassin on Friday January 10, @05:49PM (9 children)
I find the comments here kind of disturbing. The entire world is recording you constantly in public by cameras you don't know are there, and it seems the public opinion here is that people should not be allowed to do the same.
Have you noticed how different police officers act when they know they're not the only ones recording the situation at the time? Why should the police have the benefit of knowing they're being recorded? Let them be recorded abusing their authority, then lying about it, only to find this unknown video appear that objectively proves they are the ones lying.
I'm wondering where the people in the comments are getting this "without your consent" bullshit. If you are in public, your consent is not required to record you. If someone wanted to, they could walk down the street with a big ass 1990's camcorder and follow you around recording you and there's nothing you could do about it (except taking the risk of them having a gun and physically disabling them so they can't follow you anymore). Then you are the one guilty of breaking a law (aggravated assault).
Have the people saying this "without your consent" bullshit ever heard the word "paparazzi"?
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 10, @05:55PM (6 children)
>Have you noticed how different police officers act when they know they're not the only ones recording the situation at the time?
Mostly I have noticed how insecurely and childishly they react when someone is overtly recording their actions... which is amusing when there are so many Ring doorbell cameras and similar recording them all the time now.
- Jimmy Carter
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Friday January 10, @07:21PM (5 children)
Ring was a massive issue early on in particular. Last I heard, the policy on sharing the recordings with the cops had changed so that now there is a need for a warrant to get the recordings from Amazon. Although, the owner of the specific camera can turn over the footage without any such requirement. Many of those cameras only turn on in response to motion, and the retention policy can well be as short as a few days.
I do agree, that the doorbell cameras are a problem, but many of them don't even record anything unless something is relatively close, so anything on the street may not be recorded at all.
But, fundamentally, what some folks are missing is that these eyeglass mounted cameras are fundamentally different. They can follow people around in a way that's really only possible with robots or having people carry them. They can look at things from just about any angle and it doesn't take more than a quick glance to get things captured on camera.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 10, @08:14PM (4 children)
For the last 10+ years I have had high definition PoE streaming video fed to a ZoneMinder triggered recording system. The main issue with it is that it gets a lot of false positives and records cloud shadows moving across the yard, switches between color daylight and BW IR mode on the cameras, etc. But, they do trigger for just about every single thing of interest that moves in their field of view too, and I have three cameras covering most approaches to the house from multiple angles - never had a reason to think I'd ever need to cover the other side.
We use them mostly to be made aware of people approaching the house, before they get to the point of knocking on the full lite glass door in the middle of the all glass wall, recordings of the comings and goings are just a standard feature of ZoneMinder that I didn't bother to turn off. Everyone being recorded is on our private property, but as I understand the legality of the situation that's not a requirement either. When selecting my cameras I opted for the narrowest fields of view, longest lenses available, because I'm covering a relatively large area with multiple views, not trying to wide angle capture an apartment hallway. I can't quite read license plates as I am currently configured, but it wouldn't be hard to add one more camera to the system that would do an excellent job of just that, if I cared to. That could actually be fun with plate reader software that announces repeat visitors either by name, or indicating how long since their last visit and how many total visits they have made.
> these eyeglass mounted cameras are fundamentally different. They can follow people around in a way that's really only possible with robots or having people carry them
So, now people can get video from eye-level perspective, instead of shirt pocket level perspective, is that the fundamental difference? Because I can wear my phone in a chest pocket with the camera facing out and continuously record many hours of high definition video on a single charge - much more than the glassholes are capable of in their lightweight frames.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by aafcac on Friday January 10, @10:08PM (3 children)
Yes, that is fundamentally a difference. People wear glasses everywhere, and they automatically look where you're looking. People have been glancing at things for our entire existence as a species. And, if you're a bit further away, you're not going to notice that these are cameras, but you would most other devices used for recording.
As far as holding the phone in your pocket, that's far less of an issue than you're implying, you're largely stuck with whatever direction you're facing, you have garbage control over how it's facing and your chest isn't stabilized to the extent that your head is. It could workish, but there's a reason why nobody does that. With the glasses, it will happen automatically as soon as people have them on.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 10, @10:37PM (2 children)
Between wide angle lenses, high definition captures, automatic stabilization and ease of video editing, I would rather have pocket captured video than constantly triggering the glass hole shutter for a slow low power capture.
As they are, the Meta RayBans are far more noticeable on Bourbon Street than a phone slightly sticking out of a pocket.
When the glasses' tech specs catch up with continuous 4k 30fps capture for hours, I will agree that adding the head mount stabilization and tracking abilities will enable better telephoto captures from the glasses, but that's pretty marginal as the comparative abilities stand now.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Saturday January 11, @05:46AM (1 child)
Things like this need to be killed with fire before they have a chance to catch on and for the abilities to improve. It's generally somewhat risky to support just flat out refusing to take certain developmental paths, but when the consequences are as sever as they could get with this for people that aren't using it, that should weigh heavily on it, especially when most of the uses just do not require that the technology be so camouflaged. This isn't at the level of what is already going on with genetic engineering or climate change where a few irresponsible people are putting large number of other people at risk, but it definitely has the possibility of being like the other shady stuff that Meta has done in terms of tracking a bunch of people who did not opt into it because a bunch of idiots decided they wanted to be involved with Facebook.
This is especially the case with the tech sector the last couple decades that has been purposefully moving so fast, and carelessly, that regulators would normally have a hard time keeping up. It's even worse right now as neither party seems to actually care much about governance and ensuring that the companies that are strip mining the country for profit have at least some restrictions on their more egregious misbehavior. A bunch of people seem to buy into the idea that corporations have some sort of legal obligation to take customers for every possible dime leaving folks destitute.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 11, @03:28PM
There's no killing super cameras in phones, on car dashboards, bike handlebars, and GoPros mounted inside hats.
Vilifying one particular form factor is probably counterproductive, even if there is a bit of popular support for doing so.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Friday January 10, @07:17PM
The rules should be the same for both parties, there should be significant restrictions on what can be recorded and how it can be used. Right now, you don't even really have the option to opt out of the recording that's already going on. But at least the current cameras you know roughly what's being recorded. With glasses, you don't. They can go wherever the wearer goes and be pointed at things from just about any angle. So, it's arguably far, far worse than the cameras that were already out there. Those cameras were mostly an issue because of just how many have been installed in recent years and the lack of any warrant requirements to use them if the owner of the camera hands the footage over.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12, @01:25AM
They religiously declare to the world about their right to guns, but they don't want someone else to wear camglasses... 🤣
Maybe the cops should have the benefit of knowing they are ALWAYS being recorded by members of the public etc, and that anything they do or say can be used in a court of law...
One potential issue is "cruel and unusual punishment". If you get put on various "crowd sourced" "face recognition lists" (whether rightfully or wrongfully), will there be a law ensuring your removal from such lists when you have "served your time"?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 11, @08:08PM (1 child)
I wonder if he's related to the basketball player [wikipedia.org]?
A man legally forbidden from possessing a firearm is in charge of America's nuclear arsenal. Have a nice day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 12, @07:15AM