alt Hacker NewsMeta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses
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When Google Glass first released back in 2012 I was running a conference technology startup, and since we had a database full of speaker and attendee profile photos the obvious thing we could build with Glass would be a "your glasses help you spot the people you are planning to meet in a crowded room" app.
The Google Glass developer terms strictly forbid building that, and it didn't take more than a few seconds of deeper thought to understand why.
I'd like to wear an EXACT OPPOSITE of this...
Namely, if someone is using Facebook's AI-powered glasses in my vicinity, I want to get a notification (of some sort) so that I can avoid those persons
IMHO, Meta is the prime example for privacy intrusion in tech history and with this new smart glasses device, they've leveled their game too far by recording people in their home, sometimes even naked, without their consent. This was already discussed here about a month ago: Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47961838)
They seem determined to make Chicago lawyers rich. [0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_Information_Privacy_ActStart up idea:
Ordinary glass (as in spectacles) frames that have a near IR LED on the bridge and on the side. PWM to be efficient, bright, but erratic clock of around 10Hz.
Want a picture of me? Ask, or use film.
I can't think of one single practical use case for this that would benefit my life, because, right behind the glasses I have my very own locally available facial recognition built in.
How does HN feel about this as a general ethos:
- Computers can do as much work as they want to automatically, so long as none of it touches a network boundary.
- Any time a computer wants to touch the network it must be explicitly initiated by a human action. Sort of like how in browsers capturing the mouse or entering fullscreen mode requires a trusted user action and isn't something a page can do unilaterally, but broader. This also means that the extent of the network communication must be made explicit and clear with no chance of misunderstanding by the user. If what you're doing is genuinely complex beyond your ability to communicate to your target user then you shouldn't be doing it on the behalf of that user. Note that this only really applies to mass consumer products, not something built/deployed internally.
I feel like if a hard boundary is not set around this we will end up in a Panopticon. Set aside governments actively pushing for it, it seems a simple profit motive in a digital era yields this outcome. Maybe nuanced rules would produce better outcomes in theory, but humans don't seem great at sticking to nuanced and fiddly rules when there's strong incentive to bend them beyond recognition.
I'm in the position to make security policies at work, and one of them is that no smart glasses are allowed in the office. We will not be having workers aiming Facebook glasses at our screens showing confidential information. And along those lines, I can think of damn few scenarios where I'd be OK with someone using face recognition against me. Restaurants? It's not Facebook's business to know where I like to eat, presumably to sell ads to show to me. Music clubs? They don't need to know what I listen to. Anything vaguely resembling a public bathroom? Fuck right off with that. Public sidewalks? I don't want them tracking who I spend time talking to.
No, I can't really think of any situation where I'd be remotely OK with this being used. To be blunt, I kinda hope this quickly turns not into just a public shaming against people wearing public spyware, but a situation where people are physically afraid to be caught wearing them outside. I think the branch of future possibilities where it's called out as antisocial behavior to poison public spaces like this would be a happier world than one where it becomes common behavior.
Edit: In before the "do you ban cell phone cameras at work, too?" unclever gotcha: Yes. Yes, we'd definitely ban people spending the whole day holding their cell phone cameras up to their screens to record their work. We don't share confidential info with anyone other than vendors we've vetted and contracted with. If I walked by a desk and saw someone recording, I would pull them aside and explain why they're on thin ice.
Maybe Meta, Flock and Palatir could team up? Create an evil combo stock similar to musky's
I fail to see how nonstop recording of every interaction with people in everyday life will pass muster in a two-party consent state.
The company feels like the corporate embodiment of its founder.
Headline should be modded, these models aren't actively wired in anywhere. No idea why they'd be shipping these but the HN headline doesn't even match the blog headline.
Former Facebook wanker, who worked in research.
1) we were always told and legal always pushed back hard on anything face detecting.(ie haar cascade "this is a face" let alone actual this is dave/sally)
2) the FTC would audit us to make sure we weren't doing that kind of stuff
3) all of the research prototypes had inbuilt/inline face removers up until 2024(I left after that so I don't know when/if that changed)
3.1) One of the very first things I worked on was face removal, it was a central core of the entire fucking project. Like if we didn;t have any of those constraints we'd have been 2 years ahead.
4) Stella is the name for v1 rayban stories, so its very odd that they get the update when they've not had any new features since for a long time(unless I am mistaken).
Do these emit something unique that could be detected so that loud klaxon could let everyone know there is a glasshole approaching? Some unique bluetooth identifier perhaps?
In case anyone missed it. Michel Foucault the face tested in this article talked about the mechanisms of surveillance and the Panopticon.
The more impactful and positive an invention is, the more harmful it can be in the wrong hands. Sadly, AI is being developed at break neck speeds and everyone is trying to extract something from it which also means the powerful will seek to increase their power through it.
Feels like we're juggling with ball sized nukes these days... So amazing... until someone eventually drops a ball.
Meta had taken its name from the virtual world "Metaverse" in Neal Stephenson 1992 novel Snow Crash. The novel is the earliest known use of that word, so if it wasn't directly then it was indirectly.
The book also describes "Gargoyles": people using headsets with cameras and sensors to spy on everyone around them for the "Central Intelligence Corporation" while being also simultaneously in the Metaverse.
Funny, how the gargoyles are described in the book in a somewhat derogatory manner, and the villain of the story is an billionaire who owns a large Internet corporation.
At least the gargoyles in the book got paid.
Using makeup and decoration to escape facial recognition: https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty/article/48030/1/anti-sur...
This is incredibly creepy and invasive, and should be outlawed, frankly. There is no legitimate reason for this to exist. My only hope is regular Wayfarers aren't completely tainted by these creep glasses having the same design, but it may be too late.
_Careless People_ should be required reading for anyone buying this crap.
Not sure if this is the future I want, but I've always thought the main idea of smart glasses is to automatically bring up information that is relevant in your current context. One part of this is to recognize who you are staring at.
The number of times those get grabbed of someone’s face and stomped on will be greater than zero. And businesses will have signs for No guns/spyglasses.
My mind immediately went to the scramble suits in A Scanner Darkly! Is this where we’re headed?
Not the point of this article, but that schema design is quite bad.
What a huge surprise coming from the company that records its own employees.
Fudge... we can de-flock all we want but if naive people walk around with the portable surveillance cameras on their face, there's nothing we can do about that.
We need privacy regulation...
i feel like ai would be very beneficial here. use ai to create massive amount of fake facebook accounts with fake picture and fake friends. meta wants all the data so we give them more than they would ever care about. make it impossible for them to really know real from fake.
Hope they get sued out of existence for this by Illinois. The biodata stored and used only serves authoritarians.
So why not turn it on?
At least in China, where face recognition is at building gates, subway gates, store checkouts...
Thank you for sharing these insights. One of my main purchase factors was the facial recognition concerns. I now understand that this is very important and that they aren't disclosing everything. I cannot buy any of Meta's smart glasses and someone would likely break mine even if I did.
Heading towards surveillance economy, paid by our foolishness.
How many ships does Meta have?
Please God no
Ideas for what individuals can do about this and related awful tech:
1. Ask your local and state governments to completely ban "stalkerware" and "Big Tech surveillanceware" (like will use this and other face recognition), as well as ban using hidden cameras (including in these glasses) to photograph/video people.
2. Tell everyone, before their buy the glasses, what a "glasshole" is.
3. Social negative feedback to people who wear these. Tell your friends if they're being inconsiderate. Tell coworkers it's inappropriate in the workplace. Frown at strangers who do it. Tell apparent creepers to stop, and/or consider calling the police.
4. Social negative feedback to people who work at the companies pushing this tech. There's plenty of tech talent on the job market. Why consider someone who continued to work for one of the companies, in some cases after years of sociopathic abuses of society?
5. Be skeptical of influencers and astroturfing shills promoting the products.
Other ideas?
Meta are making the glasses something you could be punched for wearing.
I live in a big city and I love it because i feel anonymous - nobody cares who I am. It's a stark contrast to where I grew up, where if you were out in public with someone unusual you could hear about it at school the next day.
I think the age of anonymity in public is getting to a close. First government mass surveillance and now private mass surveillance (which will surely be funneled into government surveillance over time)
What can go wrong with :)
How do these glasses communicate/upload info? Is it saved to the glassed itself? I wonder if there's a way to deauth them when they are near you.
Title is: Meta's smart glasses app ships complete, dormant face-recognition pipeline
_Frantically Tattoos "Do Not Sell My Personal Information" message under my eyes so I can lawsuit meta for ignoring my data privacy preferences_
I wonder if people held their phones in the face of people recording with glasses if they'd be ok with it.
they finally wore down all the people internally who were against this
This is terrible but inevitable for privacy. Meta is going to exploit this and hoard all the data all the while claiming they conform to all the laws of the land. I just wish this doesn’t take off but they are targeting sub $500 and it’s bound to get all the instagram influencers and heavy users to buy.
Creeper glasses.
The shame of this is that even if you as a consumer choose not to buy them, others will. And while anyone can take a photo of you in public, you’ll have glasses taking pictures of you and transferring your identity and location to Meta servers (who by the way contract with the government).
Disgusting. Meta does not care about the harm they do so long as they make money.
Please hurry Apple.
Anybody else or does it all feel desperate? Like "here set this bubble play money on fire before it gets worthless" desperate?
This company is so beyond creepy and disgusting.
I'd rather be face forgetting self than wear this nonsense.
I wish something like this existed that was completely offline. I'm face blind (prosopagnosia) so being able to feed an offline database photos of friends so it can recognise them would be great.
Accessibility shouldn't require giving up privacy.