Yesterday I saw someone with Meta smart glasses in public for the first time. Even just standing near him was unpleasant. It doesn’t matter whether it’s recording, pointing a camera and mics at somebody who didn’t agree to it feels rude and a bit shocking.
I worry that this is becoming more acceptable or do others feel the same way? Companies keep pushing forward, now with smart neckleses, smart headphones, (all equipped with camera and mic). Are these all doomed to fail? What feature would convince me or others to actually start using them? It’s certainly not chatgpt strapped on your face, or a shitty quality spy camera either.
If any of my friends or family wore these, I wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking to them.
Im interested in your experiences. Thanks for reading.
And that doesn’t work because you can place your hand over the camera which will trick the glasses into thinking you are in the dark which will allow you to start recording, then you just take your hand away.
Youtube is full of videos that show people how to circumvent the LED on the these glasses. Its not rocket science.
I’m not saying that it’s not feasible, I’m saying the hardware changed since those first “hacks”.
Are you saying you tried on the latest version and covering the light sensor within the LED allow recording?
Because my best is that the videos are showcasing this on older models which precisely did not included that sensor. Here is a 404 episode on that https://www.404media.co/how-to-disable-meta-rayban-led-light/
Well they’re saying despite there being a light sensor it still can be easily circumvented by also covering the camera, not the LED, with your hand when starting to record and then just moving your hand away from the camera once the glasses are recording. I’ve definitely seen this tip shared and I think even an video of it in action.
They probably realize there’s no airtight way to prevent it anyway so they’ve added just some simple ways to make it a bit more difficult. It’s not like you couldn’t get camera glasses from some other company without these restrictions anyway if you’re determined to record without the light.
Sure, I’ve even made my own with a RPi0 and 3D printed frames at home https://twitter-archive.benetou.fr/utopiah/status/1449023602079240194/ so my point isn’t that Meta is fine (it definitely is bad) or that finding workarounds isn’t easy, solely that they seem to legitimately try to prevent circumvention measures despite picking bad designs, like removing a flashing red LED lights like ALL cameras did until now.
Literally the first video i found on youtube shows how to bypass the LED on Meta Gen 2 sunglasses. And the video is from only a few weeks ago.
https://youtube.com/shorts/RXQsBRQc7RU
EDIT:
And the second video i found shows the exact same “hack” working on the newer Meta Ray Ban Display. And that one’s from November.
https://youtu.be/QVKKCBkllm0
I’m saying a dumb little LED (whether it can be bypassed or not) is not enough. Recording with a regular camera, a webcam or a phone is an overt action, if you want to hide it you have to go out of your way to hide what you’re doing. Recording with these kinds of glasses is covert by its very design and should be held to different standards.
Related article https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx23ke7rm7go on how such glasses are actually used, sadly.
Ugh, hopefully they fix this. Or maybe then don’t and the whole glasses get banned, I’m fine with that.
That being said, as I mentioned in my other answer building such glasses is pretty trivial. Sure it might not look as inconspicuous as the Meta ones (or at least popular… which might lead to people better identifying them in fact) but recording covertly is indeed now trivial.
It’s wrong though and AFAIK in the EU at least it’s illegal without consent, you can’t publish the recording so the technical implementation is not really the problem, it’s the usage.
If at any point it seemed like I justified the usage of such glasses for covert filming let me clarify : no, it’s wrong, regardless of how technically feasible it now is, without or without Meta.