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.
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.