[drdaeman]

I believe the problem is not smart glasses per se, but spyware that runs on a lot (if not most) of such devices.

Shame the language makes people intrinsically hate the former by associating it with the latter without even questioning it. The idea of smart glasses is cool, the implementations are not.

[itishappy]

Smart glasses are spyware. The ability to record without my knowledge or consent is what I take issue with. I don't particularly care if you self host.

[nomel]

> The ability to record without my knowledge or consent

All major brands have a clear indicator for when they're recording.

Someone could block that indicator out, but someone could also just go to Amazon.com and select one of hundred of available pinhole cameras or not-smart camera glasses.

These aren't enabling an ability that hasn't been enabled for decades. If anything, seeing someone with main brand smart glasses makes it more obvious.

[itishappy]

Existing alternatives also make me uncomfortable for the exact same reasons. I would prefer to avoid anyone who purchases a pinhole camera for public use, regardless of whether it came with an LED to indicate recording.

To their credit, smart glasses are an obvious signal for me to avoid. That doesn't make me appreciate them any more.

[nomel]

Every cellphone in every hand is a recording device, very often used in public. Where I am, you can look most anywhere, at any time, and see someone on a phone call, taking a picture/video, posing, etc. What's the significant difference that I'm not seeing, especially since the smart glasses have an indicator, and cellphones DO NOT.

[itishappy]

No difference. If I see your recording in public, either via cell phone or smart glasses or shoulder mounted news rig, I do my best to steer clear. I don't like Alexa or Flock or whatever else either.

I do not agree that the existence of surveillance tech justifies the expansion of surveillance tech.

[nomel]

I see. This is entirely reasonable. :)

[com2kid]

Not only that, but smart glasses have terrible recording time limits. A cheap $30 pinhole camera with a SD card will far surpass meta glasses in recording capabilities.

Hidden cameras have been a thing for a long time now. Stick one in a pair of glasses and give it a super short battery life and people freak out...

[nkrisc]

Wearing a hidden camera and recording people is also very socially unacceptable. If someone knew you were wearing they would probably also “freak out”.

[itishappy]

It used to be if you were caught wearing a hidden camera in a department store the police would be called.

Now they're being billed as fashion accessories.

Sorry, but "normalize hidden cameras" isn't a movement I can get behind.

[com2kid]

My point is the tech is nothing new.

Every person holding a cellphone up in their hands could also be pointing a camera around at people, a camera with much higher fidelity, computing power, and one that can take much longer videos.

This is just panic about a new form factor. The same thing happened when cell phones came along, with the exact same talking points.

[itishappy]

Totally agree, but that's not a justification. "We already do a thing you don't like so you won't mind if we do it lot more, right?"

The same talking points still apply to cell phones. I think people who record TikToks in public are similarly gross and I go out of my way to avoid them.

I watched a guy setup a cell phone to record his laps in a pool yesterday. He swam one lap right about a meter from the 15 year-old girl playing with her mom, then climbed out of the pool, shut off his phone, and walked away. The remainder of the pool was open. Should I have called him out? I couldn't decide, and therefore didn't. This is normal now.

[blharr]

I don't get the point of this argument. Yes, the people who buy pinhole cameras are creeps too

[Markoff]

why is someone protecting their property/children creep?

[thunderfork]

Pinhole cameras ain't for that

[Markoff]

why not? secret camera is sometimes better than letting others know they are being filmed

[drdaeman]

Smart glasses (or any camera-equipped device) don’t have to record anything to provide utility.

If anything, the primary utility of smart glasses is the wearable display, not camera. YMMV, of course.

But even machine vision-capable devices can do a lot of useful things without causing you any trouble, unless your issues are more of a religious concern rather than anything substantial.

[itishappy]

I understand there are legitimate usages. There are also usages that make me uncomfortable. My issue is that I'm unequipped to know the difference.

Smart glasses sans camera would address my complaints (I take no issue with smartwatches, for instance), but that admittedly decreases the utility.

[drdaeman]

I'm not entirely sure what's your exact threat scenario, if someone records your image, especially given that you've said it doesn't matter to you whether it gets siphoned straight into some megacorp database, or private home server, or gets processed on-device only.

But... aren't already existing protections that make it e.g. illegal to distribute your image or its derivatives sufficient? If someone does you wrong, you can seek recourse. If everyone is respectful of each other (and we hate corporations instead of technologies), we enable a lot legitimate uses, making the world better: more accessible, and easier to learn and understand.

[itishappy]

Oh, it very much does matter to me what happens to recordings! I should have made that more clear. Self hosting is infinitely preferable than sending that info to Facebook. This isn't enough to flip my opinion on the technology in general, but if I had a friend who wanted to self-host their own smart glasses, I would not mind. The keyword there is friend.

My issue is that I don't have the ability to audit every smart glasses user to find out what their tech stack is, so I'm looking at averages. If I saw that smart glasses were being used and promoted as assistive technology, I would likely form a different opinion. Unfortunately, that's not what I perceive. I am open to the possibility that smart glasses could end up a net positive on our society, but the history of similar technologies does not encourage.

I will think more on your comments here. I find them quite insightful.

Edit: For a rather recent example of my threat model, I will repost part of my comment from elsewhere in the thread:

> I watched a guy setup a cell phone to record his laps in a pool yesterday. He swam one lap right about a meter from the 15 year-old girl playing with her mom, then climbed out of the pool, shut off his phone, and walked away. The remainder of the pool was open. Should I have called him out? I couldn't decide, and therefore didn't. This is normal now.

[mrgoldenbrown]

Do you consider dashcams to also be spyware? I feel like dashcams are just as hidden and nonconsensual but more or less accepted.

[itishappy]

A challenge to my beliefs! What a great question! Upon reflection, I don't have anywhere near as much reaction to dashcams. There's certainly some dissonance there.

I think it's an issue of perceived benefit vs perceived risk. I see the utility in both technologies, but I assign significantly higher risk to smart glasses. I really struggle to imagine widespread abuse from dashcams.

[aa-jv]

Alas, your knowledge or consent is not a requirement if you are in public, and this is a human right worth defending, frankly.

Your desire to consent to being recorded in public places does not counteract my right to record everything I can perceive in public. Period.

[IncreasePosts]

You're assuming every country has laws similar to, I'm guessing, america.

[drdaeman]

It's a more fundamental issue than those legal oddities of the day. It's whether people have a right to remember, right to share their memories (there must be lots of nuances here), and whether others have a right to be forgotten or deny some or all of such sharing - and how all those play together.

I can't wait for the day brain-machine interfaces will become more advanced and commonplace (so cyborgs become something way more advanced than just limb prosthetics), and hope the day comes fast enough so the true issue is forced before any decisions are made off the ill-informed assumptions and the shuttle designs are left to depend on a width of horse's ass.

[aa-jv]

I have a right to collect evidence in my own defense, and that evidence may not be abrogated by by-standers to the event who might attempt to prevent me gathering that evidence.

[aa-jv]

Its the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it covers you whether you like it or not, thankfully. You might not like it but thats gonna change the moment you need to exercise that very right yourself.

[itishappy]

How do you figure? There is no "right to record," nor is surveillance mentioned in the Declaration of Human Rights. In fact, it points out in Article 12 and 29 that rights and freedoms can and should be limited by law if they impinge on the rights and freedoms of others, such as those mentioned in Article 12:

> No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

That doesn't seem as clear cut as you're implying.

[aa-jv]

Article 19:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Seeking and receiving information covers gathering facts, evidence, or observations from public events or spaces (e.g., documenting protests, government actions, police conduct, or everyday occurrences visible in public).

You might not like it, but its a key mechanism by which we, the people, keep despots and the police state in check.

[IncreasePosts]

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has as much teeth as The New Colossus does. It's a bunch of prose with absolutely no binding or enforcement mechanisms.

[aa-jv]

Following the notion that one needs force to get things done is rather a tempestuous path to take.

The rights are there for all of us, and indeed they are generally aligned along natural human phenemonen, specifically for the purpose of allowing the weak and the strong to live as equals, universally.

Sure, you have the right as long as you have the gun. But you still have the rights once you lose the gun too, human.

[itishappy]

That's fair. You have the legal right.

I'm still going to avoid you like the plague.

[aa-jv]

Yeah, that is totally okay, its why human rights are so important to protect. You wouldn't want to be in a situation where an authority doesn't allow you to avoid them like the plague, would you? It is, therefore, your right to record those authorities .. so that they will go away, too.

[itishappy]

Totally agree. To be clear, I'm not arguing for a ban on smartglasses. I'm simply explaining why they make me uncomfortable.

The ability to record authorities is something I fully support, but I still don't want to be in that video if I can help it.

On top of that, most smartglasses are not private. If authorities can access the feeds, then my neighbor with RayBans becomes an authority, and it makes it that much harder for me to avoid them like the plague. This similarly applies to Ring doorbells and Flock ALPRs.