[hootz]

I do photography as a hobby, especially street photography and related styles, and I constantly question myself on the ethics of photographing people in public without permission, even with my huge ass camera. Meanwhile, we have people running spy cameras in their glasses, and they view that as just a normal thing to do. What.

[jameson]

Exactly.

The problem with photo since the birth of social media is that it's permanently stored in the internet, literally.

Photos used to be personal and (mostly) temporary. I may take a photo in public, develop, then share with the close ones and store in the photo book. Photo may be somehow passed onto others but likely thrown away eventually when I become less of importance to them, and it'll worn out.

With photos now uploaded to social media or the "cloud", they exist permanently as a means of backups, sold to 3rd party (knowingly or unknowingly) analyzed to "improve the experience of the platform".

[drdaeman]

That permanence is a bit of a myth. Bit rot is as real as physical one. At least four cloud storages (Bitcasa, hubiC, Ubuntu One, Cyphertite) I’ve used in the past are gone.

[jameson]

I want to emphasize "unknowingly" part. Once data is uploaded to an entity, there's no guarantee they'll manage is properly.

User agreements change constantly, engineers make mistake, firms get liquidated and data might get sold, and most importantly, as a former employee of social media firms, what the firms say about the user privacy publicly is very different inside.

[hootz]

But it has potential to be permanent through the means of other people storing copies of it. If you send a photo via WhatsApp to someone, for example, that photo is by default saved automatically to their phone, and potentially synced to their Google Photos.

[Legend2440]

You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public. It is completely legal to film someone on the street.

This is important for other reasons, as it is the same law that allows you to film cops.

[drawfloat]

In America. That is not true for all other countries.

And in even more countries it is legal to film, but it's not legal to send that footage back to Meta's servers for use in LLM training.

[drstewart]

And in even even more countries, it's actually perfectly fine to do any of that.

In before your definition of the world is a handful of tiny white countries

[drawfloat]

We’re talking about Europe. The context of this entire article is Europe.

[whilenot-dev]

This seems like a US-centric view, because "it is NOT completely legal to film someone on the street" in the european country I live.

[drstewart]

I love how Europeans claim they aren't one country but then refuse to specify where they're from.

Anyway that sounds like a very specific view only in your country since it's completely fine in the North American country in which I live.

[watwut]

He did not said it is true in every single EU country. He said it is false in his one.

He also said it is US-centric view. Which it is. Americans tend to think all the other countries are just little worst America or enemies. And get real angry when EU countries dont just project simplified American politics, but have their own equally complex one.

[drstewart]

Nothing in the original post mentioned the US.

Germans all think this way. What a German-centric view. Germans tend to think anything they don't do is just America-centric. And get real angry when other countries dont just have the same German views, but have ones that may be closer to America.

[whilenot-dev]

With a bit of clicking around you could easily find out to which country I'm referring to. I know neighboring countries have similar rulings, so how does that really change anything?

GP made some US-centric statements in, absolute form, in a thread about initiatives from the European legislature... make it make sense, please. As EU citizen I don't yearn for inspiration from the US legal system when it comes to matters of privacy. The rights to privacy of any individual shouldn't be waved aside just because they happen to be situated in public space.

[WesolyKubeczek]

In some jurisdictions, it depends. You may film “a street”, and people go into and out of the frame all the time, and it’s okay. But if you take a random passerby and make them the focus of your recording, you may run into problems.

[Gigachad]

What you have a reasonable expectation of is decided by society, not some unmoving law of physics.

A country could very easily decide you do have the right to go outside without creeps recording you with spy glasses.

[lostmsu]

Or it could also decide that you can add a digital eye to your existing two bio eyes without being called a creep and thrown in jail or issued a fine for wanting to remember something or getting assisted with something.

[fusslo]

law != ethics

[m463]

"remember, we have a legal system, not a justice system"

[lostmsu]

"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike."

[dgellow]

It's actually country specific, you don't have a universal rule that you can legally record people in public

[hootz]

As someone already said, I am not talking about legality, but about ethics.

[Jblx2]

I wonder how many surveillance cameras are currently in operation.

[hootz]

While they are a problem, they are a different problem from spy cameras capturing you up close for the benefit of a single person. Surveillance cameras are for shady governments and maybe "security", camera glasses are for straight up creeps.

[m463]

That has already been normalized. This is different. sigh.

[mc32]

When things were on NVRs only some personnel had access to them and they typically rotated fate out every 30 days by default. Importantly they were not interconnected. They were their own silos. Now they are all tied in to central services and people with the right access can pull up anything from any of the devices regardless how irrelevant they are to an investigation.

The main problem is the interconnectedness.

They are realizing Hayden’s wet dream of total surveillance.

[basisword]

And we're already seeing a tonne of creepy bastards harassing women using the glasses and they have no recourse because "public place". They should be outright banned imo. I see no benefit to them and I genuinely cannot see the day everyone is running around wearing the same few brands of glasses because they provide that much value. I had to wear regular glasses for a few years and they were a pain in the ass. I'm not doing that voluntarily so I can see live ads and reviews as I walk past restaurants.

[vkou]

Hell, I (like anyone else) grab photos with my phone on vacation, and when I take a picture of a busy market, I do my best to avoid including people in my photographs.

People in places I visit are just trying to live their lives, they aren't some kind of human zoo for me.

[hootz]

Yeah, someone giving me even the slightest hint of being uncomfortable already makes me instantly delete their photo. Like, I want to photograph the public without ruining spontaneous moments, but I don't want to make others uncomfortable or mad at me because of my photographs.

[drdaeman]

Glasses’ camera [usually] sits right next to couple more cameras embedded in wearer’s skull. [Almost] nobody has any problem with those.

That strongly suggests me it’s not the cameras that are problematic, but something about what happens to the images.

[vkou]

Most people understand that the difference between your camera and your eyes is that one records an image, while the other records a very rough description of an image.

[drdaeman]

I don’t know how I could’ve made it even more obvious that cameras themselves don’t record anything.

[hootz]

I guess people wearing spy camera glasses won't do anything at all with the images! /s

[drdaeman]

My point is, people point at the camera but have actual issues with some potential capabilities of a system that’s not the camera itself but way downstream of it.

Can we please learn to point at correct things? I honestly don’t know what wrong with everyone. It’s like when people have issues with building permits and utility pricing but blame “AI” or “data centers” instead.

[hootz]

They are not exactly potential capabilities, but real capabilities already being used by people like obnoxious TikTokers to record them harassing people in public places without the person realizing they are being recorded.

If you need to put a camera on glasses for a legitimate reason, such as a device purely for accessibility, then you should be able to get an exception, of course.

[drdaeman]

“Potential” in a sense wearer’s actions are necessary to cause harm. Or vendor’s, for other risk scenarios. One has to not just have a camera but have that camera recording to a persistent medium and - most importantly - be an asshole to publish that recording inappropriately. That’s a few active steps away from having a camera.

> then you should be able to get an exception, of course

Of course not. Not when everyone reacts to the cameras themselves instead of TikTok uploads and whatever people are doing.

I just want legislation to ban the latter (as the actual harmful thing) and not the former (then maybe allow it on some sort of permit). But I’m sure it’ll be the opposite.

Which pisses me off because as a person who has difficulty with faces, for almost my whole adult life I’ve dreamed about a wearable that could make me aware when I see a person I know as I pass by (my brain doesn’t do that on its own). Strictly on-device, zero retention, no transmission, sure - I won’t buy e.g. Meta glasses or whatever until I know I can hack them to do the right thing. But of course there’ll be an argument that others aren’t supposed to know what my devices are doing, so ban them just in case because they make people uncomfortable.

We’re literally saying the same thing, pointing that the issue is with something that happens with the images/videos (TikToks)…

[dgellow]

> a wearable that could make me aware when I see a person I know as I pass by (my brain doesn’t do that on its own)

You can do that, just ask people for consent to be recorded/taken a picture