“These are very cool and handy. It’s like some spy gear. lol”
“Literally feel like a cool spy with these on. Love it so much.”
“…there is a very obtrusive white LED light on the temple, next to one of the camera lenses, that comes on whenever they are recording. I guess this is in the name of “privacy” so others know they are being recorded, but I think it’s silly and just draws attention to the wearer.”
… by the masses, but how long before it is co-opted by Big Tech and by government?
For example, I imagine that this is all blackbox hardware and software, so it may already be sending everything “somewhere”. It specifically notes that you must run the app (which I assume uses Bluetooth to communicate with the glasses). What does the app do? Anyone’s guess.
And is there a backdoor for disabling the recording LED? (That could be used malevolently by the wearer or by a third party.)
As I read critics - it doesn’t send data anywhere … at least after using it for few weeks lot of devices seem to break. Looks like a piece of garbage which you can get for 20$ from Chinese.
But I hate the direction things are going. On street I cannot block scripts, so that cameras cannot put my data into wrong hands. The internet breaks out of my home where it is under control and spread around the public. And it’s hard to recognize them.
That’s not actually a problem in itself. As long as people are moral, this doesn’t become a problem.
But, the problem is people are immoral. Media outlets program people to sell out each other to government. People in north korea and china sell each other to government all the time.
If people are moral, then they will use this against government instead of using this to sell each other out to government.
As long as media outlets program people to be moral, it will not backfire. So, you should donate to media outlets that promote morality and freedom instead of centralized control.
Media outlets program people. People run on media programs. Humans are not exactly computers, but they are like computers. Humans are like programmable computers. Human consciousness is programmable.
One huge problem with (chinese) media outlets is they program people to give up their own rights for money and even sell other people’s rights for money. Giving up rights for money is a sin because when you give up your own rights for money, you harm other people’s rights. One person gives up rights for money, and it becomes easier for government to take away rights of others.
It’s even a problem if people do not act immoral. Alone the presence of such devices can lead other people to react in another way as they usually would do.
True. Maybe they didn’t think about this use. Maybe they did, but they are cautious and didn’t want to cause a big outcry. I wouldn’t say ethical reasons could have held them - ethics is a notion they don’t know.
But I’m sure that pretty soon this will be the new reality we will live in - the accepted societal norm.
This is called inevitabilism - a neologism coined by Shoshana Zuboff in her famous essay “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”. To quote her:
‘Technological inevitability is the mantra on which we are trained, but it is an existential narcotic prescribe to induce resignation: a snuff dream of the spirit.’
The ideology of inevitabilism: the belief that technological progress, even if it is catastrophic for the planet, inimical to effective human life, or disastrous for society at large, cannot be allayed, prevented or reversed.
A knife can be used to cook food or murder people. Any technology can be used morally or immorally.
As long as at least 51% of people understand correct moral boundaries, technologies will largely be used morally. The problem is that most people don’t understand morality.
A likely scenario is that media outlets brainwash people into thinking they should give up right to have privacy for safety or security.
Giving up rights for safety and security won’t make people secure or safe. The problem isn’t technologies. The problem is media outlets brainwashing people into giving up rights for safety and teaching fake morality to people. School and media don’t teach real morality.
When I read story, the thing that disturbed me is that the FBI was able to access video that was recorded by the glasses. Does that mean that there is no security? Or it is weak? Or the FBI leant on some cloud provider to get a copy from the cloud? Or?
I understand of course that from the perspective of someone else in the street, the whole idea of these glasses is badness. But let’s say a person is using the glasses in their own home and not for some malicious or criminal purpose …
The possibility that Meta even has a plaintext copy would be a serious privacy and security fail, in my opinion.
Obtaining it from the device seems more palatable, in my opinion, but it still raises questions about privacy and security.
I don’t know how the glasses work but it is possible that they have no persistent storage at all and just relay video in real time to the phone and the phone is responsible for storing video, securely or not, or streaming video if the user so chooses, or both.
But then with blackbox hardware you never really know, do you …
As “someone else in the street”, do I have to walk around the streets with a Bluetooth(?) “jammer” in order to disrupt the flow of video from the glasses to the snoop’s phone as I go past? Unfortunately Bluetooth uses frequency-hopping, so jamming may not be straightforward.
Jamming is usually illegal, unfortunately. However, if I thought I could get away with it, I would probably engage in it …frequently.
These particular glasses apparently have somewhat “limited” (though still very concerning) functionality, according to this article from Euronews. It’s not hard to imagine what future iterations will be able to do, though.
In totally unsurprising news: A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, declined to comment.