Meta’s AI smart glasses and data privacy concerns

Havoc

Brought to you by the CEO that tapes the webcam on his laptop https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/22/mark-zuck...

sschueller

Of course, why wouldn't they? They do not work without a meta account. /s Is anyone at meta going to be bald accountable? An absolute privacy nightmare especially in places like Switzerland or Germany where recording people (subject focus) even in public is not permitted without consent but you have tourists now showing up everywhere wearing these. The LED is barely visible during the day and some have modified their glasses to disable/remove it.

unselect5917

"People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks." -Mark Zuckerberg, 2004

msy

You would have to have been hiding under an extremely large rock not to assume this given the technology involved and Meta's overtly and consistently anti-privacy stances and history.

xmx98

Of course! Glasses with cameras are a classic secret spy gadget :)

majestik

Is anyone here actually surprised Meta is recording and reviewing their content? Vote with your dollars people.

yogorenapan

The annoying thing is that even if you yourself don't use these glasses, as long as people around you do, you are still affected by it. We really need laws to limit always-on recording devices in places where we have an expectation of privacy.

aucisson_masque

Beside the privacy part, I fail to see what value these glasses bring that a smartphone with a camera can't do already ? And you're still forced to carry a smartphone anyway with these glasses since they require internet connection. Is this fashion, or something I'm not aware of ? They look horrendous to me.

MerrimanInd

I was in engineering school back in ~2012 when Google Glass came out. One of my classmates got hold of a pair when they were still quite uncommon and wore them to an extracurricular club meeting. Within minutes someone made a comment about him wearing the "creeper" glasses and asked if he was filming. He never wore them to the club again. I just don't see a world where that doesn't happen with Meta glasses.

webdevver

i mean theres kind of no way around it. how else are you gonna get the training data you need? the only way to bootstrap ai is to tag the data with bio-ai first (humans). different companies 'launder' it differently: with voice, it was done by "accidental" voice assistant activations. i guess with glasses, maybe there will be less window dressing this time. after all, it is clearly pitched to see what you see, at all times of the day. similar controversy happened with the various roomba products, although arguably that was a combination of data harvesting + lazy engineering.

blakesterz

Meta aims to introduce facial recognition to its smart glasses while its biggest critics are distracted, according to a report from The New York Times. In an internal document reviewed by The Times, Meta says it will launch the feature “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.” https://www.theverge.com/tech/878725/meta-facial-recognition...

bogzz

I am so far removed from the type of person who might consider buying something like that. You'd have to be exceptionally impervious to social cues to even think of wearing that in public. If you're blind, it's of course understandable but that's pretty much it in terms of cases in which I would consider the glasses acceptable to wear in public.

nothrowaways

The whole project is a Creepy privacy nightmare.

smbullet

Hopefully this causes Meta to be more transparent about what data is sent to their annotators. It seems like even the annotators didn't know whether the person explicitly hit recorded (whether accidentally or not) or if it's samples from a constant stream. This kind of makes it impossible for anyone to consent to the purchase agreements.

oldfuture

this should be known by everyone

GuinansEyebrows

“I saw a video where a man puts the glasses on the bedside table and leaves the room.” “Shortly afterwards his wife comes in and changes her clothes”, one of them says. based on this and other context in the article, it seems like there's a very realistic chance that Meta is in possession of and actively distributing (internally and to contractors) video content of minors. i wonder if any contractors have confirmed this or have been unwillingly (or worse) exposed to this.

diacritical

I'm against surveillance in general and I see many people being against these glasses, yet not caring at all about surveillance cameras. Flock in the USA is a bit of an outlier in that it got some people riled up, but where I live in Europe there are private cameras looking out of at least half of the buildings, maybe more. So if you're walking down the street for 15 minutes, you'd be caught by tens or hundreds of cameras from various manufacturers, installed by various business and homes. Who knows how many have microphones, which server they store their feed in, what security each cam has and so on. I asked 2 cops in a patrol car if I could install cameras on my own and how I should go about it. They said they don't mind them. Officially it's illegal unless you have a permit, but it's so widespread and the law is so unenforced that it's practically 99.99% legal. I can point a few cameras to the street and record everything 24/7. When I'm on a bus I'm being recorded by a few cameras. On most bus/tram/subway stops there are cameras. In stores and public buildings there are cameras. Most cars have cameras for insurance or general safety concerns. Self-driving cars would have to have cameras, as well as delivery robots. If we accept this shitty reality, why shouldn't I wear a camera and a mic, too?

lvl155

Only Meta and Zuck would continually introduce invasive products.

jbxntuehineoh

On an unrelated note, the FT reported today [1] that Israel was able to track Iranian leadership by hacking "nearly all" of the traffic cameras in Tehran. Anyways, I think we should continue to put as many networked cameras, microphones, and other sensors in as many products as possible. There are no downsides! [1] https://archive.is/QSCjf

pstoll

TLDR the recorded media isn’t end-to-end encrypted and they aren’t selling it but instead using it to train their own systems. What is new here?