The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media’s coverage of how people are using Meta’s Ray-Bans smartglasses to film people without their knowledge or consent. “I consider it to be a tiny part of resistance against surveillance tech.”
more at: @feed@404media.co
You know what sucks?
In that AR glasses, in theory, are such an interesting technology with lots of potential, and certainly a piece of tech I would love to have and work with and on. Not to secretly record people, but to, well… augment my field of view with whatever digital tools or displays I would like. It would be so useful
It’s honestly kinda saddening to me that it most likely will get completely ruined by our current toxic relationship to technology. A step towards our ever increasing cyberdystopia, and not towards enchanting our limited lives
Obviously either way I don’t trust Meta, but an open-hardware device running a FOSS AR system? It would be nice…
I still hold out hope that this somehow could be resolved, and I would love to contribute to open software for these devices. Maybe one day soon-ish I will. My expertise should be well applicable, after all
Drop the cameras and microphones and replace them with a couple accelerometers and gyros. Paired with your phone’s GPS tracking, the glasses can tell where you’re looking without actually seeing anything. You can get handy features like a floating ‘turn here’ sign over your exit while driving with GPS navigation without recording anyone or anything at any time. Better battery life, too.
Tbh I don’t even mind cameras that much if they were entirely controlled by the individuals themselves. I have a much bigger issue with it when you’re streaming my facial recognition data to Evil Megacorp 2™ servers that also feed directly to the “Not Spying… Again” agency, though.
Wasnt there a ton of outrage and such incl people not being allowed on planes, back when google glass was released?
Why is it all OK now?
Years of privacy violations going deeper and deeper under pretend of “progress” and “pRoTeCt the cHiLdReN”. I am glad that people started rebelling against Flock, and some removed their Amazon cameras following the Superbowl’s ads, but that’s not even close to how much we should be mad at these mass surveillance actors.
Same reason our governments suck ass. Something unpopular tries to get passed again, and again, and again, and again, and eventually people get desensitized and worn out from trying to fight against it. That or it hits on the right time when people are distracted by something else bigger or more important.
I remember Google Glass itself receiving a ton of outrage actually: People hated it and anyone wearing one was made fun of (“glassholes” was a popular insult at the time).
Many years of indoctrination. When Google glass was introduced, it was just ‘a neat idea’. Now it’s a product, and therefore it’s clearly more trustworthy because someone is profiting from it. (/s)
Paywalled article. Here’s the link to the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.pocketpc.nearbyglasses
Edit: it’s licensed under a license I never heard of. I’m curious, I don’t understand why it was needed.
“Why draft new licenses? Until now, there has been no standardization of this kind of source code license, even though it has become increasingly common. This has resulted in confusing and overlapping licenses, which need to be analyzed one at a time. Lack of standardization has used up the time and resources of many in the software industry, as well as their lawyers. The objective of the PolyForm Project is standardization and reduction of costs for developers and users.”
Seems like that exact XKCD about standards.
That license looks like Creative Commons Non-Comercial, which is not an open source license.
This is an unpopular opinion, but using licenses to actively prevent commercial exploitation of voluntary communal labor is not a bad thing. I would even argue that allowing commercial exploitation of free, communally-maintained software is downright unethical. I don’t tolerate this pejorative “it’s not open source unless the rich and powerful can exploit it” bullshit.
If you dont want corpos to exploit it, you go with GPL. Then they are forced to share back.
Shit, I have meta glasses for listening to music and occasionally recording my kid doing something silly.
Now people are going to look at me funny.
Nothing personal, but those glasses are going to come off your face and straight onto the asphalt when I get the notification.
Don’t buy meta shit.
Have both your hands while recording is different.
This edit as a response is just unreasonably funny. Hands free and everything, perfection.
Can I set mine to loudly blare, “pedophile detected!”?
Can we not call everyone we don’t like pedophiles? It lowers the impact of the word when it’s used against an actual pedo. It also makes it harder to reason with those people because they just think of you as name callers.
Sorry bro, I’m still calling you that if you are wearing these glasses.
It’s not a stretch
https://evrimagaci.org/gpt/bbc-breakfast-exposes-secret-smart-glasses-filming-scandal-523718
I don’t think highly of people that choose to partner with these companies to sacrifice both their own privacy and that of those around them.
You call them what you want to call them, but I think the negative stigma here is good.
It’s a huge stretch. Most of the people buying these glasses are just interested in technology, see this cool new thing, and are ignorant to privacy because they already use social media and whatnot. Creeps use phones to take underskirt pictures of girls too, so are you going to go around calling every phone owner a creep? People like you who see ignorant “normies” as malicious enemies are what’s wrong with the privacy community. Like I said earlier, we should educate, not name call.
‘people like you’ don’t give consumers enough credit. They aren’t ignorant to the privacy concerns. That’s nonsense. They just don’t care about them. People buying these glasses take it a step further though by disrespecting the privacy of others. For that, I will ostracize them and their apologists.
Also what so “cool” exactly to you about strapping an ip camera to your face?I’m not going to argue with you anymore. Let’s agree to disagree 👍
Technically one of us is supposed to call the other a cunt at this point, but will accept your breach of protocol.
Wouldn’t your phone screaming “pedophile detected!” make it seem like its referring to you ?
Admittedly, this is cyberpunk as fuck.
Should not be needed… but it’s a fucking cool solution.
