There is no such ban at DEF CON. They only ban smart glasses etc. «that can record audio or video with no consistent way to understand if they're recording or not».
Meta smart glasses in particular are known for their LED.
So DEF CON has restrictions for photography, but as long as you do not hide your smart glasses' activity LED, you can just walk around and record everything as audio and video?
«Smart glasses and other devices that can record audio or video with no consistent way to understand if they're recording or not, are prohibited at DEF CON, they erode trust and invade people's privacy.»
(Last paragraph. The other paragraphs refer to photography.)
It's a great display of the character of the person. You can learn a lot about their disregard for others. Its been my experience that there's a huge concentration among narcissit midwits with insecurity issues that enjoy these products. Watching their eyes change focus and the unnatural pauses they make is also personally hilarious to me...its like talking to someone that's reading through an article or typing at the same time as talking to you. Gross.
A few years ago a device with similar capabilities would have been the coolest gadget ever; Zuckerberg truly has the remarkable ability to turn to shit anything he touches.
Google Glass was loathed too. Unfortunately Zuckerberg learned the wrong lesson from its failure - that the issue was that people could recognize the glasses and know they were being recorded and not the actual recording itself.
I'm guessing if 'surveillance camera' meant people they don't know, obviously recording their every motion from close by...they may have a different response.
Google Glass came out in 2013 and got a similar reception.
Google's device also suffered from making the user look ridiculous, like a gargoyle out of Snow Crash, but at the end of the day most people had the same core issue with it as they have with the Meta glasses which is that people don't like the idea of being filmed in public, especially when the filming is somewhat surreptitious (since you don't have to hold bulky camera gear, or at least a phone-sized device to do it)
Of course you have the legal right to film people in public spaces in many jurisdictions, but you're likely to be socially ostracized for it (and IMO rightfully so).
> people don't like the idea of being filmed in public,
I don't think that this can be the main issue, given how nobody really cares about security cameras in public spaces or all the cameras modern cars can come with, nevermind dash cams.
People absolutely do care about security cameras, as demonstrated by ongoing opposition to Flock cameras. Security cameras have been widely deployed at a time when they weren't interconnected and people had to physically obtain tapes to look at the footage. The cost of engaging in stalking or mass-surveillance has lowered dramatically since, and people are strongly opposed to these technologies once they realize what the current capabilities are. The public never consented to any of this, but those responsible are maliciously framing the past lack of awareness as consent.
I think it has to do with how closely people think they are being recorded.
Someone filming/shooting in a park with a kit 18-55mm lens is fine. Swap that with a bulky 300mm or more and you are bound to get some questions asked.
A content creator casually shooting content in a mall is fine but if you start interviewing people, aiming your camera directly at them, it's at least common courtesy if not legal requirement to ask for permission.
Personally speaking, I wouldn't mind someone wearing these creeper specs in public but if they talk to me or if we eat at the same table, I would expect the courtesy of them putting the glasses away.
I would love a pair of ordinary looking glasses that work just as displays. I go for long walks (for health reasons) and it would be really good to watch youtube videos or shows that gets projected in front of my face, but still keep overall vision outside.
I definetely don't want a camera in there.
Not sure if such a beast exists. But due to Meta/Google screwing up with cameras, I may never get my display glasses.
XREAL, RayNeo and there is at least one more brand that exists. You could use those for that already - though they're probably not perfect yet for that specific use case.
But they will come and will get better. Apple is also supposedly still working on some and they'll likely try to get rid of the "camera issue". Or maybe they'll try to make it the new normal. But they already exist and there will be more of them in the future - with and without cameras.
I love my Xreals. They don't even have a camera for tracking as they're the first generation.
Unfortunately due to meta's perv glasses they are getting a bad name too, it happens when I'm using them that people think I'm recording them. They are more bulky and clearly tech glasses, and many people understandably don't know the difference. They're more noticeable than meta's glasses.
I had that last time on the plane. It's really annoying because they have no camera nor microphone. They're great displays and can even do 3D. But meta is ruining that for us now too.
And also two of them are in the same spot as Meta's so it will be really hard for a layman to distinguish them.
Personally I don't really like the tracking because it means I have to point my face in a very specific spot to see the whole screen. Or I have to make it smaller and lose resolution. I like the way it stays locked to my vision with the cheaper ones, and the price of 200 euro makes it great to just carry around without worring too much (even though that's still a lot of money for me). I wouldn't pay 600-800 for something like this.
But they look less stupid than Google Glass did and even if they didn't look stupid, people would still consider them "pervert glasses".
In fact, I think the more indistinguishable these types of devices get from regular glasses the more people will be upset by their existence. The less immediately obvious they are, the more you seem like a creepy pervert for using them when the core problem is people don't want you filming them without their knowledge or consent.
> I think the more indistinguishable these types of devices get from regular glasses the more people will be upset by their existence.
My fear is that these spy glasses will actually become indistinguishable from corrective glasses. I don't look forward to a future where everyone wearing any sort of glasses will be immediately suspect.
I had a guy filming my kid recently while playing, I had to confront them an get them to delete the photos off their phone and recently deleted. It's going to suck when you don't even know if they were recording the kids.
I am fairly certain the goal of putting cameras on glasses is to poison the well for the rest of wearable computing while also testing the limits of user acceptance.
They don't care if it succeeds. They just don't want to lose.
Exactly! I'm noticing this already as an Xreal user. They're great for travelling, you have an amazingly huge screen and together with Samsung DeX and a foldable keyboard you basically have a whole Desktop pc with you. A year ago I used them happily but now after all of the bad press meta has caused I get more suspicion. I show people that they don't feature cameras but just displays and it's ok. But they don't see the difference from the outset which makes total sense, not many people know xreal or other bird bath glasses.
But the newer ones use cameras for 6DoF tracking too so they're even more likely to be viewed as perv glasses. I hope they keep making ones without, I never use the tracking anyway.
It's so weird to me how people don't like these kind of glasses. They are basically a dash cam for your entire life. Seems like a pretty valuable thing to have.
The only thing I object to is the facebook association.
I don't think anyone's saying that wearing such glasses isn't useful or valuable. The problem is when they're used to include unconsenting others in the data collection. It's massively antisocial.
And it makes a bad situation even worse. It's already very difficult to avoid surveillance systems. I am cautious about what routes I take and where I go in order to minimize my exposure to these systems. If these spy glasses actually approach being common, then it just further reduces where I can safely go in public. At some point, going out in public at all will become infeasible.
> They are basically a dash cam for your entire life.
Most people don't want this. Dash cams are for safety and legal liability in a very specific and dangerous domain. These "smart" glasses are for wealth signaling and surreptitiously invading others' privacy. Try walking around with your phone camera recording everywhere you go amd see what kind of response you get from people. Meta's device just obscures the fact that that's what the wearer is doing.
That's really not a good comparison. When you screenshare, even when you forget, you are the one who initiated the action. You also have the power to stop it when you realize it. Neither is the case with these glasses.
If everyone did it, welcome to 1984 beyond Orwell's wildest imagination, where the Flock cameras have legs and look human. Who needs an elaborate entrapment operation when you can observe up close how someone twitches upon mention of Dear Leader's name?
You are thinking of a very shallow America's Funniest Home Videos scenario without considering that there is a lot of daily-life scenarios that rely on the assumption that you are not being filmed by some rando.
- In a lot of places where there is still stigma on various health issues, this kind of implicit privacy could be the difference between people seeking help or not.
- We give off a lot of small but probably "confidential" signals just because we can reasonably assume we are not being recorded. From simple allusions during casual conversation to maybe a quick still frame of someone's notes. What would've been an innocuous statement could become NDA violations when recorded at the fidelity usually reserved for deposition hearings.
- And speaking of innocuous, as anyone who's spent any length of time in the internet would know, it's so easy to take thirty seconds of a two-hour conversation out of context. Now you are giving everyone an eat-all-you-can buffet of your life to take out of context. Company valuations have been decided from less.
All in all, these perv glasses would make society more guarded and less open, and that in an age when people already have a hard time forming relationships.
> You are thinking of a very shallow America's Funniest Home Videos scenario without considering that there is a lot of daily-life scenarios that rely on the assumption that you are not being filmed by some ran
Most of those were staged anyway. Just like all the skits on tiktok and Instagram are staged.
It's not like these are real life situations. You might as well record them with a big movie camera.
People are already always recording, just with their eyes and minds. Now, that is different of course, they can only transmit and transcribe these recordings inexactly, in a limited manner, semantically compressed. But that has its own pitfalls and it does already exist.
Doing all of those things you mention is entirely optional. And so what I'm proposing is if everyone had this leverage, culture would adjust accordingly, and not abusing this would become respectable first, then an expected common courtesy later.
It's not unlike how honor systems are abusable, and their entire point is that they aren't abused despite that.
There's also the side to this where I do believe that people would reevaluate what things are benign.
Regarding the inevitable Orwell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance - one could reasonably argue in light of this is that being able to record what happens to oneself should be an inalienable human right rather. If someone is abused, they should not need the consent of their abuser to gain evidence of that.
This doesn't wash the Meta glasses however, exactly because of what the top parent comment explains as well, that its data sharing isn't actually user governed. This is prohibitive of people progressing through the aforementioned social adaptation to it, as people viscerally know by this point that these devices cannot be trusted that way (and they are correct). The rest follows.
There are other weird things. If these become widespread, meta will know and be able to sell (or turn over to the government) a list of everyone you spend time talking to in public and private. Cell phone companies only have low-resolution location information. Meta will know that you talked to Sarah for 288 seconds before handing her an envelope before she went to an abortion clinic.
It is cool to be one using them. It is infinitely less cool to be one receiving it. Possibly everywhere consistently... Up your face possibly. Or your family members face...
There is no such ban at DEF CON. They only ban smart glasses etc. «that can record audio or video with no consistent way to understand if they're recording or not».
Meta smart glasses in particular are known for their LED.
So DEF CON has restrictions for photography, but as long as you do not hide your smart glasses' activity LED, you can just walk around and record everything as audio and video?
Full text at https://defcon.org/html/links/dc-photo-policy.html:
«Smart glasses and other devices that can record audio or video with no consistent way to understand if they're recording or not, are prohibited at DEF CON, they erode trust and invade people's privacy.»
(Last paragraph. The other paragraphs refer to photography.)
> Meta smart glasses in particular are known for their LED.
The LED is neither obvious enough nor reliable enough and by the time you see it, you've already been recorded.
I like how this policy document incorrectly uses commas.
It’s so weird being in a conversation with someone who is video recording the whole thing.
It's a great display of the character of the person. You can learn a lot about their disregard for others. Its been my experience that there's a huge concentration among narcissit midwits with insecurity issues that enjoy these products. Watching their eyes change focus and the unnatural pauses they make is also personally hilarious to me...its like talking to someone that's reading through an article or typing at the same time as talking to you. Gross.
It's not a conversation at that point, it's a performance. I walk away.
What will they do when attendees have comparable brain-chip capabilities?
If they take it to Defcon, they're fair game. Putting your melon on the line in a building full of hackers feels foolhardy.
Ban them. Assuming that people installed such brain chip voluntarily I do not see an issue.
A few years ago a device with similar capabilities would have been the coolest gadget ever; Zuckerberg truly has the remarkable ability to turn to shit anything he touches.
Google Glass was loathed too. Unfortunately Zuckerberg learned the wrong lesson from its failure - that the issue was that people could recognize the glasses and know they were being recorded and not the actual recording itself.
If only people reacted to surveillance cameras the same way.
I'm guessing if 'surveillance camera' meant people they don't know, obviously recording their every motion from close by...they may have a different response.
It almost seems like personal Paparazzi.
> A few years ago a device with similar capabilities would have been the coolest gadget ever
Not at DEF CON, no.
It absolutely would not have received a positive reception at an event like DEF CON. They’ve always had a strict photo policy.
I think AR glasses are loathed.
But the camera takes this to extreme anti-social levels.
I don’t think so, google glass set the precedent
Google Glass came out in 2013 and got a similar reception.
Google's device also suffered from making the user look ridiculous, like a gargoyle out of Snow Crash, but at the end of the day most people had the same core issue with it as they have with the Meta glasses which is that people don't like the idea of being filmed in public, especially when the filming is somewhat surreptitious (since you don't have to hold bulky camera gear, or at least a phone-sized device to do it)
Of course you have the legal right to film people in public spaces in many jurisdictions, but you're likely to be socially ostracized for it (and IMO rightfully so).
> people don't like the idea of being filmed in public,
I don't think that this can be the main issue, given how nobody really cares about security cameras in public spaces or all the cameras modern cars can come with, nevermind dash cams.
People absolutely do care about security cameras, as demonstrated by ongoing opposition to Flock cameras. Security cameras have been widely deployed at a time when they weren't interconnected and people had to physically obtain tapes to look at the footage. The cost of engaging in stalking or mass-surveillance has lowered dramatically since, and people are strongly opposed to these technologies once they realize what the current capabilities are. The public never consented to any of this, but those responsible are maliciously framing the past lack of awareness as consent.
I think it has to do with how closely people think they are being recorded.
Someone filming/shooting in a park with a kit 18-55mm lens is fine. Swap that with a bulky 300mm or more and you are bound to get some questions asked.
A content creator casually shooting content in a mall is fine but if you start interviewing people, aiming your camera directly at them, it's at least common courtesy if not legal requirement to ask for permission.
Personally speaking, I wouldn't mind someone wearing these creeper specs in public but if they talk to me or if we eat at the same table, I would expect the courtesy of them putting the glasses away.
> nobody really cares about security cameras in public spaces or all the cameras modern cars can come with, nevermind dash cams.
Oh, people care. They just feel helpless about it all.
They like to be ignorant of being filmed. I don't mean that as an insult. "Ignorance is bliss"
I would love a pair of ordinary looking glasses that work just as displays. I go for long walks (for health reasons) and it would be really good to watch youtube videos or shows that gets projected in front of my face, but still keep overall vision outside.
I definetely don't want a camera in there.
Not sure if such a beast exists. But due to Meta/Google screwing up with cameras, I may never get my display glasses.
XREAL, RayNeo and there is at least one more brand that exists. You could use those for that already - though they're probably not perfect yet for that specific use case.
But they will come and will get better. Apple is also supposedly still working on some and they'll likely try to get rid of the "camera issue". Or maybe they'll try to make it the new normal. But they already exist and there will be more of them in the future - with and without cameras.
I love my Xreals. They don't even have a camera for tracking as they're the first generation.
Unfortunately due to meta's perv glasses they are getting a bad name too, it happens when I'm using them that people think I'm recording them. They are more bulky and clearly tech glasses, and many people understandably don't know the difference. They're more noticeable than meta's glasses.
I had that last time on the plane. It's really annoying because they have no camera nor microphone. They're great displays and can even do 3D. But meta is ruining that for us now too.
I think they're all still without a camera. It's just an optional, detachable add-on for, e.g. the 1S. (Which is nice.)
But yes, they are bulky.
Well yes the ones they actually sell right now, yes
But they announced the Aura which has 3 cams no less: https://www.xreal.com/es-en/aura
And also two of them are in the same spot as Meta's so it will be really hard for a layman to distinguish them.
Personally I don't really like the tracking because it means I have to point my face in a very specific spot to see the whole screen. Or I have to make it smaller and lose resolution. I like the way it stays locked to my vision with the cheaper ones, and the price of 200 euro makes it great to just carry around without worring too much (even though that's still a lot of money for me). I wouldn't pay 600-800 for something like this.
The meta glasses look fucking stupid too. Like a pair of ray bans with water retention issues.
Yeah, I agree.
But they look less stupid than Google Glass did and even if they didn't look stupid, people would still consider them "pervert glasses".
In fact, I think the more indistinguishable these types of devices get from regular glasses the more people will be upset by their existence. The less immediately obvious they are, the more you seem like a creepy pervert for using them when the core problem is people don't want you filming them without their knowledge or consent.
> I think the more indistinguishable these types of devices get from regular glasses the more people will be upset by their existence.
My fear is that these spy glasses will actually become indistinguishable from corrective glasses. I don't look forward to a future where everyone wearing any sort of glasses will be immediately suspect.
And not having a distinguishable Bluetooth device ID to detect when one is near. [1] not tested as I do not know anyone with pervert glasses
[1] - https://github.com/alexh-scrt/glasses-radar
That could/should be required by law. As well as advertising the recording status. Then we can have app or OS level feature to avoid these things.
Well, not any sort. We'll just have to stick to wireframe glasses.
I had a guy filming my kid recently while playing, I had to confront them an get them to delete the photos off their phone and recently deleted. It's going to suck when you don't even know if they were recording the kids.
I am fairly certain the goal of putting cameras on glasses is to poison the well for the rest of wearable computing while also testing the limits of user acceptance.
They don't care if it succeeds. They just don't want to lose.
Exactly! I'm noticing this already as an Xreal user. They're great for travelling, you have an amazingly huge screen and together with Samsung DeX and a foldable keyboard you basically have a whole Desktop pc with you. A year ago I used them happily but now after all of the bad press meta has caused I get more suspicion. I show people that they don't feature cameras but just displays and it's ok. But they don't see the difference from the outset which makes total sense, not many people know xreal or other bird bath glasses.
But the newer ones use cameras for 6DoF tracking too so they're even more likely to be viewed as perv glasses. I hope they keep making ones without, I never use the tracking anyway.
It's so weird to me how people don't like these kind of glasses. They are basically a dash cam for your entire life. Seems like a pretty valuable thing to have.
The only thing I object to is the facebook association.
I don't think anyone's saying that wearing such glasses isn't useful or valuable. The problem is when they're used to include unconsenting others in the data collection. It's massively antisocial.
And it makes a bad situation even worse. It's already very difficult to avoid surveillance systems. I am cautious about what routes I take and where I go in order to minimize my exposure to these systems. If these spy glasses actually approach being common, then it just further reduces where I can safely go in public. At some point, going out in public at all will become infeasible.
> They are basically a dash cam for your entire life.
Most people don't want this. Dash cams are for safety and legal liability in a very specific and dangerous domain. These "smart" glasses are for wealth signaling and surreptitiously invading others' privacy. Try walking around with your phone camera recording everywhere you go amd see what kind of response you get from people. Meta's device just obscures the fact that that's what the wearer is doing.
It's weird to me that you find that weird. People in general don't like worrying that every little conversation is being recorded.
Wouldn't that change if "everyone" did it?
That "hilarious" and embarrassing misspeak or fall becomes a lot less so when it's a dime a dozen.
It's weird because it is (right now), not because it's some fundamentally weird thing ordained that way forever during the big bang or whatever.
Like, people don't like being watched when working, yet they'll sometimes outright forget they're screensharing. I know I do at least.
That's really not a good comparison. When you screenshare, even when you forget, you are the one who initiated the action. You also have the power to stop it when you realize it. Neither is the case with these glasses.
If everyone did it, welcome to 1984 beyond Orwell's wildest imagination, where the Flock cameras have legs and look human. Who needs an elaborate entrapment operation when you can observe up close how someone twitches upon mention of Dear Leader's name?
You are thinking of a very shallow America's Funniest Home Videos scenario without considering that there is a lot of daily-life scenarios that rely on the assumption that you are not being filmed by some rando.
- In a lot of places where there is still stigma on various health issues, this kind of implicit privacy could be the difference between people seeking help or not.
- We give off a lot of small but probably "confidential" signals just because we can reasonably assume we are not being recorded. From simple allusions during casual conversation to maybe a quick still frame of someone's notes. What would've been an innocuous statement could become NDA violations when recorded at the fidelity usually reserved for deposition hearings.
- And speaking of innocuous, as anyone who's spent any length of time in the internet would know, it's so easy to take thirty seconds of a two-hour conversation out of context. Now you are giving everyone an eat-all-you-can buffet of your life to take out of context. Company valuations have been decided from less.
All in all, these perv glasses would make society more guarded and less open, and that in an age when people already have a hard time forming relationships.
> You are thinking of a very shallow America's Funniest Home Videos scenario without considering that there is a lot of daily-life scenarios that rely on the assumption that you are not being filmed by some ran
Most of those were staged anyway. Just like all the skits on tiktok and Instagram are staged.
It's not like these are real life situations. You might as well record them with a big movie camera.
People are already always recording, just with their eyes and minds. Now, that is different of course, they can only transmit and transcribe these recordings inexactly, in a limited manner, semantically compressed. But that has its own pitfalls and it does already exist.
Doing all of those things you mention is entirely optional. And so what I'm proposing is if everyone had this leverage, culture would adjust accordingly, and not abusing this would become respectable first, then an expected common courtesy later.
It's not unlike how honor systems are abusable, and their entire point is that they aren't abused despite that.
There's also the side to this where I do believe that people would reevaluate what things are benign.
Regarding the inevitable Orwell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance - one could reasonably argue in light of this is that being able to record what happens to oneself should be an inalienable human right rather. If someone is abused, they should not need the consent of their abuser to gain evidence of that.
This doesn't wash the Meta glasses however, exactly because of what the top parent comment explains as well, that its data sharing isn't actually user governed. This is prohibitive of people progressing through the aforementioned social adaptation to it, as people viscerally know by this point that these devices cannot be trusted that way (and they are correct). The rest follows.
> Wouldn't that change if "everyone" did it?
No. It would just make the situation totally intolerable.
There's a novel that deals with this. I think it's called the light of other days by Arthur c. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
Thanks for the recommendation, seems a hell of a lot more interesting than a quadrillionth appeal to Orwell.
"The only thing I object to is the facebook association."
!!!Exactly!!!
If Apple comes up with smart glasses then user privacy will be job one. For meta it's all about collecting data to sell ads. Period.
Eh remember when the vision pro came out and some idiots just had to wear them out on the street and in coffee shops? That was definitely not popular.
The weird thing is not recording but secret recording.
There are other weird things. If these become widespread, meta will know and be able to sell (or turn over to the government) a list of everyone you spend time talking to in public and private. Cell phone companies only have low-resolution location information. Meta will know that you talked to Sarah for 288 seconds before handing her an envelope before she went to an abortion clinic.
OK pervert
It is cool to be one using them. It is infinitely less cool to be one receiving it. Possibly everywhere consistently... Up your face possibly. Or your family members face...