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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> The internal memo from Meta’s Reality Labs notes that the current situation in the U.S was good timing for the feature’s release.
> “We will launch 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,” says the document.
There's a mad dash right now. Everyone is sprinting as fast as possible to invent and propagate the worst technology possible. Oh, you thought smart phones ruined society? Well good news, smart glasses are finally viable. You just won't believe what they'll come up with next, and everyone will buy it, and everyone will be worse off.
Why are we even allowing this in Europe? These smart glasses are just plain data collection and surveillance in plain sight. When does the nightmare stop?