“Experts in Europe warn that these devices are used to record strangers without their consent, possibly breaching EU law.”
“A small LED light is designed to indicate when recording is taking place, but RTBF’s investigators found that tutorials explaining how to conceal the indicator are abundant and easily accessible online.”
Sometimes I have a hard time deciding who I despise more, parasite Mark Zuckerberg or its witless hosts who keep using its products—yes, Zuck’s pronoun is it. Ban Ray-Ban, for frick’s sake.
I understand how creepy this is but why is this any different than the 1000s of cameras on poles literally everywhere these days. Neither of these should be acceptable
I am so lucky I have been to french quarter celebrations before smartphones. Some things are meant to be experienced and not documented.
I never understood why a well-known brand like RayBan would want to be associated with this.
They were bought by Luxotica years ago.
as literally almost all glasses brands
Yes exactly. Their question was parallel to asking why a company like gatorade (cocacola) would put hfcs and barely any vitamins in their sports drinks. Its a mega corp now and only cares about profit, not image.
Look, if someone is wearing these and not announcing it, i’m going to punch them. When people get their shit lit up over this, people will get the message.
We need to nationalize two-party consent for this
Doesn’t sound like the other person would consent, but if I were on your jury I’d say you were clearly defending yourself.
It’s the whole entire point of these glasses so this surely cannot be a surprise.
I’m just waiting for bans on these glasses now, because that is inevitably where this is headed as the public at large simply cannot be trusted to handle this kind of technology responsibly.
And the harder these glasses become to spot, the broader the bans will be, undoubtedly right up the point where they’ll just straight up refuse anybody with any kind of thick framed glasses.
The free app NearbyGlasses can detect their Bluetooth signal and tell you if someone is wearing them in range of your phone.
This could save you from being filmed by influencers, or creeps. Let the women in your life know.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.pocketpc.nearbyglasses
Ugh watch me install this then have it just be government owned spyware
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Ray-Ban Meta glasses detection app. : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.pocketpc.nearbyglasses
AI’s against AI’s. Apps against apps. I want to get off this planet at the next stop.
Stories like this are gonna get worse. These glasses naturally self-select for assholes.
Right? It’s a collab between Meta and Ray-Ban ffs, what kind of people did they think were going to be buying them?
Idk. Bans on recording someone in public without their consent, feel like a really difficult thing to properly enforce – with or without the glasses. The number of people doing it with Smartphones already, in most jurisdictions at least, would make such a law’s wide-spread enforcement seem implausible. And I mean, you’re in a public area, so you sorta need to expect less privacy… because it’s in public?
Ya at least you can tell if someone’s pointing a phone at you and recording you. Can’t do that so easily when its glasses though. I knew these things were gonna be trouble from the start.
Dumb ficks buying these and helping the ultra wealthy expand their surveillance network. Jfc
Most places have laws on this. Often, it is legal to film/take photos, but not to focus on individuals.
Also makes a difference if you publish those pictures or videos.
looks like governments are going to need more specific rules for smaller regions within cities. that would be a start, but ironically, it would probably drive more surveillance in public spaces.
I think you can ban using such recordings in social media posts and such. The line your have to watch for is news reporters vs social media influencers. But it would at least enable prosecution of the dumb ones who don’t even claim to be news reporters…
You dont see women being this creepy with new technology why cant men resist too?
Are you saying you think it’s never happened?
I don’t think that’s what they’re saying, just that men use it a lot more to be creepy. Have you seen women making videos with meta glasses? Or girls in school using deepfake tech to blackmail their classmates? Probably not.
Yeah I have never seen a WOMAN making creepy porn deepfakes of a man, have you?
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Oh it has! But stats dont lie, men are doing it WAY more
It almost entirely comes down to porn preferences. Women tend to prefer pornographic stories while men tend to prefer pornographic images and videos. There’s a reason “romance” novels are one of the absolute largest genres for books and that their demographic skews heavily towards women. I would not at all be surprised to find a certain number of women using LLMs to generate erotic stories possibly featuring acquaintances or celebrities in them. Same impulse, different medium.
Ban them.
Who would’ve known this would happen? Everyone. Meta knew people would use it for the bad and they still decided to go on with it because money.
Hope there will be a way to prevent being recorded, like some tech that disables it or something.
It’s a good thing they brought in “experts” to point this out.
like some tech that disables it or something.
The word you’re looking for is “hammer”.
Baseball bats have better range.
There are lights that work on some cameras. I’m not sure which (infrared, I think prolly others). Search the web. They exist. But how are you gonna have that at all times everywhere? Easier to set the Meta HQ on fire. And that’s prolly not easy.
But how are you gonna have that at all times everywhere?
Someone made a hoodie with IR LED lights all around the face. I bet one could also build it into a necklace or something, but you’d need some sort of battery in your pocket to power them.
The real problem with these is that they are only really effective at night. In daylight, the blinding effect of the LEDs is minimized.
There are lights that work on some cameras. […] Search the web. They exist.
Or look in real life :-)
They are small and you can see them only from some specific angle. And not quite bright.
I think they are referring to camera-blinding IR lights
Years ago I tried calling out the normalization of anybody recording anybody in public without their knowledge or consent, and nobody cared because I was a man so they thought I didn’t deserve privacy. Now the headlines frame it as a women’s issue and suddenly everyone cares.
It’s not a gendered thing. It’s a privacy issue. People didn’t care when I raised concerns about it, and I’m not surprised that it’s biting people on the ass.
I still think it’s wrong, I just don’t find it surprising given people’s reactions whenever I raised concerns about it.
Also, ray-ban was stupid for allowing this because obviously nobody is going to buy their shit anymore. They had a distinctive design that now nobody is going to trust…
I can tell you the vast majority of people don’t care AND Raybans gets their name in the media more often so it’s marketing for them.
They’ve made crap sunglasses for a while now. I went to another company for my Aviators.
there are open source android apps that tell you when a meta rayban is nearby (using the phone’s ability to scan nearby bluetooth devices) which isn’t really good enough but it’s something i guess
https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses
if you’re a woman and the creep is a man, there’s always the option of pepper spray i guess, though then you will have to justify yourself somehow. i don’t think predominantly male chud cops will accept the reasoning of “i feel unsafe” from women, even if it’s true and valid.
as for impractical ideas, you can always carry around a 5W laser pointer and then try and fry the camera. of course does not work irl.
I’ve always thought an EMP bomb would do some good. Snap worker bees out of their unhealthy relationship with working, disable vehicles, make people fulfil their needs physically
I figured that would kill pacemakers, but it might not. it’ll definitely kill electric wheelchairs and insulin fridges though.
kill everyone with a pacemaker, disable emergency systems, create traffic chaos
Everything is surveillance nowadays. No one should be surprised by this. They should be aware that it is happening because this is normal for the current fucked-up world that we inhabit.
There was a similar news article in Germany a few days ago. It was about a “pick-up artist/dating coach/influencer” named Erick Ronaldo secretly filming some girl at the Oktoberfest and posting it to his channel where that girl was ridiculed in the comments. (Fun fact: when the news media approached that guy and asked for a statement, he demanded $7,500 for an interview - which they, of course, didn’t pay)
he demanded $7,500 for an interview
Is he going to ask the police to pay him for interrogation?
heimliches Filmen ist aktuell in Deutschland nicht per se strafbar. Besonders in öffentlichen Räumen sind Betroffene kaum geschützt.
(Roughly in English)
covert filming isn’t currently illegal in Germany per se. Those filmed are rarely protected, especially in public
Filming in public not being illegal, I get, but he’s profiting off of her likeness. Ideally that would be illegal itself, but even if not, could she not sue him for a share? Obviously, putting the burden on victims is not a great remedy, especially because it’s expensive, a huge hassle, and risks the Streisand effect, but I could see a women’s rights organization orchestrating it for her and it might be possible to keep her identity secret.
Again, I don’t think that’s ideal, but it seems better than nothing and wouldn’t preclude criminal charges from going through if the government does figure out how to prosecute this
Filming by itself isn’t illegal in Germany, but publishing the footage without consent of everyone in the video is. (“Recht am eigenen Bild”) Don’t know how this applies if the perpetrator is from the USA and publishes the recording there, though.
And even if - good luck in suing someone from the US while you’re still in Germany.
You could at least get it taken down from YouTube through German privacy rights, since it was filmed in Germany.
I think that could fall under “Recht am eigenen Bild” (right to your own picture). It gives you the right to decide how images of you are used. If he profits off of photos/videos of her, she should have the right to sue him. It might also be illegal to publish the videos under GDPR law, especially in combination with more personal information like first name or city.
However, big festivals like the Oktoberfest often have a disclaimer that you agree to being filmed and your picture being published due to TV, press etc. being there. I don’t know how that would work.
Another privacy epidemic unfolding, only waiting when it auto link people you see om the streets to their social media profiles
Didnt that already get done to demonstrate the complete lack of privacy caused by this?
Checking…
Yeah this was what I was thinking of: https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/rsac-meta-smart-glasses-facial-recognition-hacked-live-demo-2026/
