Interesting idea. It seems to me that most things which would need to be protected from hidden cameras would be stationary and not require the operator to mount the detectors on his body, but starting with mobile constraints is often helpful.
I would like to draw attention to this gem of wit, easily the best I've seen in a long time:
> I think the idea behind this approach is sound (actually it's light)
It's me. I want to be protected from hidden cameras from other peoples glasses.
Project Codename: Allen Funt
Project Description: Glasses that have a speaker and appropriately say “You’re on Candid Camera!” when it detects others being recorded.
... by using your own glasses with a hidden camera? Sounds like a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun.
”I would feel pretty silly if my solution uses its own camera. So I'll be avoiding that.”
From the GitHub link.
Yeah but that approach using "sweeps" doesn't seem to be working. It's possible it actually requires a camera to do it reliably well.
I’ve heard of approaches using pulsed IR along with a Mk.1 Human Eyeball to detect the incident reflections, sometimes with the assistance of a filter. Glasses seem like a good form factor for that kind of thing.
Of course, the detecting person’s anti-camera glasses may well light up on the surveiller’s recording, too…
The solution to this (smart glass privacy debate) is Apple releasing smart glasses that automatically anonymize anyone in your photos/videos who isn’t a friend or family member with you at the time (it could be done automatically as Apple knows your friends/family members' faces already). All else appear as random faces, completely removed, a blurred out crowd to whatever privacy config options they offer and you choose.
Not a creep here and use my Meta glasses to record my normal non-creepy life and life experiences. They are really convenient and useful (just suck cause they break easily either from software updates to water splashes)!
This isn't a solution, they would still have the data. Companies can't be trusted, they'll do what is more convenient for them, we need to remove the problem at the root by not allowing people to take pictures/videos if not permitted.
Indeed, this solution is in some way even worse.
It teaches people to trust "Currently NonEvil Company™" to do the good thing.
First, and obvious problem is that this "trains" us to rely on brands to protect us. And to keep doing this. Companies may have different interests than their consumers. Ideally and sometimes these interests are aligned. But nothing guarantees this remains so. Companies will "Become evil", if only because they are sometimes legally forced to by governments or shareholders.
Second, is that this teaches people not to be responsible but to leave that to companies or technology. Which works if e.g. Apple and Meta are the only providers. But falls apart the moment Focebook glasses, Apelle Gear or Rang Doorbell is available on temu. And becomes worse when HP, Dell, Samsung, IBM and other legitimate producers start competing in the space. We've now been trained that what the first companies did was "The Good Thing", but lack the social structure, laws, or even common sense to manage a world in which this self-constraint of the companies no longer applies.
Apple is the privacy company already .. that's their brand and a brand that the public trusts.
Overall why are we not up in arms about all the video cameras that record in all cities everyday which companies like Clearview and others have our public images in their databases yet we are up in arms about smart glasses?
THis is a solution to this public debate and Apple hasnt released their glasses yet and they are a privacy company and heavily market themselves as such. As the poster notes smart glasses adoption is rising and will only continue to do so... so this debate in time will continue to fade into the background as there is no same amount of debate about all the cameras in cities that are already recording us. With that in mind the smart glass privacy debate is an odd one to me where corporations are already recording us in these same public places.
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> Apple is the privacy company already .. that's their brand and a brand that the public trusts.
...for now. What happens if they end up with a future CEO who is more like Zuck?
lol overall this argument is silly the genie is out the bottle and in five to ten years smart glasses are the norm. All you laggards will be wearing them too and or many close to you will be wearing them. Go ahead and downvote me but in five to ten years you know i am right ;)
Reminds me of my 24 year old niece in which her and her friends hate chatGPT/AI. Hippies fighting technological progress futilely. Like the iPhone haters of 2007 to 2010!
As noted Apple already knows your friends' and familys' faces... why are people not up in arms about this fact already? It's been close to a decade or more they have done this.
Also the debate is around a lot of people not wanting to be recorded without permission in public via glasses (yet they are complacent about all the video cameras recording us now.. i dont get it) so with Apple marketing smart glasses with a solution to this debate and millions buying their smart privacy glasses the market forces all others to follow suit (offer smart privacy glass features too).
I've struggled with this in many public spaces even without having a camera on my glasses. Should I feel guilty that some kids are incidentally in my photos when my kids are on the playground when I take a photo of them? Should I never take photos in public because other unwilling people might be included unless I've explicitly asked them?
Going by data, most likely a path with prior success.
I want to be able to use glasses with a camera, in situations which warrant it, to prevent people from gaslighting me or others about our conversations. Something like you see in dashcams, where it's always recording to a circular buffer of a few seconds to a minute, and then one can then enable "full" recording which dumps the buffer to storage and then starts saving everything until disabled.
I also live in a US state that only requires one-party consent to record a conversation, meaning it is fully legal in my state to record any conversation I am a participant in, regardless of the consent of the other participants.
How should this be reconciled?
Same way as the police body cameras do it: disclose what you’re doing. Which really is all OP is asking of the Ray-Ban spy cam wearers, too. A blinking red light is the conventional method.
In the police’s case, there’s rarely a choice, but at least you’re reminded you’re speaking For The Record instead of with a person. In your case, that way I know not to talk to you.
I wonder why stealth is so foundational to these devices’ success…
Other people don’t have to agree to be around you if you insist on using a camera all the time. I wouldn’t.
I think your ‘freedom’ infringes on other people's ‘rights’. I think rights should trumps freedoms, that is, your liberty ends where someone else's right to privacy begins.
Sounds dystopian to me, I'd want to reconcile it by not allowing "one-party consent" for people to record me.
Not sure if the state laws you're referencing are in reality limited to phone calls, but I strongly dislike unregulated public camera use.
Your vision (no pun intended) is the story of the Black Mirror episode "The entire history of you", IMO from the show's golden age.
edit; I know that surveillance cameras pass this line already, but here they have to be announced with signs. And even when they aren't, to me state or police surveillance is different from potentially everyone stealthily recording me in private or public spaces.
It's possible the state laws in question (Tennessee) only apply to audio recordings, which would suit my desire. I also don't believe that the idea of a rolling buffer that normally discards its contents to be morally against the idea of notification of recording, or of seeking someone's consent.
I'd be fine with glasses that only record audio in such a way, that illuminate an LED once the "record" button has been pressed. If audio is being recorded into a buffer at all times, but then discarded unless triggered to start "recording", then maybe that should not count as "recording" under the law.
As a practical matter, if one is in a situation where such recording is warranted, by the time you press the record button, you've already missed important information that's relevant to the context of the recording. Allowing a 60-second rolling buffer that then gets dumped to storage when "actual" recording starts should be allowed.
1984? It's not the only surveillance state story. Everyone loves when you can dig up something from decades ago that is no longer representative.> Sounds dystopian to meCameras everywhere just keeps everyone honest, right? Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, right? What's acceptable now will always be acceptable in the future, right? My mind never changes, whose does?
The point of this idea is that it would be under control of the individual wearing the glasses. I would most definitely not want it to be syncing to the cloud or some stupid shit like that. The buffer, and the storage, would need to be entirely contained within the glasses (or other device, if it turns out audio is a legally safer way to implement something like this).
As I mentioned in a sibling comment, I'm not against a visual notification of such recording once the "start saving to storage" button has been pressed. At the same time, I realize that the 60 seconds or so leading up to pressing that button is also often vital (otherwise dashcams wouldn't use a rolling buffer). And in such a situation where audio (or video, in applicable jurisdictions) is being recorded only in volatile memory and overwritten when the buffer is exhausted, I don't think a recording notification should be necessary unless the user has actively engaged non-volatile recording. In that sense, it's similar to the difference between streaming and downloading media. Both are technically the same, but the intention of "streaming" is to download the media and decode it without storing it in a non-volatile fashion.
I think you're thinking about this a bit naively, concentrating on the utility without considering the detriments.
Look at social media. WE are the ones who surveil ourselves. Yes, the big social media companies process all that data and use it against us, but we are the ones who give the pictures, videos, and words to them. There's really no good way around this either. I put those same things on my blog and they still get scrapped.
So what ends up being the difference? It's not synced to the cloud, but we put it there anyways. Do you really think most people are just going to take the videos and not share them? Do you think most people are just going to run a NAS at home? In an ideal world, yes. But I don't think we're anywhere near that happening. So a good portion of those videos just get put online somewhere and bad actors have access.
Non-volatile recording doesn't really exist. We're on HN and I'd expect most people here to be familiar with how easy it is to download a streamed video. yt-dlp will do that for a lot more than youtube.
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"Secret" camera recorder on a phone. Runs in the background, so you just need to keep the gaslighting person in view.
Isn't the biggest mobile use case where you don't want to be secretly recorded in public? This was a big concern with the original Google Glass.
Massive problem in Japan where the issue of sex pests and covert recordings comes up every other day in the media. I suspect it's one of the reasons why Japan isn't on the list of supported countries for the Meta glasses. I hope it stays that way.
> sex pests and covert recordings comes up every other day in the media.
These are also issues where we live, they just don't get the same media attention.
Do companies sell phones/cameras that take photos without making a sound? Cause they all make sounds in Japan because of how bad the sex pest problem is.
The suggestion seems to be that lax governmental attitudes towards the voyeurism risk indicates that the risk itself is lower but I don't believe that's necessarily true or that it would contradict my statement above even if it were.
The idea of being constantly monitored by a megacorp tracking all my movements wih their swarm of cameras to feed us personalized ads is utterly dystopian indeed.
But I think the only valid way yo prevent this will be legislation though, it's not a fight individuals can win on their own.
Do not expect this from the UK. That fight despite millions of signatures was batted down:
The UK is introducing passed legislation that citizens' digital IDs are owned by a Google or Apple smartphone.
The UK already have such laws active and in force that company directors must submit their information through an app available only from Google or Apple. It is clear 'digital IDs' will go the same way.
It's not about age or attribute verification. It's about tracking. Which Google excel at, the only alternative Apple and their opt-in.
Governments are quite happy making citizens have megacorps track their lives.
Digital ID legislation has not been introduced.
Company directors do not have to use the app. The app is one of three ways of doing it.
In the USA, at least, the right to record in public is protected by the First Amendment.
We have a similar law in the UK but it does depend on what you mean by public place.
In somewhere like a public toilet block, at least here in the UK, you have an expectation of privacy. If some creep in Meta glasses is filming you take a piss then they are breaking the law.
If you were on a public beach sun bathing then you probably don't have that expectation of privacy.
In most eu countries, you can record in public, but gathering identifying data ("making a database") is strictly regulated, and that includes faces from those photos. You can't even point a security camera at public areas (ie. outdoor camera recording the street infront of your house), because that's enough data to make it a "database".
You can record in public, but you can’t point cameras at public areas? That seems contradictory
Or is it the fact that it’s always recording that makes the difference or something?
The easier way of phrasing it is "you can't record in public, except in certain circumstances". Those certain circumstances just happen to encompass most things reasonable people want to do.
In Europe there is very much an expectation of privacy in public. But that expectation is not absolute, it competes with various other rights and public interests.
For example you can make street photography without blurred faces, because art trumps privacy in this instance. If you start making photos of individuals instead of areas then privacy wins out again and you need consent. A surveillance camera is not creating art, so it doesn't have that excuse going for it and needs a really good reason to be pointed at public areas (and "I fear someone's going to break into my private home" is generally not a good enough reason). And even if you can set up the surveillance camera, operating it requires complying with the GDPR, which has a lot to say on that topic
Note the "I fear" is treated differently if you e.g. have to remove graffiti hate speech from your front door on a weekly basis. It's just about the "you better have a concrete reason to fear, pure abstract fear won't cut it", and as always, data minimization principles do apply.
There's a difference between taking a photo of eg. random people on the street (eg. trying to show someone that there's a big crowd at the bus station) and recording 24/7 the same bus station. A single photo held by a single person makes it hard to establish movement patterns etc. for those people, while a 24/7 recording can be used for creating a database of all those people coming and leaving.
There are many nuances in privacy law, not just pertaining to photo vs. 24/7 recording, but also expectation of privacy, intent, etc. Taking a photo of some random touristy area with people there is ok, singling out a person is not. Same for eg. taking a panoramic shot of a city where someone just happens to be undressing by the window in one of the buildings in the photo, vs using a telephoto lens pointed at that persons window... so, were you taking a touristy photo vs intending to violate their privacy.
Same nuances, mostly regarding intent appear in other laws too.. you can walk in public, you can stand in a public location, you can work the same shift as your coworker and walk the same path as them, since you both finished work at at the same time. But under slightly different circumstances that same "walking down a public road" or "standing in a public location" can be interpreted as eg. stalking if done with different intent.
That's why there are signs at every store entrance about video surveillance, even though it's private property, they must give info to customers who the contact person for the recording is and they need to have some kind of a retention policy defined for those recordings, and even then they cannot record in areas where people expect privacy (bathrooms, dressing rooms, etc.).
So yeah, taking a random photo of your street is not problematic, since it's "random" and done for other reasons (eg. tourism) while recording 24/7 is gathering enough data to be possibly problematic. Some streets (eg highways) are under video surveillance, but there are signs saying that when you enter the highway: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Mj3GjA7m8BLwUfs77
Short answer is its complicated and will vary from member state to member state. My parental unit had a dispute with neighbor over where his camera is pointed and filed some motion to see what he does with it ( 'not making a database' part ), but the law was mostly toothless as the enforcement of it lacked. On the other hand, the dispute part of the real estate was handed real toot sweet, because everyone and their mother cares about outcomes in those.
tldr: I wish I could tell you there is a simple tldr
> toot sweet
Not sure if intentional but just in case: the usual term is "tout de suite"
It might be in the original French, but it’s been anglicised and adopted as an English language term:
I love this way English has of swallowing and digesting terms from other languages. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/the-tooter-the-sweeter_phr
Quelle surprise (wink wink)!
This is the first time I've ever seen "toot sweet" used. The more you learn :)
To be clear, it’s a jokey informal English language term, not a standard one.
“The English language doesn't exist, it's just badly pronounced French” strikes again.
There's also the UK practice of deliberately mangling French for comedic effect, as in Del Boy's cries of "Bain Marie!" and "chateuneuf-de-paper!" on 1980s TV. Saying "Toot sweet" can fit right into that bucket.
Some right to record in public may be protected by the current jurisprudence invoking the first amendment, but the first amendment itself obviously doesn't say anything about the right to record in public:
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It's a bank shot. SCOTUS has recognized that newsgathering gets some first amendment protection because "without some protection for seeking out the news, freedom of the press could be eviscerated" (Branzburg v Hayes).
One could argue that having a contractor of US intelligence service (Google) collecting data on every citizens all the time isn't exactly “news gathering” and ought to be prevented if one wanted to abid to the spirit of the Constitution.
Recording is writing, which is speech, which is protected.
“Performance is speech, murder is performance, hence murder is protected”
Fortunately it doesn't work like that.
Also not every speech is protected, you aren't allowed to leak classified info even though doing that is purely speech.
Private businesses, however, can choose to refuse service for any reason as long as it’s not discriminatory. If enough businesses collaborated to create a “no camera glasses” policy, people might be less likely to buy them. This could keep the market small.
Perhaps a good approach would be to pressure businesses about this. Frankly they probably don’t want pervasive recording of their employees anyway.
I highly doubt that businesses will take a stand against these camera glasses. The kind of people that buy these smart glasses are usually a) wealthy, and b) not very frugal. What business would want to turn away the people with lots of money?
Walmart? Target? Other large retailers who don’t want people covertly filming employee interactions for “content?”
Plus the footage goes on social media as free advertising.
> What business would want to turn away the people with lots of money?
Plenty? Random dive bars, for example, probably don’t care how rich you are (it’s not like a millionaire is going to buy 10x more $5 beers than an average person).
I’m d assume businesses like social media attention, so if these cameras post to Social Media that’s free advertising.
Also, how would you differentiate banning cameras on glasses vs cameras on smartphones. It could get murky
> I’m d assume businesses like social media attention, so if these cameras post to Social Media that’s free advertising.
If you care about attention, a move like that is likely going to create enough controversy to get you a great deal of attention actually.
Corporations don't need cameras to track people, they have had the ability to track bluetooth emissions for well over a decade. Unless you turn off a lot of connectivity settings, smartphones are pretty much open tracking devices.
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/14/opinion/bluet...
So Ring doorbells and networked CCTV? We're there already. Billboards alongside roads containing targeted advertising already exist, too.
I'm not too fussed about the advertisers in this aspect. The people these companies sell data too not meant for advertising are much more dangerous. That includes the government.
The kinetic solution starts at misdemeanour.
> The idea of being constantly monitored by a megacorp tracking all my movements wih their swarm of cameras to feed us personalized ads is utterly dystopian indeed.
That's very similar to the basis of _The Circle_ by Dave Eggers.
It's not only personal advertisements for consumerism. It's also personalized political messages. That is dangerous to the nations and states and their citizens.
"But I think the only valid way yo prevent this will be legislation though, it's not a fight individuals can win on their own."
It will need both. Secretly recording in the public is already prohibited in many if not most jurisdictions, but ad far as I know, not really prosecuted.
If I want to record you, you'd never know.
https://www.dpreview.com/news/4272574802/omnivision-has-crea...
So all the people blathering about camera in public have a moot point. All the whining does is prevent the fairly obvious camera being put into devices.
But if someone wants to record you in public otherwise, they will and there's nothing you or any of us can do about it.
The thing is, every beginner lockpicker makes a similar point when they realize how easy most locks are: "what's the point of locking my door if anyone can easily get in anyway?".
I think the same answers apply here: because making it harder to be casually recorded sends a clear signal that you don't want it, and now the act of recording goes from being an oversight to a deliberate, sometimes punishable act.
>The thing is, every beginner lockpicker makes a similar point when they realize how easy most locks are: "what's the point of locking my door if anyone can easily get in anyway?".
No they don't. I'm a beginner lockpicker and so far I've only been able pick a 2 pin lock once. Have not been able to repeat it. Have not been able to rake any lock open. Lockpicking is much more of a skill than people online give credit. People on the Internet always acting like lockpicking is just as easy as using the key for any old novice.
For some people it is.
My then-12 or 13 year old picked the lock that came with her beginners lock picking kit within just a few minutes. She picked most of the small locks that I could find - I think an Abus finally defided her. And she has had no interest in the hobby since.
It becomes an oversight to a deliberate act only if the recording person knows that he was detected. So that means that your anti recording glasses should signal 'no recording' in some way. Otherwise it's not really useful.. But at that point.. You can just stick a qrcode on you with the message 'no recording please look away from me'.
I think people are getting lost in the weeds here. The idea with detection is not to prevent public recording, it's to _know_ you're being recorded so you can act accordingly.
I think your point is a little black-and-white — there's tons of behaviour that sits in the "technical possible but frowned upon" bucket.
It's like people listening to music without any headphones on the train — technically has been possible for ages but previously would've gotten you told to turn it off. Now it barely gets a raised eyebrow.
Can you prevent people secretly filming you? No, but most people still don't want it be become accepted behaviour, even if to you that's all just "whining and blathering".
So if someone wants to sucker punch me in pubic, there's also nothing that I or anyone else can do to proactively prevent it.
But I don't get sucker punched very often, so it seems like there probably are things that can be done about. Norms, consequences, etc etc. "We live in a society".
> most things which would need to be protected from hidden cameras would be stationary
Counter-sniper systems that scan for reflections from optics have existed for twenty years already. These are indeed meant for static operation in military bases and other fixed installations.
I could see these being worn by walking-around security in a place where filming by the audience isn’t allowed. Super cool.
I agree, I laugh out loud at that pun.
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Switzerland is quite unusual in that regard.
I would imagine most Hacker News users live in places where recording or photography in a public place is not illegal.
Your suggestion of violence certainly isn't legal in most places!
And even in those few places where publishing identifiable photos of people is theoretically illegal, I'm sure it happens thousands or even millions of times a day. I don't shove a camera in people's faces but you'll find plenty of pics in my public feeds that have identifiable people in them, including from many countries in Europe.
Relax Rambo
