Workers report watching Ray-Ban Meta-shot footage of people using the bathroom
arstechnica.com156 points by randycupertino 4 hours ago
156 points by randycupertino 4 hours ago
"using the bathroom" will be the least of what they're watching people do. Anyone wearing these glasses (or similar) should know that all of the audio/video picked up by the glasses will be watched and analyzed by others, likely by AI as well. Just like the entire point of facebook is to spy on people and profit from that data, the entire point of these devices is to spy on people in ways that the facebook app doesn't/can't and profit from that data.
Sadly, "using the bathroom" will cause a more immediate visceral reaction for most people than "maliciously manipulating your entire life via ad networks and media".
Do we really care what it is that will cause the visceral reaction? If I said it might reveal ways/means or private IP or any of a million other examples, few would really care as not everyone is involved in that. However, everyone goes to the bathroom.
I care a little bit - I think it's genuinely disappointing that your privacy can be so thoroughly compromised by interesting uses of metadata... but I also won't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It'd be great is people truly understood the dangerous of invasive monitoring outside their physical forms (a, imo, relatively minor privacy to have compromised compared to your behavior) - but if it gets folks riled up I'm all for it.
Great if I wear sunglasses at the public pool people think I'm a nonce filming kids.
>nonce
today i learned this word has a definition outside of cryptography. it appears to be UK slang for pedophile.
Sunglasses, no.
Meta RayBans, deservedly.
The problem is, they are becoming normalized very very quickly.
Take a walk down whatever area has the best night life near you and you will see tons of people wearing meta glasses. It's so common.
And now realise the same is true for your robot vacuum, car camera, doorbell camera, etc etc
We consumers have no protection against big tech
We definitely don’t have any hard boundaries baked into this tech preventing big tech from (ab)using our data this way. But are there specific companies you think are doing this? I think with Meta products, it’s been rather obvious for a long time. But I’ve had a Nest doorbell camera and thermostats for years, and first iRobot and now Roborock vacuums, and they don’t really seem so suspect.
You should assume that Google is collecting every scrap of data they can from nest products and that your data will (or could) be handed over to police and the state with or without warrants and with zero notice to you. There were concerns raised with irobot devices selling the floorplans of your home (https://gizmodo.com/roombas-next-big-step-is-selling-maps-of...) and now its owned by China (Picea) so who knows what they're doing. Roborock is also a Chinese company who appears to have been under investigation in Korea for data leaks (https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-03-05/busines...).
At this point I'd consider anything not locally hosted (and certainly anything owned by Google, Amazon, or facebook) to be highly suspect.
Amazon literally just put out a superbowl ad of them using their (your?) front door cam feeds to find people.
They are all dipping into our data for their ends, Meta is just particularly sloppy/honest about it
Sure you do. All of those are available in local versions without Internet.
Youjust need to care enough, be able to afford them (while my vacuum has no camera, it requires the cloud, but it was significantly cheaper than a local or hackable one), and have the ability to self host something like home assistant.
How about we just enforce minimum privacy standards on big tech instead?
Sure you can root all your own hardware but you can’t stop the fact that your walk down the street is documented by Amazon and Google front door bells
There is no opt out of this surveillance if you live in modern society
> if you live in modern society
Quite an if you got there... pointing security or doorbell cameras to public spaces isn't legal where I live.
>We consumers have no protection against big tech
Stop buying it. You are not a robot that is forced to purchase a video doorbell or a robotic vacuum cleaner or a smart thermostat.
You have free will. If you do not like a commercially available product, don't buy it, don't use it. It's that simple.
> Stop buying it
That's my policy, but there's a sucker born every minute and they are buying these products so anytime you are in or near their homes or anywhere a microphone or camera can see you (even one mounted on some idiot's head) you're at risk. Even worse, both people and corporations typically don't disclose their use of those devices when you enter their homes/businesses either.
How about we just enforce minimum privacy standards on big tech instead?
Sure you can just not buy the thing.
But can’t stop the fact that your wall down the street is documented by Amazon and Google front door bells
There is no opt out of this surveillance if you live in modern society
I think it's a reasonable ask that when buying a product, it has reasonable levels of safety, security, and privacy. Especially with products that might change over time because of software updates.
Yes, there are ToS, but it's fine for us as a society to say that consumers deserve more protection against big tech so we aren't a TOS update away from having everything shared or be used for something that wasn't promoted.
> You have free will. If you do not like a commercially available product, don't buy it, don't use it.
Caveat emptor. But lemon laws exist, too.
And, a commercially available product now might not be the same a year from now.
There's compelling reasons for all sorts of home devices to be connected to the internet[1] but the rub is that ToS flexibility and software updates make this a backdoor waiting to happen. I feel like our legal system has significantly failed us by not empowering the consume to say "I accept your device with a wifi antenna for the purposes of updating and I reject any exfiltration of personal data from it to your servers". You can have such a contract written - but this is really a place where something like a consumer advocacy board should step in and make sure those rights and sanely guaranteed.
1. It'd be great to ease the method for updating, it'd be nice to be able to easily monitor the device especially if it could become active in some manner while you're absent (I don't want the stove turning on to broil right after I leave on a three month vacation)
> I feel like our legal system has significantly failed us by not empowering the consume to say "I accept your device with a wifi antenna for the purposes of updating and I reject any exfiltration of personal data from it to your servers".
Worse it's allowed for them to remote into your device and disable features that you bought the device to use, by paywalling them off behind a subscription service that didn't exist when you brought the product home or just them entirely. To me that's no different than theft. It doesn't matter if it's amazon logging into you kindle overnight and removing books you already paid for from your virtual bookshelf, or Sony pushing an update to remove the option to use linux on your PS3, or BMW deciding that you should have to pay them every month just to use the heated seats option you already paid for when you bought your car.
If I, as an individual, sold you something than broke into your house to steal it or break it or demand ransom to get parts back that would be a crime, but companies get away with it somehow. What Google, Facebook, and Amazon do are basically just stalking.
Just to clarify, I don't mean what I said in a manner hostile to consumers, I mean what I said in a manner hostile to abusive corporations. Let them either adapt to market demand for better products (which we demonstrate by not continuing to buy their current garbage), or let them (the corporations) starve and die if they refuse to.
Stop feeding the parasites.
Don't buy the shit. You don't need a smart doorbell or robot vacuum at a minimum.
At least the vacuum does not try to start a civil war for add impressions..
How many times will the same report be regurgitated and reposted? There is nothing added here that the original source didn't cover already (https://www.svd.se/a/K8nrV4/metas-ai-smart-glasses-and-data-...). Read that instead of the derivative blogspam.
Can that original source be reposted on HN within a short timespan or will it be deleted/comments moved? How then would this report gain more traction if only allowed once?
From a comment by ChrisArchitect somewhere in this thread:
> [dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47225130 .
More info: 1439 points | 6 days ago | 838 comments
Yea, but not a bad reminder to ridicule people who wear them, and if possible destroy on site.
Similar to Pokemon Go big tech can get footage in places not visible from the road. At work in the restroom should be a notification to HR and lawsuits. In some states this would be jail time [1].
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sVTm608LBg [video][50m]
Facebook at it again - creating the worst possible image in society of a potentially useful technology by their carelessness and greed.
Deserved.
We have been telling people to stay away from big USA tech companies and what they do??
Buy a smart glass from said company!!
No symphaty, and knowing how the system works, these videos will never be deleted and will move from one hanf to another, until somebody leaks them online or request money.
People never learn!!!
Privacy-wise, isn't this completely on-brand and expected from Meta? Is anyone surprised by these kinds of revelations?
No. Read the book "Careless People". Meta leadership tried to downplay it by saying the stories are exaggerated. It seems doubtful to me.
I have read it and was enough to delete the insta account for good. Still have the fb unfortunately use it to handle some Non profit pages
It's cheaper for them to settle in a lawsuit than what they are gaining by doing this. If it wasn't, they wouldn't. The laws are broken.
As is already revealed with Meta leadership knowing that they make 7billion a year on scam ads. They even calculated that global regulations and fines might cost them 1 billion.
So fines and regulations are priced in as a fraction of the net earnings.
https://mashable.com/article/meta-7-billion-dollars-scam-ads
Won't this cause significant legal issues in two party consent states and have a huge potential to run afoul of revenge porn laws?
AI = Mary, Moses and David from Kenya, ...
Source: Someone who says that someone said that someone anonymous said. (Literally)
> Source: Someone who says that someone said that someone anonymous said. (Literally)
Weird way to say workers given anonymity for whistleblowing interviewed by two reporters and not denied by meta in their response?
True creeper glasses.
Meta does Meta things (again). People surprised (again).
Still, amazing how Meta (and Luxottica?) massaged the media to have the wearers of its dystopian goggles not labeled how they ought to be labeled: Glassholes.
[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47225130
Water is wet. Grass is green.
While water maybe we, grass being green is going to be a regional/timing thing. My grass currently brown
"Dumb fucks". Honestly... Volenti non fit iniuria.
Anyone wearing these glasses in public should be punched in the face. Especially public transport.
Why especially public transport?
Well, when you physically assault someone on public transport, at least there's a lot of witnesses present who can testify against you?
Violence isn't the answer. Handheld IR/non-visible-wavelength LiDAR systems that permanently fry CMOS image sensors are.
If state laws permit the capture of light, let them capture light. Light has no spectrum allocation laws, no license required to emit, and as long as you're not disturbing anyone (e.g. with deliberately obnoxious use of visible wavelengths), you're not breaking any laws.
LiDAR operators do not have a legal duty to protect image sensors around them.
As much as I'd like a quick hack to disable raybands recording me - that feels like a pretty slam dunk case of destruction of property.
Just attach a camera to your device and say you where recording in public just like them, no seam to have an issue with that. Your system was just measuring the distance to the target using lidar :)
You're still responsible for damaging people's property even if you have a super clever reason why you totally didn't intend that to happen :)