There\u2019s an ongoing arms race to protect identities and privacy in the age of facial recognition, biometric scanning and data collection. Now, some of those concerns are coming from the influx of wearables, namely, smart glasses, and how to go about protecting oneself from being filmed in public. Some joke about singing Disney songs, others use software, and some have even resorted to physical tricks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And the concern is warranted: Meta\u2019s Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, for example, have been coined \u201cpervert glasses\u201d for recording people undressing, and the company is even being sued after a study revealed Meta\u2019s subcontractors are viewing your most intimate moments. This is all culminating into a real privacy concern as not only is your right to privacy (or lack thereof) in the public realm coming into question, but so is how to stop what you do in public from getting stored on a company\u2019s servers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are living in weird times,\u201d Jim Waldo, a professor of computer science who teaches several technological privacy courses at Harvard, told Fortune. \u201cThe technology is changing. It\u2019s the combination of the Meta Glasses with facial recognition, AI, and a number of other sorts of technologies that are all coming together and putting us in an environment that we just aren\u2019t prepared to deal with yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The privacy concerns are real\u2014from the suit to data collection, and even the social media content made with the tech has left people chalking up Meta Glasses as a form of surveillance. Even Meta\u2019s Instagram has had to act: the platform disabled several accounts thanks to violations of content usage after those accounts amassed millions of followers by streaming live feeds from Meta glasses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want harassing content on our platforms and take it down when we find it,\u201d a spokesperson for Instagram told Fortune.<\/p>\n
Gone are the days of \u201cdumb\u201d smart wear. No longer are wearables contained to just your fitness trackers or your sleep monitors, they now have cameras with AI built in them. Most prominently in this space are Meta\u2019s Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, which have cameras built directly into the frames, allowing users to take photos and videos without pulling out a phone. The glasses also have microphones that capture audio, and Meta has enabled livestreaming directly from the glasses to Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a way to tell if you\u2019re being recorded: the glasses use a white capture LED on the front of the frames that blinks when content is being captured. Meta says the LED cannot be switched off and that the camera is disabled if the LED is covered or blocked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will keep strengthening our protections as our glasses become even more capable,\u201d Meta spokesperson Dina El-Kassaby told Fortune.<\/p>\n
But experts are still concerned about the privacy implications of wearable technology. \u201cThey\u2019re making it safe for the consumer,\u201d Waldo said. \u201cThey\u2019re not making it safe for the people around the consumer.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are also legal implications for the use of these smart glasses in public. Gene Kang, partner at law firm Rivkin Radler LLP, told Fortune the technology itself is not necessarily the problem, but that people don\u2019t know they could be filmed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re holding up your phone to somebody\u2019s face, they\u2019re going to know,\u201d Kang said. In that situation, he explained, there could potentially be an argument for implied consent if the person knows they\u2019re being recorded and does nothing to object. With the inconspicuous glasses, however, that assumption becomes much harder to make\u2014meaning privacy and consent laws can potentially be invoked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they\u2019re not aware that they\u2019re being recorded, then I think that presents a different issue,\u201d he added. \u201cI think they would potentially have a claim there.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to a study done by University of Sydney researchers, \u201cpick-up artistry\u201d content has picked up in recent years. This type of content, spread around social media and mainly perpetrated by individuals in the \u201cpick-up artist\u201d community, attracts viewers who wish to watch point-of-view reels of women being approached in public.<\/p>\n
The study found 60% of over 350 videos analyzed involved behavior classified as potentially harassing. In 43% of the videos, women were subjected to derogatory commentary, and other subjects were identified or doxxed. The study focuses on what the researchers defined as \u201cambient capture\u201d\u2014recording people in their everyday surroundings without them realizing that a camera was pointed at them.<\/p>\n
The researchers found a relationship between the apparent covertness of the recording devices and the severity of the harassment. \u201cWe should all be very concerned,\u201d Dr. Milica Stilinovic, one of the study\u2019s authors, told Fortune.<\/p>\n