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This App Warns You if Someone Is Wearing Smart Glasses Nearby - 404media (www.404media.co)

submitted 19 hours ago by RockBottom@feddit.org to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/technology/p/1812149/this-app-warns-you-if-someone-is-wearing-smart-glasses-nearby-404media

The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media's coverage of how people are using Meta's Ray-Bans smartglasses to film people without their knowledge or consent. “I consider it to be a tiny part of resistance against surveillance tech.”

more at: @feed@404media.co

all 19 comments

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[–] mrnobody@reddthat.com 31 points 17 hours ago

If you don't want to install from Google Play, install APK from this link

https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses/releases

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 55 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

What an awesome society we live in. We were promised jetpacks, but we got “hey, you’re being spied on” pocket machine. (I mean, the pocket machine spies on you too, but that’s fine, cause that’s a corporation spying on you.)

[–] FineCoatMummy@sh.itjust.works 22 points 18 hours ago

For sure.

I talk to my pa, he was around in the earliest days of personal computing in the 1970's when you didn't need a whole room for a computer any more. You could get one in your very own house! He remembers feeling like we were headed into a utopia. There was no spyware. Computers would do all these great things for us.

Honestly we did get some pieces of a utopia. I can now talk to my friend who speaks only German while I cannot speak any German at all. We use a computer to translate for us. That's straight up sci fi! We got some good parts, but we got even more bad parts. We got all this dystopian big-tech corp, mass surveillance, Orwellian BS.

Never go full dystopia.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 31 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (2 children)

There are also inexpensive ESP32-based ~~Nest~~ Flock camera detectors out there. They work by detecting their Bluetooth & Wi-Fi traffic, specifically by scanning for manufacturers’ OUIs on MAC addresses.

Detecting Surveillance Cameras With The ESP32

[–] N0x0n@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 hours ago

That's nice, but I wish there would be a way to somehow intercept traffic and send them some "warning" video in place of their recording...

Or something else that makes their recording useless or broken ^^

[+] Angryhumanoid@fedinsfw.app -12 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

Here's the problem, it's not doing anything people already couldn't and weren't doing, it's just making it a lot easier and making it more widely available. Honestly it's the exact same issue with "AI", every bad aspect about it was already being done with existing LLMs, they were just the domain of a much smaller subset of people.

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 13 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

It's also manufacturing consent for society to accept being covertly recorded by random people at all times, and potentially for that footage to be posted out of context on the internet with brainrot edits and sound effects mocking people minding their own business because they happened to act a little funny but ultimately harmless in public. It used to be that wearing any kind of hidden camera on your person made you a creep and an asshole period, doubly so if you post any of that footage anywhere, even when it was technically legal. Is it wrong to want it to stay that way? Now you have tech companies not just providing resources to, but actively encouraging that same creep behavior and gas lighting everyone else into thinking they're the problem if they don't like it.

[–] Angryhumanoid@fedinsfw.app 1 points 11 hours ago

That's literally the point I'm making. In some places it is common place to see streamers broadcasting in public, and I've seen plenty of videos of not as obvious streaming as well. This will continue that trend, and the question is whether we pass laws to change that. The technology only makes it more accessible.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 8 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

it's not doing anything people already couldn't and weren't doing, it's just making it a lot easier and making it more widely available.

This could be said of so many things.

[–] Angryhumanoid@fedinsfw.app 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah that's kinda my point.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 hours ago

But there's often utility in that

[–] MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

Isn't making it a lot easier and more widely available the whole point?

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

This line of reasoning was already perfectly captured in Office Space: https://youtube.com/watch?v=yZjCQ3T5yXo

[–] Angryhumanoid@fedinsfw.app 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

That's... not even close to what I'm saying. That's like saying using computers to steal money is illegal therefore using computers is illegal. Someone walking around with a camera is fairly commonplace, the problem is this tech makes it less easy to see and more accessible, which is a problem because of the number of people who would want to use it for something illegal. Remember back when they started making digital cameras which could take pictures silently, which was a big privacy issue? Then they started making mandatory sound effects when a picture was taken.... until they stopped doing that?

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Then they started making mandatory sound effects when a picture was taken.... until they stopped doing that?

They never stopped in Japan

[–] Angryhumanoid@fedinsfw.app 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Good point, because of privacy protection laws, exactly the kind of laws we would need to pass to do something about this issue.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

How effective is it really? People who want to do that will find a way.

[–] Angryhumanoid@fedinsfw.app 1 points 8 hours ago

Unfortunately true, there will always be a workaround.