| ▲ | hootz 2 days ago |
| I do photography as a hobby, especially street photography and related styles, and I constantly question myself on the ethics of photographing people in public without permission, even with my huge ass camera. Meanwhile, we have people running spy cameras in their glasses, and they view that as just a normal thing to do. What. |
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| ▲ | jameson 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Exactly. The problem with photo since the birth of social media is that it's permanently stored in the internet, literally. Photos used to be personal and (mostly) temporary. I may take a photo in public, develop, then share with the close ones and store in the photo book. Photo may be somehow passed onto others but likely thrown away eventually when I become less of importance to them, and it'll worn out. With photos now uploaded to social media or the "cloud", they exist permanently as a means of backups, sold to 3rd party (knowingly or unknowingly) analyzed to "improve the experience of the platform". |
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| ▲ | drdaeman 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That permanence is a bit of a myth. Bit rot is as real as physical one. At least four cloud storages (Bitcasa, hubiC, Ubuntu One, Cyphertite) I’ve used in the past are gone. | | |
| ▲ | jameson a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I want to emphasize "unknowingly" part. Once data is uploaded to an entity, there's no guarantee they'll manage is properly. User agreements change constantly, engineers make mistake, firms get liquidated and data might get sold, and most importantly, as a former employee of social media firms, what the firms say about the user privacy publicly is very different inside. | |
| ▲ | hootz 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | But it has potential to be permanent through the means of other people storing copies of it. If you send a photo via WhatsApp to someone, for example, that photo is by default saved automatically to their phone, and potentially synced to their Google Photos. |
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| ▲ | Legend2440 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public. It is completely legal to film someone on the street. This is important for other reasons, as it is the same law that allows you to film cops. |
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| ▲ | drawfloat 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | In America. That is not true for all other countries. And in even more countries it is legal to film, but it's not legal to send that footage back to Meta's servers for use in LLM training. | | |
| ▲ | drstewart 2 days ago | parent [-] | | And in even even more countries, it's actually perfectly fine to do any of that. In before your definition of the world is a handful of tiny white countries | | |
| ▲ | drawfloat a day ago | parent [-] | | We’re talking about Europe. The context of this entire article is Europe. |
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| ▲ | whilenot-dev 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This seems like a US-centric view, because "it is NOT completely legal to film someone on the street" in the european country I live. | | |
| ▲ | drstewart 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I love how Europeans claim they aren't one country but then refuse to specify where they're from. Anyway that sounds like a very specific view only in your country since it's completely fine in the North American country in which I live. | | |
| ▲ | whilenot-dev a day ago | parent | next [-] | | With a bit of clicking around you could easily find out to which country I'm referring to. I know neighboring countries have similar rulings, so how does that really change anything? GP made some US-centric statements in, absolute form, in a thread about initiatives from the European legislature... make it make sense, please. As EU citizen I don't yearn for inspiration from the US legal system when it comes to matters of privacy. The rights to privacy of any individual shouldn't be waved aside just because they happen to be situated in public space. | |
| ▲ | watwut 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | He did not said it is true in every single EU country. He said it is false in his one. He also said it is US-centric view. Which it is. Americans tend to think all the other countries are just little worst America or enemies. And get real angry when EU countries dont just project simplified American politics, but have their own equally complex one. | | |
| ▲ | drstewart a day ago | parent [-] | | Nothing in the original post mentioned the US. Germans all think this way. What a German-centric view. Germans tend to think anything they don't do is just America-centric. And get real angry when other countries dont just have the same German views, but have ones that may be closer to America. |
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| ▲ | Gigachad 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | What you have a reasonable expectation of is decided by society, not some unmoving law of physics. A country could very easily decide you do have the right to go outside without creeps recording you with spy glasses. | | |
| ▲ | lostmsu 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | Or it could also decide that you can add a digital eye to your existing two bio eyes without being called a creep and thrown in jail or issued a fine for wanting to remember something or getting assisted with something. |
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| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | fusslo 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | law != ethics | | |
| ▲ | m463 2 days ago | parent [-] | | "remember, we have a legal system, not a justice system" | | |
| ▲ | lostmsu 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | "Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike." |
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| ▲ | dgellow 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's actually country specific, you don't have a universal rule that you can legally record people in public | |
| ▲ | WesolyKubeczek 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In some jurisdictions, it depends. You may film “a street”, and people go into and out of the frame all the time, and it’s okay. But if you take a random passerby and make them the focus of your recording, you may run into problems. | |
| ▲ | hootz 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | As someone already said, I am not talking about legality, but about ethics. |
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| ▲ | Jblx2 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I wonder how many surveillance cameras are currently in operation. |
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| ▲ | hootz 2 days ago | parent [-] | | While they are a problem, they are a different problem from spy cameras capturing you up close for the benefit of a single person. Surveillance cameras are for shady governments and maybe "security", camera glasses are for straight up creeps. | | |
| ▲ | m463 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That has already been normalized. This is different. sigh. | | |
| ▲ | mc32 2 days ago | parent [-] | | When things were on NVRs only some personnel had access to them and they typically rotated fate out every 30 days by default. Importantly they were not interconnected. They were their own silos. Now they are all tied in to central services and people with the right access can pull up anything from any of the devices regardless how irrelevant they are to an investigation. The main problem is the interconnectedness. They are realizing Hayden’s wet dream of total surveillance. |
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| ▲ | basisword 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And we're already seeing a tonne of creepy bastards harassing women using the glasses and they have no recourse because "public place". They should be outright banned imo. I see no benefit to them and I genuinely cannot see the day everyone is running around wearing the same few brands of glasses because they provide that much value. I had to wear regular glasses for a few years and they were a pain in the ass. I'm not doing that voluntarily so I can see live ads and reviews as I walk past restaurants. |
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| ▲ | vkou 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Hell, I (like anyone else) grab photos with my phone on vacation, and when I take a picture of a busy market, I do my best to avoid including people in my photographs. People in places I visit are just trying to live their lives, they aren't some kind of human zoo for me. |
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| ▲ | hootz 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, someone giving me even the slightest hint of being uncomfortable already makes me instantly delete their photo. Like, I want to photograph the public without ruining spontaneous moments, but I don't want to make others uncomfortable or mad at me because of my photographs. |
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| ▲ | drdaeman 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Glasses’ camera [usually] sits right next to couple more cameras embedded in wearer’s skull. [Almost] nobody has any problem with those. That strongly suggests me it’s not the cameras that are problematic, but something about what happens to the images. |
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| ▲ | vkou 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Most people understand that the difference between your camera and your eyes is that one records an image, while the other records a very rough description of an image. | | |
| ▲ | drdaeman 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I don’t know how I could’ve made it even more obvious that cameras themselves don’t record anything. |
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| ▲ | hootz 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I guess people wearing spy camera glasses won't do anything at all with the images! /s | | |
| ▲ | drdaeman 2 days ago | parent [-] | | My point is, people point at the camera but have actual issues with some potential capabilities of a system that’s not the camera itself but way downstream of it. Can we please learn to point at correct things? I honestly don’t know what wrong with everyone. It’s like when people have issues with building permits and utility pricing but blame “AI” or “data centers” instead. | | |
| ▲ | hootz 2 days ago | parent [-] | | They are not exactly potential capabilities, but real capabilities already being used by people like obnoxious TikTokers to record them harassing people in public places without the person realizing they are being recorded. If you need to put a camera on glasses for a legitimate reason, such as a device purely for accessibility, then you should be able to get an exception, of course. | | |
| ▲ | drdaeman 2 days ago | parent [-] | | “Potential” in a sense wearer’s actions are necessary to cause harm. Or vendor’s, for other risk scenarios. One has to not just have a camera but have that camera recording to a persistent medium and - most importantly - be an asshole to publish that recording inappropriately. That’s a few active steps away from having a camera. > then you should be able to get an exception, of course Of course not. Not when everyone reacts to the cameras themselves instead of TikTok uploads and whatever people are doing. I just want legislation to ban the latter (as the actual harmful thing) and not the former (then maybe allow it on some sort of permit). But I’m sure it’ll be the opposite. Which pisses me off because as a person who has difficulty with faces, for almost my whole adult life I’ve dreamed about a wearable that could make me aware when I see a person I know as I pass by (my brain doesn’t do that on its own). Strictly on-device, zero retention, no transmission, sure - I won’t buy e.g. Meta glasses or whatever until I know I can hack them to do the right thing. But of course there’ll be an argument that others aren’t supposed to know what my devices are doing, so ban them just in case because they make people uncomfortable. We’re literally saying the same thing, pointing that the issue is with something that happens with the images/videos (TikToks)… | | |
| ▲ | dgellow 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > a wearable that could make me aware when I see a person I know as I pass by (my brain doesn’t do that on its own) You can do that, just ask people for consent to be recorded/taken a picture | | |
| ▲ | drdaeman 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > consent to be recorded/taken a picture Taking a reference face image for vectorization - certainly. If I'll have a wearable device, I wouldn't mind asking, even explaining the setup, risk assessment, and so on. Right now I apologize that I would most likely not remember person's face anyway. Although I shouldn't have to because you don't have to do it for functionally 100% equivalent thing with your eyes. Continuously scanning faces for matches against a private library, on device, zero transmissions and everything decent and respectful - how do you imagine consenting? A balloon above my head with a banner that goes like "sorry folks the meat in my head is wacky, so there's a machine that eyeballs y'all - no recordings, just some real-time processing that doesn't transmit or long-term store any results"? Even something like that probably won't cut it for a consent. | | |
| ▲ | dgellow 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, definitely difficult to envision how something like that would work if you have live crowd processing. FWIW someone close to me has a similar problem, I’ve seen how annoying it can be. I can see how a wearable would help but anything with cameras is causing friction with people expectation of privacy. I don’t know the correct way to balance that in your case, other than explicitly asking for consent before recording | | |
| ▲ | drdaeman 2 days ago | parent [-] | | To reiterate, my suggestion is to ignore the cameras and just focus on regulation and prohibition of actually harmful activities - that is, publication without depicted persons explicit consent. If some tiktok shitheads abuse the public trust and upload derogatory videos - fine them into selling those glasses and then some, duh. Make that a very public case to send a "we don't tolerate this" message to others. This focuses and addresses actual, real issues, and leaves legitimate use cases unhindered. That said, I understand that people subconsciously flinch at even a sight of a camera. I've had a guest wearing Meta glasses just the other day, and I felt a little irk - despite having a pro-camera position (although to be precise my concern there was with Meta, not the glasses themselves). Worse, it turned out that guest was a victim of domestic abuse, so they have an arguably good reason to have a camera ready at a glance. Weird world, weird times. |
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