Meta Is Warned That Facial Recognition Glasses Will Arm Sexual Predators (wired.com)
- Reference: 0181683888
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/13/1930253/meta-is-warned-that-facial-recognition-glasses-will-arm-sexual-predators
- Source link: https://www.wired.com/story/meta-ray-ban-oakley-smart-glasses-no-face-recognition-civil-society/
> More than 70 civil liberties, domestic violence, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+, labor, and immigrant advocacy organizations are demanding that Meta abandon plans to deploy face recognition on its Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses, warning that the feature -- reportedly known inside the company as "Name Tag" -- [1]would hand stalkers, abusers, and federal agents the ability to silently identify strangers in public . The coalition, which includes the ACLU, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Fight for the Future, Access Now, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, is demanding Meta kill the feature before launch, after [2]internal documents surfaced showing the company hoped to use the current "dynamic political environment" as cover for the rollout, betting that civil society groups would have their resources "focused on other concerns."
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> Name Tag, as revealed in February by The New York Times, would work through the artificial intelligence assistant built into Meta's smart glasses, allowing wearers to pull up information about people in their field of view. Engineers have reportedly been weighing two versions of the feature: one that would only identify people the wearer is already connected to on a Meta platform, and a broader version that could recognize anyone with a public account on a Meta service such as Instagram. The coalition wants Meta to scrap the feature entirely. In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, it argues that face recognition in inconspicuous consumer eyewear "cannot be resolved through product design changes, opt-out mechanisms, or incremental safeguards." Bystanders in public have no meaningful way to consent to being identified, it says.
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> Meta is also urged to disclose any known instances of its wearables being used in stalking, harassment, or domestic violence cases; disclose any past or ongoing discussions with federal law enforcement agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, about the use of Meta wearables or data from them; and commit to consulting civil society and independent privacy experts before integrating biometric identification into any consumer device. "People should be able to move through their daily lives without fear that stalkers, scammers, abusers, federal agents, and activists across the political spectrum are silently and invisibly verifying their identities and potentially matching their names to a wealth of readily available data about their habits, hobbies, relationships, health, and behaviors," write the groups, which also include Common Cause, Jane Doe Inc., UltraViolet, the National Organization for Women, the New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the Library Freedom Project, and Old Dykes Against Billionaire Tech Bros, among others.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/meta-ray-ban-oakley-smart-glasses-no-face-recognition-civil-society/
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-recognition-smart-glasses.html
"warned" and "urged" (Score:2)
ya, that carries real weight against revenue and government contracts...
What about spy cameras? (Score:1)
They can be smaller than those glasses. Where's the outrage about those?
Not being on Meta properties wins again. (Score:2)
Even if they kill this in the consumer version, you know they will still have a fully-enabled version for "select partners*. Look forward to government goons wearing these soon.
Re: (Score:2)
> Look forward to government goons wearing these soon.
I would imagine they already are.
Re: (Score:2)
Not creating an account doesn't mean you don't have a shadow account.
"Old Dykes Against Billionaire Tech Bros" (Score:3)
I salute the naming committee from that group. Well done.
1984 with the brakes removed. (Score:2)
Just effing great.
Inevitable (Score:2)
If you outlaw guns...only outlaws will have guns. (swap guns with tech you care about)
Blocking Meta simply leaves the market open for someone less scrupulous. (Yes, they exist.)
Innovation should be examined, understood, integrated, not 'blocked.'
Of course, there's also the concept that 'locks are simply there to keep honest people honest.'
Who has the database with millions of photos? (Score:2)
> Blocking Meta simply leaves the market open for someone less scrupulous. (Yes, they exist.)
And what less scrupulous non-governmental entity is it that has a database of photos of millions of known individuals to compare against?
Re: (Score:2)
>> Blocking Meta simply leaves the market open for someone less scrupulous. (Yes, they exist.)
> And what less scrupulous non-governmental entity is it that has a database of photos of millions of known individuals to compare against?
I believe the word you were looking for is BILLIONs. Facebook is world-wide.
Re: Inevitable (Score:1)
Guns are simple and can be built or smuggled by motivated individuals. Huge facial datasets, on the other hand, can probably be regulated fairly easy without vicious/unmanageable black markets popping up.
We will launch during a dynamic political enviro.. (Score:2)
In other worse "We know it's bad, so we'll try to sneak it in because... money"
If your stalker need (Score:2)
If you stalker needs face recognition to identify you; are they stalking you at all? That one does not even really make sense.
Law enforcement too already has cameras all over the darn place. I kinda don't see the threat there either, at least not beyond the one that already is present. We post wanted posters for a reason, precisely because we want to deny know criminals and suspects privacy in public.
There are lot of reasons to be concerned about Meta putting face recognition on these things, but honestl
Hammers will arm murderers (Score:2)
Stop making hammers.
Think of the X.... (Score:2)
Disappointing that privacy issues need to be sensationalized to get people to care.
Adding facial recognition to Glasshole's capabilities that relies on some Aunt or coworker tagging them a Facebook post a decade ago is creepy enough without needing to think of what sexual predators will do with it.
2020 is calling... (Score:2)
The early panicky days of COVID may be over, but face masks suddenly look like a pretty good idea again.
Time to go into the unisex burka business (Score:2)
Tired of Meta identifying you 40 times a day everywhere you go?
We have the solution.
The head to toe, face covering, unisex burka!
They only come in the same gray color, so you'll mix in and remain unidentifiable.
Another genius solution from the past!
That's just one side of it (Score:2)
Wait until every camera around you is used to track the eyeballs of every person in a store and everywhere.
There will be AI watching what you are currently looking at, looking at that booty? Ai will know who, and how often you look, there will be lists that will measure this.
It will go under the disguise of crime prevention, and also what goods customers want and desire.
Looking at that booty or that box of Cereal? That observation goes somewhere.
Someone suspects you of something? They can look at the statis
This would be a great feature (Score:2)
How often has someone's name slipped your memory because you have not seen them in a long time or seeing them in a new context throws off your memory. Maybe you could buy them if you pass a 'nice person' test- Oh wait that is social credit score, darn we just can't have nice things!
Sucks to grow up under surveillance. (Score:2)
So don’t have a public account. You can’t control what other people do. But you can control what you do. Also, this is lame. Is it not enough nearly everyone has a camera in their pocket. How is society better when the majority of people are a being constantly recorded? I’m definitely glad I came of age before this nonsense. My stupid years are mostly anonymous and in the memories of the few. More and more people will be defined for extended periods by something they thought was funny whe
we can't prevent identification in public already (Score:2)
Bystanders in public have no meaningful way to consent to being identified We already can't do that for any existing camera. Why are these any different?
Re: we can't prevent identification in public alre (Score:2)
Covert and able to be owned by any asshole and used as a marketing point. Just because it can be done doesn't mean it should.
Re: (Score:3)
> Covert and able to be owned by any asshole and used as a marketing point.
How is that different from any camera bolted to the side of a building? Or any dashcam?
Hint: It's not.
How is a camera on your foot any different (Score:2)
Really, it's just the same as any surveillance camera.
Re: we can't prevent identification in public alre (Score:5, Informative)
>> Covert and able to be owned by any asshole and used as a marketing point.
> How is that different from any camera bolted to the side of a building? Or any dashcam?
> Hint: It's not.
Guess again, they are not actively identifying individuals in near-real time, or identifying them at all. Just passively recording things in case something happens so that after-the-incident law enforcement can take the video and identify people.
Re: (Score:2)
That is true of random security cameras. It's no longer true of security cameras at national chains and it will trickle down to the random security cameras. The tech to track people and vehicles across multiple camera networks is already in use for marketing and security. Few companies will not deploy it when it offers them a trickle of additional income. Consumers will have to go far out of their way to buy security cameras that don't do it. The most popular cameras are already doing it.
Flock Safety and Friends Enter the Chat (Score:2)
Once "think of the children and/or sexual predators" are invoked the protest is always suspect. (Not that you did dmb, but the headline warned us).
Flock Safety actively tracks vehicles by license plates using cameras.
To me this is much worse than facial recognition, because I must present a valid license plate to the world to legally drive down the road.
I was warned 10 years ago that retailers like Best Buy were identifying you when you walked into their stores using data provided by Facebook.
The warning fo
Re: we can't prevent identification in public alre (Score:4, Insightful)
Cameras that available now for normal citizens don't get VIP access to a large social media network and automatically try to identify everyone?
Re: (Score:3)
Upload a random photo to Facebook and see how many people it tags for you.
That barn door has been wide open for a long time.
Re: (Score:2)
That doesn't meet the smell test.
You can elect to be on Facebook. FACEbook.
Or you can elect to never go there.
On the street, you must travel, or your are jailed in your location, enslaving you. Actual freedom means walking down the street, going into a store, driving, biking, whatever.
Liberty dictates you have freedom of movement and association. It doesn't mean you can look up any random individual and drill through who/what they are. In public and private places, the Fifth Amendment applies, also unreason
Re: (Score:2)
“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” according to the document from Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses."
Because existing cameras don't automatically identify people in public when you point them at them? I mean, Meta clearly understands how it's different - they're trying to toe the line between hoping certain groups wi
Re: (Score:2)
Can't do that in any way, technological or otherwise. It is the very definition of being in public.
"Meta is also urged to disclose any known instances of its wearables being used in stalking..."
In order for them to do that they would have to engage in stalking themselves.
"People should be able to move through their daily lives without fear that stalkers, scammers, abusers, federal agents, and activists across the political spectrum are silently and invisibly verifying their identities and potentially match
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps you mean "consent to being recorded". To identify someone, you have to take that information, match it to a record in a database and return linked records.
Just make it illegal to posses such records in the first place (particularly related to children). Zuckerberg in prison would be a great achievement.
Re: (Score:2)
It's different because they can use your data against you, odds are you are in their system you gave them your data. At the time you didn't think your pictures you gave facebook could be used for strangers to identify you. Now it's different. Most other systems you have to consent to give them your picture, and many of these systems you can opt out of. But the biggest problem is the government can use these systems to locate you without your consent.
Existing cameras are not actively identifying you (Score:3)
>> Bystanders in public have no meaningful way to consent to being identified We already can't do that for any existing camera. Why are these any different?
Because nearly all the existing cameras are just recording events in case something bad happens. Outside of a few edge cases, like Las Vegas casinos, these cameras are NOT trying to actively identify you.