Classic meta
So Meta wants its own army of unsuspecting spies?
I can’t for the life of me imagine that this is legal. Maybe in the U.S., since the legal system there is so completely broken, but in Europe, the mass surveillance of millions of people by a private company seems likely to be a criminal offense.
Yeah. In Europe, the government is in charge of all the mass surveillance of millions. Europe and an overabundance of “big brother is watching” are synonymous of each other.
That is fundamentally true, yet European law and the respective national constitutions set limits on unwarranted mass surveillance. Lobbyists for tech companies—especially American ones, led by Palantir—are working tirelessly to erode these limits, thought.
Under the status quo, however, the scale of surveillance is currently in no way comparable to that in China or the U.S., as there are still legal limits in place—at least for the moment—that are also enforced, albeit only in a basic sense.
This makes it all the more important to preserve these rights and to advocate for them. It is not helpful to equate conditions in Europe with those in the US, as this creates the impression that insisting on existing law is a futile endeavor.
Also, Luxottica Group SpA (the company that owns the Ray-Ban brand) is Italian. They abide to European laws.
If you buy this stuff, fuck you
I’m autistic and extremely faceblind and despite this being potentially useful to me personally, I really don’t think this should be legal at all.
I also want to say, don’t let anyone use people like me as a reason why it should be. I dont know what’s scarier to me, being identified accurately by it which, stalkers and abusers will love, or being misidentified by it and experiencing what to me will seems like arbitrary harassment and violence.
Great job Ray-Ban! Really good look! Thanks Meta! Connecting us to people whether we like it or not!
Can’t get the full article.
Is that really saying they sent updates to non-glasses users’ phones only to access their biometrics, so they can basically broadcast that identification to their glasses?
No way this is EU GDPR compliant. So glad I got a phone that doesn’t come with system-embedded meta shit.
“Though not yet enabled, NameTag sits inside a Meta AI companion app that’s been downloaded over 50 million times and is necessary for use of key features of its smart glasses, including Ray-Ban and Oakley models. If activated, it will transform faces captured by Meta’s glasses into unique biometric signatures, commonly known as faceprints, and check each one against faceprints stored on the user’s phone—a database that’s currently configured to receive updates from Meta. Recognized faces will trigger notifications, while the rest are cropped, indexed, and saved to a folder marked ‘pending’.”
It seems that the code is in the specific app for the glasses. Another very relevant passage:
“NameTag would revive a type of technology Meta said it had sunsetted in 2021, when the company announced it would delete more than a billion faceprints belonging to Facebook users following years of controversy over its photo-tagging system. Meta ultimately paid $650 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by Illinois users and, in 2024, agreed to a separate $1.4 billion settlement with Texas over allegations it had unlawfully collected biometric data from users.”
So if I’m getting this right they do keep biometrics from people who have never agreed to anything, but only on smartglassers’ devices and they are not transmitting them. Yet?
Still a huge invasion of privacy. Nobody stores data just to be left “pending” in a random folder. Yeah it’s very similar to when they made pseudo-profiles from tagged people on facebook pics. Was not even aware they were eventually and succesfully sued for it.
No no, from the full article it seems they are building (again) a database of people’s biometrics. They are kept in the app, but from an early analysis it looks like there is a client-server mechanism to “pull” biometric information to your phone and start recognizing people with your glasses. I guess only time will tell how they will implement it, and if there will be enough pressure again to have them remove this terrible functionality.
Remember kids, never update software when the change log just says, “bug fixes and performance improvements 😎👍🎉”
Although Meta has their own internal update system that invisibly runs outside the normal channels, because fuck those people who disable auto update on their devices, right?
The reality is this shit will keep happening, whether it’s legal or not. We really need to focus on finding effective countermeasures that work no matter what.
The effective countermeasures:
Anyone can strap a camera to their face and run facial recognition. The crux of the problem is still that the cameras are hidden.
We quickly need new laws around filming in public.
Like the cops wouldn’t abuse that.
There’s gotta be a way to scramble that shit or remove their nametag crap from your phone.
