Why isn't the publishing of the captured video banned? If you want to upload content involving someone else (not just in the background) in it then you should need consent.
Laws will seldom work 100% of the time, but I profoundly disagree with your implied attitude. "They don't cover this future case, so we shouldn't do anything now".
It's like treating concealed carry of a weapon differently than open carry. I think it's reasonable to say "you can do this in public but only if it's clear to other people that you're doing it".
Targeting smart glasses specifically seems to narrow though, because there are obviously many other ways to carry around a hidden camera in public, like one disguised as a pen in your pocket or something.
I think it's because it's more plainly obvious if someone is taking photo if they're lifting up a phone to do it. Someone taking a photo with glasses can be done more covertly.
It’s easy to see if someone has a phone or camera pointed at you. If someone’s looking in your direction while wearing glasses, you would not typically expect them to be recording you.
There's a big difference between holding up a phone and taking a picture and just... existing with glasses and having everything recorded without your knowledge.
People care more about the illusion of privacy than actual privacy itself.
Even if we banned smart glasses, we'd still see ever-expanding networks of privately owned cameras that record every movement you make. We'd still have networks of ring cameras and similar devices. We'll still have ever-increasing use of AI to sort and categorise the content.
Privacy is dead. Smart glasses are just an uncomfortable reminder of this fact, and banning them without addressing the over-arching issue is similar to sticking our collective head in the sand.
Privacy doomerism sucks. You can fight (and win) some battles without winning everywhere—in fact that’s how life works in general.
Just because we haven’t yet beaten ALPRs doesn’t mean I want some dickhead recording me at a hot spring without me knowing. Having both things to deal with is worse than having just one.
A temporary measure.
Knowing the current regime they will use years & millions on comittees, reports, reviews, expert groups and all kinds of bureaucratic wage labor I don't have english vocabulary for. And then, the EU, which we a not a member of, decides everything behind our back.
> The ban could apply to parks, beaches, museums, shopping centres, schools, daycare centres, healthcare facilities, gyms and public events.
True - many places where photography and video recording by people and organizations is already done on a broad scale with both smartphones and infrastructure cameras.
> "We do not want a society where people worry about being recorded without their knowledge, photographed, or filmed in places and situations where they are accustomed to not being monitored"
This seems similar to how much of East Asia requires a “click” sound from camera apps, to prevent surreptitious photos, or how some US states require both parties to consent when recording audio of a conversation. There’s plenty of precedent for privacy laws related to public recording, across the world. And they don’t have to be perfect—the goal is to limit access to casual snooping and creepshots, and to ensure that those who habitually violate privacy can be prosecuted if caught.
Just because you’re in public doesn’t mean it’s ok to take secret upskirt photos, film in the gym showers, etc. There actually is a certain level of privacy expected in public.
Banning harmful behavior (like secretly recording someone) is pretty defensible and not all that controversial. Banning the mere possession of generic tools that could potentially be used to engage in harmful behavior is a lot more dubious. It requires infringing the rights of a bunch of innocent people merely because they might use that freedom to do something wrong.
I agree in part. Rather than a full ban, it makes more sense to require manufacturers to implement obnoxiously obvious “tells” (blinding LED plus sound perhaps), and to ban commercial businesses that remove these features. No need to ban possession. For DIY creepers a ban on the behavior is enough, they will get caught eventually.
The point is to ban widespread normalization of tools that make invasion of privacy easy. You can go find a shirt button spy cam on Aliexpress, but if you get caught wearing it then everyone knows what you’re up to. Wearing one in certain places could be taken as criminal intent.
(I don’t think restrictions like this would work in the US without an amendment, but I think we’re long overdue for a privacy amendment to clarify some things.)
Only issue with that is that enforcing it requires you to make open source smart glasses illegal, since open source software cannot be used to coerce users the way closed-source software can.
Perfect enforcement isn’t required, the intent is to prevent normalization. Laws against murder don’t prevent all murders either.
Someone wearing weird 3D printed camera glasses is going to be obvious. Someone with the skill to disassemble a tiny glued together smart glass frame, bypass any hardware protections, and flash a custom OS will be rare, and they’ll get caught anyway when they “accidentally” wander into the women’s locker for the third time.
> This seems similar to how much of SE Asia requires a “click” sound from camera apps
I live in "SE Asia" - specifically Vietnam - and I've never heard of such a law. I just looked it up and the two countries that come up are Korea and Japan, neither of which are in SE Asia.
I 100% agree with this outlook. People that have ignored encroaching surveillance for decades at this point are finally concerned once we start suggesting we literally strap them to the face of a sizeable chunk of the population.
Personally, I gave up years ago. People don't care about actual privacy, they just care about the illusion of it.
> Norway Eyes Partial Ban of Smart Glasses
I see what you did there.
So a Smart Monocle is ok?
Why isn't the publishing of the captured video banned? If you want to upload content involving someone else (not just in the background) in it then you should need consent.
This is short-sighted; smart contacts are viable.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-51137379
Pun intended?
Laws will seldom work 100% of the time, but I profoundly disagree with your implied attitude. "They don't cover this future case, so we shouldn't do anything now".
Do they have cameras and recording?
How is different from another device ? Phone, digital camera, etc .. someone can use that for taking the same photo ..
Is it the added convenience of the glasses?
It's like treating concealed carry of a weapon differently than open carry. I think it's reasonable to say "you can do this in public but only if it's clear to other people that you're doing it".
Targeting smart glasses specifically seems to narrow though, because there are obviously many other ways to carry around a hidden camera in public, like one disguised as a pen in your pocket or something.
I think it's because it's more plainly obvious if someone is taking photo if they're lifting up a phone to do it. Someone taking a photo with glasses can be done more covertly.
It’s easy to see if someone has a phone or camera pointed at you. If someone’s looking in your direction while wearing glasses, you would not typically expect them to be recording you.
There's a big difference between holding up a phone and taking a picture and just... existing with glasses and having everything recorded without your knowledge.
People care more about the illusion of privacy than actual privacy itself.
Even if we banned smart glasses, we'd still see ever-expanding networks of privately owned cameras that record every movement you make. We'd still have networks of ring cameras and similar devices. We'll still have ever-increasing use of AI to sort and categorise the content.
Privacy is dead. Smart glasses are just an uncomfortable reminder of this fact, and banning them without addressing the over-arching issue is similar to sticking our collective head in the sand.
Privacy doomerism sucks. You can fight (and win) some battles without winning everywhere—in fact that’s how life works in general.
Just because we haven’t yet beaten ALPRs doesn’t mean I want some dickhead recording me at a hot spring without me knowing. Having both things to deal with is worse than having just one.
I don't understand how this question can be asked in good faith?
If you have to defend smart glasses based on a technicality, that doesn't reflect very well on the glasses.
Smart glasses that were clearly designed and visible were odious and shunned, so Meta (et al) have developed covert designs instead.
It's the same as a buttonhole camera used for spying. The differentiator (vs a phone or SLR or similar) is that its primary function is concealed.
A temporary measure. Knowing the current regime they will use years & millions on comittees, reports, reviews, expert groups and all kinds of bureaucratic wage labor I don't have english vocabulary for. And then, the EU, which we a not a member of, decides everything behind our back.
> The ban could apply to parks, beaches, museums, shopping centres, schools, daycare centres, healthcare facilities, gyms and public events.
True - many places where photography and video recording by people and organizations is already done on a broad scale with both smartphones and infrastructure cameras.
> "We do not want a society where people worry about being recorded without their knowledge, photographed, or filmed in places and situations where they are accustomed to not being monitored"
... I think we're gonna need a bigger ban
This seems similar to how much of East Asia requires a “click” sound from camera apps, to prevent surreptitious photos, or how some US states require both parties to consent when recording audio of a conversation. There’s plenty of precedent for privacy laws related to public recording, across the world. And they don’t have to be perfect—the goal is to limit access to casual snooping and creepshots, and to ensure that those who habitually violate privacy can be prosecuted if caught.
Just because you’re in public doesn’t mean it’s ok to take secret upskirt photos, film in the gym showers, etc. There actually is a certain level of privacy expected in public.
Edit: corrected SE Asia to East Asia.
Banning harmful behavior (like secretly recording someone) is pretty defensible and not all that controversial. Banning the mere possession of generic tools that could potentially be used to engage in harmful behavior is a lot more dubious. It requires infringing the rights of a bunch of innocent people merely because they might use that freedom to do something wrong.
I agree in part. Rather than a full ban, it makes more sense to require manufacturers to implement obnoxiously obvious “tells” (blinding LED plus sound perhaps), and to ban commercial businesses that remove these features. No need to ban possession. For DIY creepers a ban on the behavior is enough, they will get caught eventually.
The point is to ban widespread normalization of tools that make invasion of privacy easy. You can go find a shirt button spy cam on Aliexpress, but if you get caught wearing it then everyone knows what you’re up to. Wearing one in certain places could be taken as criminal intent.
(I don’t think restrictions like this would work in the US without an amendment, but I think we’re long overdue for a privacy amendment to clarify some things.)
The obvious solution is to have them behave like drones - where their behavior is geofenced.
Only issue with that is that enforcing it requires you to make open source smart glasses illegal, since open source software cannot be used to coerce users the way closed-source software can.
Perfect enforcement isn’t required, the intent is to prevent normalization. Laws against murder don’t prevent all murders either.
Someone wearing weird 3D printed camera glasses is going to be obvious. Someone with the skill to disassemble a tiny glued together smart glass frame, bypass any hardware protections, and flash a custom OS will be rare, and they’ll get caught anyway when they “accidentally” wander into the women’s locker for the third time.
> This seems similar to how much of SE Asia requires a “click” sound from camera apps
I live in "SE Asia" - specifically Vietnam - and I've never heard of such a law. I just looked it up and the two countries that come up are Korea and Japan, neither of which are in SE Asia.
I guess you’re right, I always refer to them as SE Asia but it’s technically considered East Asia. Thanks for the correction.
Yeah, lets also ban smart phones, cameras and recording devices just in case.
Somebody check this guy’s camera roll
Apple already did....hehehe...
I 100% agree with this outlook. People that have ignored encroaching surveillance for decades at this point are finally concerned once we start suggesting we literally strap them to the face of a sizeable chunk of the population.
Personally, I gave up years ago. People don't care about actual privacy, they just care about the illusion of it.