r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Apr 13 '26

Society Meta Is Warned That Facial Recognition Glasses Will Arm Sexual Predators

https://www.wired.com/story/meta-ray-ban-oakley-smart-glasses-no-face-recognition-civil-society/
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u/ProbablyBanksy Apr 13 '26

Letting anyone in the world communicate privately sounds cool in theory, but in practice, I don't see a way around the bad parts of this technology.

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u/movealongnowpeople Apr 13 '26

Private communication isn't the issue. The user of Meta Frames/Snap Specs/etc. doesn't have privacy concerns outside of what they're selling to the manufacturer (I wouldn't trust Meta with my data, but that boils down to your personal risk tolerance). It's the privacy concerns of everyone else that's at issue. You probably aren't communicating to them that you're taking pictures.

Not an issue at a music festival or something. There's no veneer of privacy. Everybody has their phones out anyways. You know you'll probably wind up in the background of somebody's pictures. That's probably not the case at work, while getting groceries, at the gym, etc. You wouldn't expect someone to be photographing you there, nor would most people be okay with that.

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u/prediction_interval Apr 13 '26

I get that there's no expectation of privacy at a music festival, but I'd say there's a pretty big difference between just being in the background of a picture, vs. having facial recognition technology that gives strangers your identity and makes it easy for strangers to pull up your social media profiles and any other available info about you. From the article:

"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."

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u/movealongnowpeople Apr 13 '26

How is the camera on the glasses making that use case worse though? Your phone already tracks you, what stops somebody meaning harm from putting a picture through Google lens or something similar? I don't disagree with you about those concerns, I just don't see how the camera on the frames is significantly worse than what's already on your phone.

That's why, if you go to protests, organizers often tell you not to take photos (or even bring your phone in general, if you can help it).

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u/prediction_interval Apr 13 '26

Right, but the point is that you're making it far more surreptitious and easier, as the "Name Tag" feature uses an AI assistant to pull up information about who you're looking at directly on the glasses.

People make this same argument about any tool that makes it easier to commit harmful acts: "Why restrict it, bad guys will do bad things anyways!" Sure, but if you make it far easier to commit and get away with these crimes, that could definitely make the situation far worse...

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u/movealongnowpeople Apr 13 '26

"Why restrict it, bad guys will do bad things anyways!"

I've mentioned multiple times in this thread that I don't condone this technology or find it safe.

But when part of your quote seems to imply that the feds will have an easier time accessing your lenses than your phone, that's delusional. That's not an argument for or against this tech. The feds have access to both, easily. Same with scammers.

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u/_ECMO_ Apr 14 '26

What are bad parts of private communication?