Seems like this could be an interesting article but all I get at that link is the infinite spinner. How come does an article about surveillance require JavaScript to be enabled? JavaScript is one of the key enablers of surveillance.
As someone who works in AR, the potential downsides of AR worry me.
One the plus side we can make the blind see and the deaf hear. We can keep dementia patients safe, and I can find my fucking keys.
Also AR porn is going to be wild.
However, we really have to interrogate the technology it's self.
Ar needs hyper accurate location to work. This means both SLAM and off device location services.
To make the location services work we need a global database of visual keypoints to allow devices figure out their position to the nearest MM. We are not far away from that now. (google have already launched a service in google maps.)
This means that any picture taken in public, or in view of windows, will leak your location.
What I worry about most is Apps that might be allowed to run on these glasses.
With mm level location services, and onboard acceleration for face detection and recognition, its trivial for an app maker to create a Uber stalking app.
You are making a big leap between using this at home and using it on the go. For one thing, nobody has battery technology good enough to allow someone to walk around with a headset on for the entire day.
This claim of yours to mm accuracy needed leading to mass surveillance is a figment of an over active imagination. Will there eventually be googles on everyone and tracking for those? Yes, probably when we have nuclear batteries. Will we have other privacy invading tactics wielded against us by more unethical corporations in the meantime? You bet.
> For one thing, nobody has battery technology good enough to allow someone to walk around with a headset on for the entire day
Facebook's project Aria does this now. Apple has a set of glasses in development that are more impressive and actually has screens. Google? fuck knows.
> This claim of yours to mm accuracy needed leading to mass surveillance is a figment of an over active imagination
This is my professional area of interest. Sadly its your imagination that's letting you down. Google and Apple know where you are at all times. As does your phone service provider. An app _can_ steal your location, but that's fairly obvious, or not very accurate. This is because your phone's location is only accurate when either using GPS, or lots of post processing by your service provider. All of which sucks power.
AR _requires_ that location services fit in a budget of <250mw. You can't have AR without visual positioning. You can't have visual positioning without a database of key points.
Once you have a database of keypoints, anybody can geo locate a picture within 5 minutes, automatically. This means that even if the AR glasses app blocks out precise location, its trivial to recover afterwards. This means that any app that runs on these glasses can trivially create it's own surveillance network. That is the risk.
> Will we have other privacy invading tactics wielded against us by more unethical corporations in the meantime?
I will copy and paste the article in the comments for anyone that does not want to enable javascript:
First articulated in a 1965 white paper by Ivan Sutherland, titled “The Ultimate Display,” augmented reality (AR) lay beyond our technical capacities for 50 years. That changed when smartphones began providing people with a combination of cheap sensors, powerful processors, and high-bandwidth networking—the trifecta needed for AR to generate its spatial illusions. Among today’s emerging technologies, AR stands out as particularly demanding—for computational power, for sensed data, and, I’d argue, for attention to the danger it poses.
Unlike virtual-reality (VR) gear, which creates for the user a completely synthetic experience, AR gear adds to the user’s perception of her environment. To do that effectively, AR systems need to know where in space the user is located. VR systems originally used expensive and fragile systems for tracking user movements from the outside in, often requiring external sensors to be set up in the room. But the new generation of VR accomplishes this through a set of techniques collectively known as simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). These systems harvest a rich stream of observational data—mostly from cameras affixed to the user’s headgear, but sometimes also from sonar, lidar, structured light, and time-of-flight sensors—using those measurements to update a continuously evolving model of the user’s spatial environment.
For safety’s sake, VR systems must be restricted to certain tightly constrained areas, lest someone blinded by VR goggles tumble down a staircase. AR doesn’t hide the real world, though, so people can use it anywhere. That’s important because the purpose of AR is to add helpful (or perhaps just entertaining) digital illusions to the user’s perceptions. But AR has a second, less appreciated, facet: It also functions as a sophisticated mobile surveillance system.
This second quality is what makes Facebook’s recent Project Aria experiment so unnerving. Nearly four years ago, Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s goal to create AR “spectacles”—consumer-grade devices that could one day rival the smartphone in utility and ubiquity. That’s a substantial technical ask, so Facebook’s research team has taken an incremental approach. Project Aria packs the sensors necessary for SLAM within a form factor that resembles a pair of sunglasses. Wearers collect copious amounts of data, which is fed back to Facebook for analysis. This information will presumably help the company to refine the design of an eventual Facebook AR product.
The concern here is obvious: When it comes to market in a few years, these glasses will transform their users into data-gathering minions for Facebook. Tens, then hundreds of millions of these AR spectacles will be mapping the contours of the world, along with all of its people, pets, possessions, and peccadilloes. The prospect of such intensive surveillance at planetary scale poses some tough questions about who will be doing all this watching and why.
To work well, AR must look through our eyes, see the world as we do, and record what it sees. There seems no way to avoid this hard reality of augmented reality. So we need to ask ourselves whether we’d really welcome such pervasive monitoring, why we should trust AR providers not to misuse the information they collect, or how they can earn our trust. Sadly, there’s not been a lot of consideration of such questions in our rush to embrace technology’s next big thing. But it still remains within our power to decide when we might allow such surveillance—and to permit it only when necessary.
This article appears in the January 2021 print issue as “AR’s Prying Eyes.”
What Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the mindlessly ambitious spectrum of the population really need is AR/VR spectacles that tell they every 2 minutes that they already own the whole world. Maybe the rest of us will get some peace.
Many thanks for posting that. It was a very interesting read.
> Wearers collect copious amounts of data, which is fed back to Facebook for analysis.
Wow. That is scary on so many levels.
> So we need to ask ourselves whether we’d really welcome such pervasive monitoring, why we should trust AR providers not to misuse the information they collect, or how they can earn our trust.
1. We shouldn't welcome it until we have full control of our consent for AR provider to acquire our personal information.
2. We shouldn't trust AR providers to not misuse the information they collect! They will definitely misuse it even if they're asked not to by legislators.
3. To earn our trust, they need to grant us full control of our personal data.
If you use software to guide and support you in any environment and it's not free software (free as in speech, and as in the definition provided by the FSF), then even though that non-free software may provide you with short-term benefits (that may be worth it), you've given up some of your autonomy to another party.
People will downplay that aspect of software all the time - "proprietary software is good for business thanks to support contracts", "people don't care as long as the software works", "free software has poor usability". That's understandable and those are beliefs that those people usually genuinely hold, but it doesn't change the underlying principle of the situation.
(this generally applies to hardware and computing platforms too)
I wonder if in the AR age this decade might end up being defined as, LIDAR will become the de facto outward-mapping tool to preserve some semblance of privacy while still capturing enough to make it viable and valuable?
I wasn't familiar with Project Aria, as mentioned in the article. Searched for it, and found the facebook connect demo. I enjoyed that the demo'er was kind enough to refer to Aria as an Evil-lution @ 32 seconds in.
https://youtu.be/a0QVh5TJl3c?t=30
23 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 64.0 ms ] threadhttps://archive.is/ixk9X
One the plus side we can make the blind see and the deaf hear. We can keep dementia patients safe, and I can find my fucking keys.
Also AR porn is going to be wild.
However, we really have to interrogate the technology it's self.
Ar needs hyper accurate location to work. This means both SLAM and off device location services.
To make the location services work we need a global database of visual keypoints to allow devices figure out their position to the nearest MM. We are not far away from that now. (google have already launched a service in google maps.)
This means that any picture taken in public, or in view of windows, will leak your location.
What I worry about most is Apps that might be allowed to run on these glasses.
With mm level location services, and onboard acceleration for face detection and recognition, its trivial for an app maker to create a Uber stalking app.
This claim of yours to mm accuracy needed leading to mass surveillance is a figment of an over active imagination. Will there eventually be googles on everyone and tracking for those? Yes, probably when we have nuclear batteries. Will we have other privacy invading tactics wielded against us by more unethical corporations in the meantime? You bet.
I can barely keep my phone charged all day.
I would not rule that out, combating 2010 tech to 2020 tech.
Facebook's project Aria does this now. Apple has a set of glasses in development that are more impressive and actually has screens. Google? fuck knows.
> This claim of yours to mm accuracy needed leading to mass surveillance is a figment of an over active imagination
This is my professional area of interest. Sadly its your imagination that's letting you down. Google and Apple know where you are at all times. As does your phone service provider. An app _can_ steal your location, but that's fairly obvious, or not very accurate. This is because your phone's location is only accurate when either using GPS, or lots of post processing by your service provider. All of which sucks power.
AR _requires_ that location services fit in a budget of <250mw. You can't have AR without visual positioning. You can't have visual positioning without a database of key points.
Once you have a database of keypoints, anybody can geo locate a picture within 5 minutes, automatically. This means that even if the AR glasses app blocks out precise location, its trivial to recover afterwards. This means that any app that runs on these glasses can trivially create it's own surveillance network. That is the risk.
> Will we have other privacy invading tactics wielded against us by more unethical corporations in the meantime?
I'm specifically talking about AR, and AR only.
First articulated in a 1965 white paper by Ivan Sutherland, titled “The Ultimate Display,” augmented reality (AR) lay beyond our technical capacities for 50 years. That changed when smartphones began providing people with a combination of cheap sensors, powerful processors, and high-bandwidth networking—the trifecta needed for AR to generate its spatial illusions. Among today’s emerging technologies, AR stands out as particularly demanding—for computational power, for sensed data, and, I’d argue, for attention to the danger it poses. Unlike virtual-reality (VR) gear, which creates for the user a completely synthetic experience, AR gear adds to the user’s perception of her environment. To do that effectively, AR systems need to know where in space the user is located. VR systems originally used expensive and fragile systems for tracking user movements from the outside in, often requiring external sensors to be set up in the room. But the new generation of VR accomplishes this through a set of techniques collectively known as simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). These systems harvest a rich stream of observational data—mostly from cameras affixed to the user’s headgear, but sometimes also from sonar, lidar, structured light, and time-of-flight sensors—using those measurements to update a continuously evolving model of the user’s spatial environment. For safety’s sake, VR systems must be restricted to certain tightly constrained areas, lest someone blinded by VR goggles tumble down a staircase. AR doesn’t hide the real world, though, so people can use it anywhere. That’s important because the purpose of AR is to add helpful (or perhaps just entertaining) digital illusions to the user’s perceptions. But AR has a second, less appreciated, facet: It also functions as a sophisticated mobile surveillance system. This second quality is what makes Facebook’s recent Project Aria experiment so unnerving. Nearly four years ago, Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s goal to create AR “spectacles”—consumer-grade devices that could one day rival the smartphone in utility and ubiquity. That’s a substantial technical ask, so Facebook’s research team has taken an incremental approach. Project Aria packs the sensors necessary for SLAM within a form factor that resembles a pair of sunglasses. Wearers collect copious amounts of data, which is fed back to Facebook for analysis. This information will presumably help the company to refine the design of an eventual Facebook AR product. The concern here is obvious: When it comes to market in a few years, these glasses will transform their users into data-gathering minions for Facebook. Tens, then hundreds of millions of these AR spectacles will be mapping the contours of the world, along with all of its people, pets, possessions, and peccadilloes. The prospect of such intensive surveillance at planetary scale poses some tough questions about who will be doing all this watching and why. To work well, AR must look through our eyes, see the world as we do, and record what it sees. There seems no way to avoid this hard reality of augmented reality. So we need to ask ourselves whether we’d really welcome such pervasive monitoring, why we should trust AR providers not to misuse the information they collect, or how they can earn our trust. Sadly, there’s not been a lot of consideration of such questions in our rush to embrace technology’s next big thing. But it still remains within our power to decide when we might allow such surveillance—and to permit it only when necessary. This article appears in the January 2021 print issue as “AR’s Prying Eyes.”
If you use software to guide and support you in any environment and it's not free software (free as in speech, and as in the definition provided by the FSF), then even though that non-free software may provide you with short-term benefits (that may be worth it), you've given up some of your autonomy to another party.
People will downplay that aspect of software all the time - "proprietary software is good for business thanks to support contracts", "people don't care as long as the software works", "free software has poor usability". That's understandable and those are beliefs that those people usually genuinely hold, but it doesn't change the underlying principle of the situation.
(this generally applies to hardware and computing platforms too)
[1] - https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software
https://itif.org/publications/2020/12/14/how-address-privacy...
Edit to add: Also this from the EFF a couple of months ago.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/augmented-reality-must...
"Still Logged In: What AR and VR Can Learn from MMOs"
Raph Koster (lead designer of Ultima Online) gave a very good talk about this problem and the broader topic of VR/AR being used as a weapon.
I can think of numerous applications for small-unit military scenarios. Pointing out where your friendlies are in an overlay, etc.
But I don't see many use cases for day to day life. Construction site / management? Okay sure. But again, it seems limited.