Ask HN: How to prevent Apple Vision Pro users from filming you?
Apple Vision Pro headset is out and soon these headset users will be swarming the streets. In a way Apple Vision Pro are very sophisticated spy glasses. Shouldn't there be a standard way to enforce 'do not film' policy? Like a QR code that would work as 'robots.txt' and would inform smart glasses that you don't agree to be filmed?
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 48.1 ms ] threadYou’ve got a strong signal you might be filmed with the Vision Pro in the form of a gigantic headset, if you’re that worried avoid people with them on.
Not particularly relevant to the question here, but worth mentioning that there are exceptions for places with an expectation of privacy, such as bathrooms and lodging rentals (hotel rooms, interior space of an Airbnb, etc.).
Aka real-life "do not track" header ?
It uses cloud facial recognition and emotion analysis to identify people who will likely run away at the sight of a Vision Pro, and lays out a perfect AR intercept course for the wearer. Eventually it builds up a database of runaway targets and will notify you if one is detected nearby. If you catch them faster than the last wearer did, you get on the leaderboard.
Second, I doubt these will be flooding the streets any time soon., but yes eventually when the cost is lower and technology is more matured.
Third, we're already being filmed by corporate America. Door bell cameras, car cameras, people's phones and online image/video services, and just general corporate surveillance.
Sadly the cat's out of the bag so to speak and aside from wearing anti-recording clothing I don't think there's yet a practical way out of being surveilled.
What will the regulations be?
How do you get the government to want to implement such policies?
How do you enforce them?
How do you get around corporate lobbying against changes to their business operations?
1. A standard appears to communicate that you don't want to be filmed (let's say QR code) 2. Some consumer-friendly company follows to implement it 3. EU publishes a directive in Europe for devices to respect this requirement (with some exceptions for security surveillance, etc) 4. Eventually even some of USA companies follow on with this practise
Perhaps there is a way to create clothing that when viewed by the human eye appears "normal" but then when viewed by a camera will appear highly offensive and perhaps even contain keywords that big platforms will go out of their way to censor.
Maybe it's a dumb direction to think on my part or a dumb idea in general, I don't know.
What I do wonder is how private space owners will deal with AR/VR.
One of the minor themes is old people obsessively, aggressively filming everything in public.
Note how well "robots.txt" works: the problem is bad actors tend not to follow "social convention" rules like that. The people that do adhere to such rules are probably not going to be the worrisome agents, anyway.
Furthermore; the laws are already ahead of you: if a store's surveillance video is requested by a court, and it has blocked out the people wearing "don't see me" codes; ... who does the court hold has destroyed evidence? Store owner that turned the feature on? Vendor that enabled it? Person who wore a mask with the activating code?
https://www.ray-ban.com/canada/en/rayban-meta-smart-glasses
I'm not saying that to belittle, I'm just wondering what you perceive the difference to actually be.
Thats insane. Anyway the whole point is moot because you can’t wear it out and about. It has boundary limits
And that's not counting other wearable cameras, such as the Meta RayBans mentioned elsewhere in this conversation.
IR LED laden accessories will probably be your best bet.
Yes, we're being spied on everywhere. But that in no way means that it's pointless to avoid it wherever we can.
I actually wonder if some kind of post processing could be used to remove people from videos/pictures but that would require some kind of registry which causes its own problems
I don't think anybody thinks that the Apple Vision Pro is going to be used out in public like that, and it makes no attempt to disguise what it is. Whereas Google Glass was intended to look like a pair of glasses and be used out in public.
It's perfectly reasonable to try to minimize how much you're being spied on even if you can't completely stop it. You do what you can.
I still do.
Simply get legislation passed that requires Apple scan all VP imagery and scrub your registered Facial ID from every repository. They'll need to create a Gait ID for videos and you'll need to register that.
What about this $3k product will make people go out in droves and buy it, to then go and use it in the streets? What killer app will convince people that it's OK to wear this when they are going out in public?
So for many common situations, the most you could do is make a polite request stating your preferences, without any expectation that it'd be enforced, unless Apple just feels like it as a policy decision.
Why the specific mention of a very non-discrete device other than recency? Calling them “very sophisticated spyglasses” makes it hard to take this seriously. Even though mass surveillance is very much an important topic of discussion.