I would bet my money that there's a dozen lawyers at work, right now, in Meta's HQ, to get a sense of what options they have to harass, shut down, or do something else to the creator of this app. And I would also bet that Zuck is furious about it.
Somewhere deep in the central European woods, a lonely dev fights for his life, against a dead man switch. Accidentally, a NATO drone flattened his house into glass a week ago. Now, he evades drones, rabid lawyers, train accidents, Starlink honey traps, sudden internet blackouts of unknown origin, regular honey traps, poisoned whiskey, social media bans and dowvotes ...
... if you can find him, you can hire him, and restore privacy and sanity to your apps. he is ... the ZuckOff dev.-
Anyone can get a $5 bluetooth-capable ESP32 and set its bluetooth mac to one in the range used by smart glasses. Not sure why you'd do that though.
The other direction is trickier. You'd have to modify the firmware of the smart glasses to set a different mac, or at least gain arbitrary code execution with hardware access. That's well beyond what the average smart glass user will do
And at that point, it'd be mostly about the heads-up display anyways. Somebody who is determined to record you without your knowledge has far easier paths available to them. Just get one of those lighters or ear-rings or car key fobs with built-in camera
Reading this inspired me that it would be nice if there were a do-not-film-me standard: your mobile phone sends out a do-not-film-me request with a (rotating) hash of your facial biometrics via Bluetooth. All cameras (glasses, phones, etc.) then blur your face in recordings.
Similarly, a venue could request a do-not-film-this-venue setting and make sure no photos are taken at a party.
> All cameras (glasses, phones, etc.) then blur your face in recordings.
that requires too much goodwill and effort from the makers of such devices. They know their audience wouldn't want that. They don't give a shit about what people being filmed think.
Think about it some more. It's all fun and games, until same technology is used against you. There was literally a Black Mirror episode about this very thing.
There are just two makers of devices, Google and Apple, both proprietary and user hostile and they'll do anything the government tells them. Remember how quickly they implemented that covid tracking bullshit? Yeah.
Police unions would love for cameras to standardize on that.
There was an article on HN that one city's police force, when there were protests going on, took to playing Disney songs from loudspeakers; so that any recording of their interactions would be impossible to publish on any significant internet platform (or at least, the audio would be muted, by IP protection filters).
Sounds like a swift way to be included in "Need constant observation" list.
Or we can even build a special surveillance for such folks along with plausible Parallel construction scenario constantly refreshed.
Not too dissimilar to the Black Mirror episode "White Christmas" where you can block other people in real life. Except in this case it's glasses and in Black Mirror retinal implants. We're getting there.
Yes. And an app could render the same thing on your screen via the same tech currently used to robustly watermark generative AI image output, and now not only you won't be able to screenshot the app, you also won't be able to take a photo of it with another device, and on the off chance you found some pre-202X camera that still could, no other computer would display the resulting photo either.
Yes, let's keep coming with more of these great ideas.
To cut this short: the whole overall idea is just universal DRM writ large. A big, principled no fucking way, ever from me.
But what about the personal privacy / venue rights ...
That's a social problem, it should not be used as excuse to give unilateral control over other people's technology to groups or individuals with special interests.
Great idea, we could also have a standard in browsers that signals you don't want to be tracked. We could call it the "Do not track" header, short for DNT.
And what happens when some bad actor actively monitors for that signal and seeks out the people who have it? And why does it require carrying my surveillance device to tell others I don't want to be surveilled?
> All cameras (glasses, phones, etc.) then blur your face in recordings.
Rendering security cameras useless for identifying any criminals?
Maybe some of these commenters aren’t old enough to remember when fighting for your right to take photographs and videos in public places was one of the frequent topics in online places like Slashdot and BoingBoing. There have been waves of attempts to restrict freedoms to take photos in many countries. When they pass there’s a significant loss of personal rights and freedoms.
> Similarly, a venue could request a do-not-film-this-venue setting and make sure no photos are taken at a party.
Do you really want this? An off-button for all cameras nearby? Please purchase your official photographs from the gift shop or from the $5 Photo Booth.
This would be a dream for bad people who don’t want to be recorded or photographed doing something, like a bad police officer. Just keep a device around that broadcasts the “do not record at this venue” signal and you can shut down recordings all around.
First they filmed the celebrities, then the politicians, then the cops, then came the ring cameras. It was a slow erosion over decades, the justification drifting from "they are a public figure" to "they are standing near me"
I never knew why the paparazzi could harass celebrities and a few decades later we are all being secretly filmed for a Meta perv database.
A major factor is that the companies pushing for this technology are spending significant resources into making sure your consent isn't relevant. From this article [1] about Meta and smart glasses:
> Five years ago, Facebook shut down the facial recognition system for tagging people in photos on its social network, saying it wanted to find “the right balance” for a technology that raises privacy and legal concerns. Now it wants to bring facial recognition back.
> (…) The Silicon Valley company has been conferring since early last year about how to release a feature that carries “safety and privacy risks,” according to an internal document viewed by The New York Times. (…) Meta’s internal memo said the political tumult in the United States was good timing for the feature’s release.
> “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” according to the document from Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses.
> We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns
And if there's no dynamic political environment or fitting concerns to steal focus at hand, we'll sure as hell fund their creation.
1838 for still photography. Shortly after 1888 for movies.
Despite the pearl-clutching in this thread, filming rando strangers without consent has always been legal and socially accepted.
It's the prospect of being filmed frequently, and especially in more intimate situations than walking down the street, that is making people uneasy. Flock cameras agitate us because of the frequency of their use. Recording glasses enable the off-the-street problem.
I... don't know how I feel about this. I mean, the concept, sure, good idea. Is it reliable? Perhaps. But... I get a "buy merch" popup the moment I open the page, and there seems to be a pro option for what seems to be a very much LLM-aided app? ...IDK, rubs off a bit wrong IMO. Just my personal opinion.
We are going to have the organic label soon on apps with this mindset..AI assisted development is evolving by the day and at the rate most apps will be built that way..
I think this will go like this:
- Resistance. People don't like being "secretly" filmed.
- Most people will realise it does not affect their lives.
- People will ignore it
- New generation will accept as something normal to do. Everyone recording everyone.
the demo video really looks ai generated — several weird artifacts, but what bugs me the most is that at the end the alleged glasses-wearer goes through two men between whom clearly there is no space for a third person.
Dunno why I remembered "The Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi.
Basically, you had fine-grained control over what others perceived of you.
Your friends can see you completely, while strangers can only see a blur.
The 1st 2 were great but I didnt like the 3rd one. Its like the author was in a hurry to finish the book and just started killing characters to make his wordcount.
The 1st 2 are independent, I recommened people stop after 2nd book
So google can already figure out if you're being followed by an air tag, why can't they natively scan Bluetooth for smart glasses and do what zuckoff does without a third party app?
150 comments
[ 0.38 ms ] story [ 13.0 ms ] threadI would bet my money that there's a dozen lawyers at work, right now, in Meta's HQ, to get a sense of what options they have to harass, shut down, or do something else to the creator of this app. And I would also bet that Zuck is furious about it.
... if you can find him, you can hire him, and restore privacy and sanity to your apps. he is ... the ZuckOff dev.-
> Flags camera glasses by their manufacturer signature <
How is this guaranteed to be not spoofed?
The other direction is trickier. You'd have to modify the firmware of the smart glasses to set a different mac, or at least gain arbitrary code execution with hardware access. That's well beyond what the average smart glass user will do
And at that point, it'd be mostly about the heads-up display anyways. Somebody who is determined to record you without your knowledge has far easier paths available to them. Just get one of those lighters or ear-rings or car key fobs with built-in camera
Similarly, a venue could request a do-not-film-this-venue setting and make sure no photos are taken at a party.
that requires too much goodwill and effort from the makers of such devices. They know their audience wouldn't want that. They don't give a shit about what people being filmed think.
Think about it some more. It's all fun and games, until same technology is used against you. There was literally a Black Mirror episode about this very thing.
There was an article on HN that one city's police force, when there were protests going on, took to playing Disney songs from loudspeakers; so that any recording of their interactions would be impossible to publish on any significant internet platform (or at least, the audio would be muted, by IP protection filters).
Sounds like a swift way to be included in "Need constant observation" list. Or we can even build a special surveillance for such folks along with plausible Parallel construction scenario constantly refreshed.
Yes, let's keep coming with more of these great ideas.
To cut this short: the whole overall idea is just universal DRM writ large. A big, principled no fucking way, ever from me.
But what about the personal privacy / venue rights ...
That's a social problem, it should not be used as excuse to give unilateral control over other people's technology to groups or individuals with special interests.
Sounds… worse.
It would make sure no websites track you.
The idea was for concert venues display these on-stage to block smartphones from filming (and redirect users to iTunes purchases instead IIRC)
Rendering security cameras useless for identifying any criminals?
Maybe some of these commenters aren’t old enough to remember when fighting for your right to take photographs and videos in public places was one of the frequent topics in online places like Slashdot and BoingBoing. There have been waves of attempts to restrict freedoms to take photos in many countries. When they pass there’s a significant loss of personal rights and freedoms.
> Similarly, a venue could request a do-not-film-this-venue setting and make sure no photos are taken at a party.
Do you really want this? An off-button for all cameras nearby? Please purchase your official photographs from the gift shop or from the $5 Photo Booth.
This would be a dream for bad people who don’t want to be recorded or photographed doing something, like a bad police officer. Just keep a device around that broadcasts the “do not record at this venue” signal and you can shut down recordings all around.
I never knew why the paparazzi could harass celebrities and a few decades later we are all being secretly filmed for a Meta perv database.
> Five years ago, Facebook shut down the facial recognition system for tagging people in photos on its social network, saying it wanted to find “the right balance” for a technology that raises privacy and legal concerns. Now it wants to bring facial recognition back.
> (…) The Silicon Valley company has been conferring since early last year about how to release a feature that carries “safety and privacy risks,” according to an internal document viewed by The New York Times. (…) Meta’s internal memo said the political tumult in the United States was good timing for the feature’s release.
> “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” according to the document from Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-re... or https://archive.is/65Fze
And if there's no dynamic political environment or fitting concerns to steal focus at hand, we'll sure as hell fund their creation.
Incrementally, apathetically and often to gleeful offerings of tinfoil hats to those who pointed out previous steps and extrapolated them forth.
Despite the pearl-clutching in this thread, filming rando strangers without consent has always been legal and socially accepted.
It's the prospect of being filmed frequently, and especially in more intimate situations than walking down the street, that is making people uneasy. Flock cameras agitate us because of the frequency of their use. Recording glasses enable the off-the-street problem.
>Quiet is not proof that nobody is recording, and a detection is not proof that anyone is
Is such claudespeak it’s not even annoying it’s just funny at this point
Oh, the hypocrisy
We are going to have the organic label soon on apps with this mindset..AI assisted development is evolving by the day and at the rate most apps will be built that way..
HN is not that rational of a discussion form but there are some good articles/comments so worth being around.
the demo video really looks ai generated — several weird artifacts, but what bugs me the most is that at the end the alleged glasses-wearer goes through two men between whom clearly there is no space for a third person.
It was an amazing book.
This comment box is too small to contain the story.
* The Quantum Thief
* The Fractal Prince
* The Causal Angel
Actually, most of the story is on his WikiPedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannu_Rajaniemi
The 1st 2 are independent, I recommened people stop after 2nd book