> 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 SE 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.)
Single party consent empowers those who are underhanded in uneven situations. For instance, the ability to secretly record my employer, who has far more resources than me, benefits me. I personally benefited in being able to defend myself by using single-party consent for audio recording, which helped me both avoid legal trouble and would have allowed me to offer more evidence had it ever come to actual legal action.
There are two sides to privacy laws, and the downside is not often discussed.
This phrasing seems odd, considering that those two countries are firmly in East Asia, and would not be considered as a part of SE Asia by any definition.
Well to me they’re part of an overall southeastern quadrant, with the northeastern quadrant occupied by Russia. It’s just how I think about things. If you divide it into eight directions plus a central region then it’s clearly East Asia, which is the common way to look at it.
It’s a habit of thought that I should break because it’s not really a common way to look at things, which makes communication difficult.
It might be how you think about things in your own mind but for many other people South East Asia as a region is a pretty commonly understood term with a fairly specific set of countries and basically considered to be the tropical part of Asia where it's always hot and humid. (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Myanmar, Brunei).
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.
Do we though, really? Because every single piece of technology that's been slowly eroding adults privacy is doing the same to children.
My argument isn't that we should let "the wrong people" setup their own camera, or strap cameras to their face and walk around, or whatever the next thing is to come along and record people with impunity.
My argument is that, if you want to solve a problem then address the actual problem. In this context, there's no way to know whether someone is a creep before they act on their creep-like nature, so the safest things to do for children is ban recording of all under 18's in public as a strict criminal offense. Security cameras, mobile phones, glasses, implants, whatever.
Today, the suggestion is wildly unthinkable as a complete overreaction, but in the 1990's there was a brief moment where that could have actually been the outcome, at least outside of the USA. I suspect if people knew then what it would look like today - even disregarding smart glasses altogether - that the opposition would have been stronger.
Is it weird that I'd be happier with that? Easier to spot and has a "we're bringing that shit back" vibe that goes well with a disruptive product. Certainly beats trying to pass them as glasses.
I would not recommend. Whenever a rambunctious youth acts against my well-founded advice, mine pops off and I must replace it quickly lest I miss any moment of the cricket match.
It's a partial ban of smart glasses, so presumably either the left lens or the right lens will be banned. That leaves a monocle, so it will definitely be OK.
Brilliant Labs was selling one for quite a while, but it looks like it was discontinued in favor of their new, more standard device https://docs.brilliant.xyz/monocle/monocle/
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.
The "democratic" processes in EU seems rather opaque and hidden from my point of view. Not like the rest of norwegian politics. Just ... here's the latest batch of out-of-touch decisions from Brussel.
It's not opaque so much as under-reported. It's under-reported because it's tedious.
I get weeklies about the machinations of my own country's parliament. It is almost entirely dull. The small amount of salacious action is seized upon by news outlets. Upshot: the plebs falsely believe they are informed.
The EU is like this but much more so. The vast amount of stuff is technical and boring. What you do read is likely removed from context and sexed-up to generate clicks. Does the EU do bass and stupid things? Yes. Is that what you're reading about? Unlikely, unless you're a politics junkie with a high tolerance for trade documents.
Norway chose to not join the EU but still be subject to many of its requirements. It can still change that - it can still seek to become a proper member, or it can seek to cut ties.
Exactly. Either way would be better. We have no vote but all the rules.
A couple of examples:
* We have one of the worlds best bottle deposit systems [1]. Now that the EU has made their rules. Norway has to spend tons of money regressing to a common system.
* Norway has good cleansing facilities for water/sewage. Now that the EU has made their decisions, based on research from urban regions of southern europe and the pollution of rivers, sparsely populated fjord communes of Norway dont know how the fuck they will pay for upgrades to their already modern systems, other than passing it on to an already strained population. (Norwegiens are not generally rich. Our state is rich. They use the money for investing in anything but Norway. Manhatten real estate is good. Norwegian roads or hospitals are not).
Let's not exaggerate though, we have some of the best roads in the world. I have driven many, many places. Even the small fjord roads on the west coast are well paved, signed, and lit.
And we're building one of the most advanced tunnels in the world (deepest, longest, most complex), between Stavanger and Haugesund.
I agree the state could be less frugal, but it's hardly poverty conditions. It's not perfect, no where ever is. But I grew up in an actually corrupt nation and region. It is not like that here.
For healthcare, I don't know what you mean either. Specialists for non-time sensitive matters can take a while, but anything immediate (cancer, acute emergencies), is some of the best healthcare on this planet, for free.
I saw family die in the US for our hospitals and healthcare. You have no idea how bad it is elsewhere if you think it's poor here.
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.
Is there though? I could walk around with my phone in my shirt pocket just recording everything and no one would be the wiser. And there's plenty of discrete camera options out there, not just smart glasses. Creepers gonna creep.
Trying to ban recording in public is silly. People just need to realize that they're probably being recorded in public. That cat has been out of the bag for many years now.
Consent or not, most laws allows that anyway. This is the publication that is usually limited and usually only in cases where people can be too easily recognized. These exceptions are a bit vague on purpose so that it is still easy to publish stuff without having to ask every single person you came accross in the street for their consent.
But the world has changed. For instance last year I recognized my father in a travel video published by a youtuber from another continent. You would have thought that it is no big deal if a latin american can record video of people in europe because its target audience is unlikely to recognize anyone. Yet here we are, people nowadays can have relatives, friends and or former colleagues spread all over the globe, or consuming content published online but targetting a public from very far away.
Until now it wasn't a big deal as it was still easy to spot someone recording a video from quite far and move away or hide your face. And we would rely on good old shame and citizen vigilance to spot people recording kids for example. "spy cameras" used to have such a crappy quality you couldn't do anything too bad without getting close and in good light. Now it becomes a bit complicated with these glasses.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In this example smart glasses are the equivalent of walking around pointing a gun. Obviously shooting the gun is the real issue but simply pointing it around alarms people and fatigues them to spotting a real threat.
Smart glasses should not be allowed to have a camera always pointed at people. If needed, let them integrate with a phone to use the camera which is much more visually obvious to people when it is being used.
If it were made illegal then news journalism, documentary filmmaking, sports broadcasting (crowds), street photography, and police-body camera footage would become extinct almost overnight.
The point is if you’re recording with a handheld device at least you can ensure there is some level of awareness to those around who can duck/signal they don’t want to be in it.
Because you need to do both. Recording creates material that can be damaging and distribution realizes that potential. Banning the first is more effective, banning the second should come with additional penalties because it proves you did the first and then went on to the second presumably willfully ignoring two different legal aspects, creation and distribution.
I'd like to see this framed as a ban on surreptitious recording, not specific to glasses. But it's a little hard to figure out exactly what the parameters should be.
You cant expect any privacy in public settings.... also what are the communities that banned these devices going to do once robots (very soon) become ubiquitous in our every day lives? robots need to have vision and will record everything... so they are just delaying the inevitable unless they go full amish in their communities which good luck with that....
Does anyone else remember in the early 2000s the concerns around privacy with cell phone cameras? [0][1][2][3]. How long until people feel the same way about camera glasses?
I was a student who would wear my Google Glass out and about (in the UK) and no one ever said anything negative. Of course, they might've looked at me and thought I was a glasshole. Most people I interacted with were intrigued by the novelty.
I protect my privacy, but I have no major problems with these smart glasses. Cameras are everywhere, if they don't want to accept cameras they need to stop the double morals. Law needs to be equal to everyone, not just because there is some high and mighty populist politician that doesn't understand technology or want to ensure that the core principles of protecting apply.
The current regulation is good enough; we don't need more regulation - if anything we should update the existing regulation to ensure we protect our privacy in critical and sensitive places.
we keep forgetting that having cameras readily available is not just a negative thing, it does help provide forensics material in cases where something happens.
that said, we can probably find common ground rules for using these - norwegians are best in class when it comes to adhering to rules and regulations.
> We do not want a society where people worry about being recorded without their knowledge
Isn't everyone already carrying an expensive wiretap around with them at all times anyway? Is the only difference that people don't know or care how their smartphone can be made to record everything they say and thus they don't worry?
These smart glasses could unravel some quite profound things about the populace that won't be shared with us. Maybe it's all about easing people into intrabody chips and brain interfaces.
92 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 18.5 ms ] threadTrue - 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
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.
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.)
There are two sides to privacy laws, and the downside is not often discussed.
This phrasing seems odd, considering that those two countries are firmly in East Asia, and would not be considered as a part of SE Asia by any definition.
It’s a habit of thought that I should break because it’s not really a common way to look at things, which makes communication difficult.
Personally, I gave up years ago. People don't care about actual privacy, they just care about the illusion of it.
Well except for America- there such creeps become pillars of the community.
My argument isn't that we should let "the wrong people" setup their own camera, or strap cameras to their face and walk around, or whatever the next thing is to come along and record people with impunity.
My argument is that, if you want to solve a problem then address the actual problem. In this context, there's no way to know whether someone is a creep before they act on their creep-like nature, so the safest things to do for children is ban recording of all under 18's in public as a strict criminal offense. Security cameras, mobile phones, glasses, implants, whatever.
Today, the suggestion is wildly unthinkable as a complete overreaction, but in the 1990's there was a brief moment where that could have actually been the outcome, at least outside of the USA. I suspect if people knew then what it would look like today - even disregarding smart glasses altogether - that the opposition would have been stronger.
I see what you did there.
https://wondermark.com/gentlemans-single-use-monocles/
I get weeklies about the machinations of my own country's parliament. It is almost entirely dull. The small amount of salacious action is seized upon by news outlets. Upshot: the plebs falsely believe they are informed.
The EU is like this but much more so. The vast amount of stuff is technical and boring. What you do read is likely removed from context and sexed-up to generate clicks. Does the EU do bass and stupid things? Yes. Is that what you're reading about? Unlikely, unless you're a politics junkie with a high tolerance for trade documents.
A couple of examples:
* We have one of the worlds best bottle deposit systems [1]. Now that the EU has made their rules. Norway has to spend tons of money regressing to a common system.
* Norway has good cleansing facilities for water/sewage. Now that the EU has made their decisions, based on research from urban regions of southern europe and the pollution of rivers, sparsely populated fjord communes of Norway dont know how the fuck they will pay for upgrades to their already modern systems, other than passing it on to an already strained population. (Norwegiens are not generally rich. Our state is rich. They use the money for investing in anything but Norway. Manhatten real estate is good. Norwegian roads or hospitals are not).
And we're building one of the most advanced tunnels in the world (deepest, longest, most complex), between Stavanger and Haugesund.
I agree the state could be less frugal, but it's hardly poverty conditions. It's not perfect, no where ever is. But I grew up in an actually corrupt nation and region. It is not like that here.
For healthcare, I don't know what you mean either. Specialists for non-time sensitive matters can take a while, but anything immediate (cancer, acute emergencies), is some of the best healthcare on this planet, for free.
I saw family die in the US for our hospitals and healthcare. You have no idea how bad it is elsewhere if you think it's poor here.
Is it the added convenience of the glasses?
Trying to ban recording in public is silly. People just need to realize that they're probably being recorded in public. That cat has been out of the bag for many years now.
And it's hard to call it consent when the alternative is never going in public which is infeasible for most people.
But the world has changed. For instance last year I recognized my father in a travel video published by a youtuber from another continent. You would have thought that it is no big deal if a latin american can record video of people in europe because its target audience is unlikely to recognize anyone. Yet here we are, people nowadays can have relatives, friends and or former colleagues spread all over the globe, or consuming content published online but targetting a public from very far away.
Until now it wasn't a big deal as it was still easy to spot someone recording a video from quite far and move away or hide your face. And we would rely on good old shame and citizen vigilance to spot people recording kids for example. "spy cameras" used to have such a crappy quality you couldn't do anything too bad without getting close and in good light. Now it becomes a bit complicated with these glasses.
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.
If you have to defend smart glasses based on a technicality, that doesn't reflect very well on the glasses.
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.
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.
Smart glasses should not be allowed to have a camera always pointed at people. If needed, let them integrate with a phone to use the camera which is much more visually obvious to people when it is being used.
The point is if you’re recording with a handheld device at least you can ensure there is some level of awareness to those around who can duck/signal they don’t want to be in it.
How can you do that with meta glasses?
Get real man.
https://www.adac.de/verkehr/recht/verkehrsvorschriften-deuts...
It could be, but that's a separate problem. Surreptitiously filming someone can be problematic even if the videos are kept private.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-51137379
I'm betting that the streaking has gone down as cameras have gone up.
[0] New Privacy Menace: Cell Phones? (2003): https://www.wired.com/2003/02/new-privacy-menace-cell-phones...
[1] More trouble for camera-phones (2003): https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2003/06/195-2/
[2] Camera Phones Raise Whole New Set of Privacy Issues (2004): https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/camera-phones-raise-w...
[3] Cam Phones, Go Home (2005): https://time.com/archive/6671091/cam-phones-go-home/
The current regulation is good enough; we don't need more regulation - if anything we should update the existing regulation to ensure we protect our privacy in critical and sensitive places.
we keep forgetting that having cameras readily available is not just a negative thing, it does help provide forensics material in cases where something happens.
that said, we can probably find common ground rules for using these - norwegians are best in class when it comes to adhering to rules and regulations.
Isn't everyone already carrying an expensive wiretap around with them at all times anyway? Is the only difference that people don't know or care how their smartphone can be made to record everything they say and thus they don't worry?