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Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses

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Re: Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses

#91

I wish something like this existed that was completely offline. I'm face blind (prosopagnosia) so being able to feed an offline database photos of friends so it can recognise them would be great. Accessibility shouldn't require giving up privacy.

I find myself asking this every time a new software product is released. "Nice, but why can't this be usable without an account and a tether to the developer's cloud?"

Re: Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses

#92
post #34

I can't think of one single practical use case for this that would benefit my life, because, right behind the glasses I have my very own locally available facial recognition built in.

A lot of people are face blind (including me), and it's extremely embarrassing, especially when I'm supposed to remember a person's name. Wouldn't wear survialiance tech to try to fix it though.

A lot of people are face blind

3.08%, according to https://hms.harvard.edu/news/how-common-face-blindness

Re: Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses

#93
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tech's there. The genie can't be put back in the bottle, and it will only get cheaper and more invasive. Only question we have any control over is... do we want everyone to have it, or only govs and corps? There's a second-amendment-like argument here, imo, that is very hard to push back on - because at least this stuff doesn't kill people. I want every cop to be surrounded by five or six recording devices that t…

you're implying there is some kind of symmetry here, that facial recognition will empower individuals in a way to counteract the power given to governments and corporations. I should try to compile my own database of everyone's location? I fail to see how it helps me in any way

You as an individual? Probably not, but you could lobby your local government to, for instance, require any such dataset taken from information in the public be subject to the freedom of information act.

Re: Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses

#95

I wish something like this existed that was completely offline. I'm face blind (prosopagnosia) so being able to feed an offline database photos of friends so it can recognise them would be great. Accessibility shouldn't require giving up privacy.

Literally my thoughts. That would be so helpful, but I will not give any data-hungy company access to people around me.

I recently heard the best way to explain faceblindness: Apples.

Can you tell apples apart? Yes, sure, if you put two apples next to each other, they look similar, but there are differences.

But could you recognize that specific apple among 50 similar ones?

If an apple addressed you on the street, could you remember where you've seen it before?

That is how it feels to be faceblind.

There are workarounds, but they are context-dependent and error-prone.

That apple with red hair and a beard? Sure, that's the colleague from the office next door. But was that the same apple that waved to you in the city yesterday?

The only green apple among red ones? Easy to recognize. But only after some awkward misunderstandings you realize that there are two of them.

And changes of hairstyle are a real problem. I once wondered who that new colleague was during lunchbreak. I was about to ask her, when she said something (unrelated) and I recognized her voice. I had worked with her for 10 years, she had colored her hair.

Re: Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses

#96

Former Facebook wanker, who worked in research. 1) we were always told and legal always pushed back hard on anything face detecting.(ie haar cascade "this is a face" let alone actual this is dave/sally) 2) the FTC would audit us to make sure we weren't doing that kind of stuff 3) all of the research prototypes had inbuilt/inline face removers up until 2024(I left after that so I don't know when/if that changed) 3.1)…

Pure speculation, probably they finally figured out the correct legal ToS and privacy policy and everything else that made them feel confident + some regulatory/lawmaker discussions reached a certain point that they finally decided they could do it? Does that add up?

I think the ToS is lenient enough to get away with most things.

I suspect that its a two-fer,

1) zuckerberg has said "it must be done" as part of the AI push

1.1) it might be also that Wang has pushed to get that data, but thats a guess. I doubt he has that kind of sway

2) they've realised that the FTC isn't either capable, or they have bribed the right part of the government to avoid getting nailed.

The thing that gets me is the number of lawyers that are there, and the sheer amount of process that is there to stop this kind of thing happening requires Zuck to explicitly say "I WANT THIS" repeatedly.

Re: Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses

#97

They seem determined to make Chicago lawyers rich. [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_Information_Privacy_Act

That pertains to collecting biometric info, not end users of facial recognition services. From your link: > The BIPA requires companies doing business in Illinois to comply with a number of requirements pertaining to the collection and storage of biometric information. These include a requirement that companies: > Obtain consent from individuals if the company intends to collect or disclose their personal biometric i…

If you actually read the full text of the law, it states:

" "Biometric identifier” means a retina or iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, or scan of hand or face geometry. Biometric identifiers do not include writing samples, written signatures, photographs, human biological samples, [...] "

So if it's just pictures of faces, then it's okay. If, however, at any point in the pipeline the actual facial geometry is calculated or stored, that might be a violation.

Re: Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses

#98
post #61

Another case of really cool tech done badly. Imagine a world in which you could use facial recognition, have an instant summary in front of you you reminding you of someone's birthday, the names of their kids ... Then imagine that it wasn't tracked, recorded, saved, or tied into anything at all. Just a useful service, in service to only you. Thanks Meta et al, for pushing forward with this broken (for people) model o…

[flagged]

Sounds like I touched a nerve.

Re: Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses

#99

I'm in the position to make security policies at work, and one of them is that no smart glasses are allowed in the office. We will not be having workers aiming Facebook glasses at our screens showing confidential information. And along those lines, I can think of damn few scenarios where I'd be OK with someone using face recognition against me. Restaurants? It's not Facebook's business to know where I like to eat, pr…

while I agree with you I can definitely see women wearing it to "feel safe". during dark months women wear vests with lights on them. admittedly I have not seen any of them wear bodycams yet.

The big difference is that if a woman wears a camera to make her feel safer, she'll do it in a way that it's obvious she's recording. The whole point is to make potential attackers aware that they're being recorded. A gopro or a cell phone camera body mount works a lot better for this than meta glasses.
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