Strümke: Seriously, what’s wrong with us?

Meta's smart glasses, sold by Oakley and Ray-Ban, include a hidden facial recognition feature called NameTag that can identify unsuspecting individuals, raising privacy concerns. The feature was removed from the app after negative reactions, but it had already been installed on around 50 million smartphones. The author, Strümke, argues that consumer power is insufficient to address such privacy invasions.

Strümke: Seriously, what’s wrong with us? When Meta glasses can turn individuals into surveillance robots that film and identify unsuspecting individuals, consumer power is not enough. Opinions expressed in Viewpoints are the author’s own. The other day I spotted Meta glasses for sale at the optician’s office. They were displayed on the wall with the rest of the eyeglasses, stating that they could be included as part of an eyewear subscription. Now, I already knew that Meta glasses were available in Norway, so I don’t know why I reacted so strongly. But I haven’t regained my resting heart rate since. Seriously, what is wrong with us? Why on earth do we allow a product on the market that could have been taken from an episode of the Black Mirror science fiction series? You might also like: Boycott unethical AI companies – and do it now A privacy nightmare First, a brief introduction: Meta glasses are special eyewear made by Oakley and Ray-Ban – with a lot of extra functionality. They look like regular glasses, but are equipped with a camera and microphone. You can control them with your voice, take photos and videos, play audio and phone calls directly, and translate between languages in real time. The glasses have an AI assistant that answers questions, including about what the camera sees. They can work with fitness apps, too. Unfortunately, the Meta glasses also pose a privacy nightmare. In short, Meta glasses can make everyday life easier and give the user an augmented reality experience. Unfortunately, the Meta glasses also pose a privacy nightmare. Recently, it was revealed that Meta had discreetly embedded hidden facial recognition functionality in the app that comes with the glasses. The functionality is called NameTag. It is designed to transform images of faces captured by the glasses into biometric signatures that are easy to compare. Here’s how it works: You walk around wearing the glasses, and they take a picture of a person. The glasses recognize the person’s face, and a database stored on the user’s phone is used to find the person’s identity. This database is updated from Meta’s servers. Once the person has been identified, the AI assistant can, for example, find all available information about the person. The glasses in question have already been nicknamed ‘pervert glasses.’ When the NameTag functionality became known and met with negative reactions, it was quickly removed from the app – after it had been installed on around 50 million smartphones. The glasses in question have already been nicknamed ‘pervert glasses’ due to several reports of users filming unsuspecting women in public and uploading the videos to the internet. Since the glasses look like regular glasses, it is almost impossible for the person being filmed to know what is going on. Meta’s role Personally, I struggle to understand how this can be legal, but I’ll try my hand as an armchair lawyer. It all depends on how Meta’s role is defined. As the manufacturer of the glasses, they can hardly be held any more liable than Kodak could be held liable for filming an assault with one of their cameras. Then we move on to the photo’s use: Perhaps using Meta glasses in public spaces is okay in the same way that taking a picture with your mobile phone in the public square without getting permission from everyone who ends up in the background is permitted, as long as the picture is only for private use. Finally, data processing comes into play, and here I’m acting as a defence lawyer. As the recording moves along, from the glasses to the app on the phone, and from there into Meta’s cloud servers, Meta has switched to data processing. Meta sends recordings of people going to the bathroom, undressing and having sex. According to Meta’s terms of service, images and video recordings may be used to train AI models and sent to human employees. There are examples of this very action. Earlier this year, Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten revealed that Meta is sending recordings of people going to the bathroom, undressing and having sex to workers in Kenya. Whether this is legal is currently on the table of the European Commission the General Data Protection Regulation is an EU law. Functionality just needs to be turned on Let’s return to facial recognition, which for the record, Meta is not carrying out as of today. In terms of privacy, a person ending up in the background of a photo in a public space is something completely different than analysing an image for the purpose of identifying individuals. The EU requires bystander consent for this. The American facial recognition company Clearview AI, for example, was fined tens of millions of euros for failing to comply with EU privacy requirements. The question of legality will therefore arise when Meta eventually rolls out facial recognition features. Given that the functionality already exists, they just need to turn it on. Meta says they haven’t decided whether to enable facial recognition, and that they are not building a database of faces. It does seem strange that they have created a feature that they might not intend to use, but of course we can’t know what the company will decide to do. However, an internal memo suggests that they have discussed launching the functionality only when critics are distracted by political turmoil in the USA . You might also like: The danger of AI is that’s so good, you simply can’t resist https://norwegianscitechnews.com/2024/09/ai-ok/ The limits of what we accept What we do know, however, is that technology shapes society, and that it only takes a frighteningly short time for human beings to get used to just about anything. To date, Meta has a very poor track record when it comes to taking threats to security and privacy seriously. Do we want to take the chance of getting used to people walking around wearing glasses that may or may not recognize the face of absolutely everyone in a public space? To date, Meta has a very poor track record when it comes to taking threats to security and privacy seriously. When it comes to technology that will push the boundaries of what we accept and thereby change society forever, we have to create a high bar and be willing to put our foot down. We can actually say no to development we don’t want. I can already hear the reply on the horizon: “We can’t ban everything we don’t like.” True, but we can actually say no to development we don’t want. With social media, we were way too passive and too late, and now we are struggling to clean up after the enormous damage that recommendation-driven, addictive platforms with zero moderation or age controls have caused and are still causing to society. Political leadership needed The faster development progresses, the faster our system must be able to react. The more powerful the technology is, the clearer a stance we must be able to take. And when technology can turn individuals into surveillance robots that record and identify unsuspecting individuals, consumer power is not enough. It doesn’t matter if 99 percent of Norway’s population finds this technology repulsive as long as there is a small percentage who want to use it. This is the kind of issue that needs political leadership and politicians who dare to be normative, that is, to take a stand on how we want society to develop, not in the long term, but today. We should ban today’s generation of Meta-glasses. Let me emphasize: Technology that expands reality would be really cool. Imagine being able to walk around and receive relevant information straight into your ears and field of vision – for navigation, translation, entertainment, and information. And precisely because such technology has the potential to be absolutely fantastic, and because we want the fantastic, we must be able to reject the unfantastic. We should ban today’s generation of Meta-glasses. This opinion piece was first published in Aftenposten.