Meanwhile there’s rumours of Apple working on airpods with built-in cameras 👀
Cameras that don’t record are arguably more akin to sensors?
It really depends on how the circuit is built. If the image processing is a separate circuit that only sends commands to the main unit, it’s fine.
If the cameras send the image data to the phone for processing, it changes things quite a bit from a privacy and security standpoint.
Another question is the resolution of the sensor. If it’s something like 128x128px, it’s not a big deal.
Good! These have no business being on the market. I don’t get people wanting to be walking surveillance cameras and war drivers for private companies. And pay for it…
I work with someone who bought a pair. He’s from south-east Asia though and I think opinions on technology aren’t the same as in the west yet. He likes them for when he goes travelling to get highlights from his trip. But says he’d be uncomfortable wearing them doing anything other than some kind of activity in the UK.
So me I actually mind less about someone recording me, than meta having access to the footage of everyone that has a pair. That’s the thing I can never get past.
Yeah the use case I see for these is literally having a record of your trip or vacation without having to take out a camera or phone and bring you out of the natural experience just to snap a photo or video. You can just exist and experience it in the moment, then pull a recording or photo from it later.
Augmented reality is another, albeit smaller, use case. Like displaying navigation when walking or biking around an unfamiliar city, again without having to pull out your phone.
You’re in public, there are hundreds of cameras recording you and your surroundings at any point. Nearly every store has security cameras, cities have cameras monitoring nearly every intersection nowadays(not even including things like Flock, just the old dumb traffic monitoring cameras). You have control of absolutely none of those recordings at any point. And that doesn’t even get into vloggers, tourists, etc.
You See, Not everyone lives in a dystopian surveillance dictatorship. At least for now. As far as im concerned, the “others are already doing it so what’s the harm” argument is not valid. Meta is a private company. They already use their shit app to track the offline connections anyone with Facebook/Instagram installed has and record everything from SSIDa to BT beacons and connect the data with multiple sources. Having a surveillance camera mounted on someone’s head that can send a live feed non-stop to a private company is not the same as someone blogging or taking a picture with a phone of a camera. You can see those actions and take appropriate actions. The way disabling the recording light is advertised as a service gives us a peek on the most practical use case for the actual consumer: being a creepy little fuck. Glassholes were the beginning, but at least you could spot them easily.
