Should smart glasses blur your face by default? Australia's tech watchdog thinks so
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/should-smart-glasses-blur-your-face-by-default-australias-tech-watchdog-thinks-so/mstu307hdOpen linkView original on programming.dev
20 replies
The pervert glasses will first run object detection, detect your face and then blur it.
Soooooo...
Alternative suggestion: they should be banned.
Nah nah; crikey. We’ll just make ‘em promise to do the blurring first! Then, nobody gets their feelings hurt, mate.
Oooor.. hear me out. Ban smart glasses, excepting with very limited uses for helping disabled folks
No. They should be banned completely.
We all need to normalize walking out of meetings and other social engagements when we see these in public. Make them feel weird for wearing it. If in a professional setting: "I'm sorry I'm not comfortable proceeding with this conversation / meeting while being recorded"... "They arnt recording"...."There is no way for me to fully verify that. I would be happy to continue if they are put away, otherwise we will need to postpone."
And then stick to your boundaries.
Has there ever been any intelligent thought coming from Australian governments/politicians/authorities that has anything to do with technology? Just wondering because isn't this the same country where a leading politician once said that the laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only laws that apply in Australia are those of Australia...
Hint: Something like this can only be enforced if you ban smart glasses on which the user can install any software they like (e.g. free and open source software). And if you go down that route, what is stopping governments from doing the same thing to other computers too?
Very, very few Aussie politicians have ever understood technology to a degree necessary to legislate about it. We’ve had a handful of independent Members and Senators who show real interest and understanding (like former AFL legend David Pocock) but they’re definitely an extremely small minority. We produce some amazing technologies, especially medical tech and quantum computing where we’re world-leading, but our best and brightest very rarely ever end up in government. As an Aussie tech and privacy enthusiast it can be supremely frustrating.
Eh, ok. And how will this work exactly?
The glasses will record everyone, send their faces to a third party or government server...
(to check 'blur or not, of course, of course, nothing else. And then we'll delete them again - pinky promise!)
Ah yes. For privacy.
My degoogled phone's open source camera app (with no internet access) detects faces instantly and locally
Yes, detecting whether something is a face wouldn't be a problem. You can just just use the FaceDetect api on android.
Thought then after you detect a face, you still have to decide - is this a face to blur? If you have some sort of database for that, you'll still have to some face identifier there to check if it's whitelisted or not
No. Blur every face.
The only issue I see is that people who wear tech to avoid facial recognition will be the only heads that aren't blurred.
This could be done on the device, for example the Android app ObscuraCam has automatic face detection.
It can, but that would ruin Facebook's bottom line
Smartglasses shouldn't my face. At all.
Why do they need cameras to begin with? Wtf are these even for? They failed miserably last time around, why are the tech companies trying again?
Maybe we could just blur the vision of all the users
You think it can not recognize your walk or voice or what?
It really seems like tech "journalists" and tech "watchdogs" don't know shit about tech. Something offensive (as in vs. defensive) isn't a reasonable solution in any way.
Someone will make a hack to unblur faces and it'll be back to square 1.
Ah yes, make them useless for filming police abuse, great idea.