I am a tech worker, and I go to many events. At these events, I often see people with dystopian eyewear, like the Rayban glasses that are recording, and the snapchat ones too. I know they aren’t nessesarily privacy violating, but I really do not like the idea of meta or snapchat having access to my facial data and location. Would wearing privacy ir blocking glasses, like the reflectacles, actually have any effect? If so, is there other options other than reflectacles? Can I make my own at home? If so, how?
Off topic: Thank you so much. I have been browsing this site for years without making an account, but I finally have something I would like to contribute.
1 Like
A hat would be enough in most cases, no?
I don’t have the technical knowledge to judge how well that works, but we’ll know it works if governments try to make it illegal.
The UK government wants to make it illegal to wear a mask to a protest, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to make any counter-facial-recognition gear illegal as well.
2 Likes
Can’t speak to IR blocking glasses and their effectiveness against smartglasses. There’s already a lot of cameras in the world with some governments implementing facial recognition. I think the best you could do if you’re concerned is to try to cover your face and any identifying features.
In a post-COVID world it shouldn’t be suspicious to wear masks and if you’re outside you can pair it with other clothing to better conceal yourself. However, face coverings are being criminalized in some parts of the world which is extremely troublesome.
The issue I see with those glasses is the type of facial recognition they claim to fight against i.e. iPhone Face ID, iris recognition requires the sensor to be very close to your face. It seems like they’re fighting specifically against the technology you use to authenticate your personal devices and not the type of mass-deployed non-consensual facial recognition being deployed by governments.
I can’t really see privacy glasses being all that useful in general as they’re only blocking your eyes, which would only be used either for authenticating your personal devices in which case you would need to take them off anyway or some kind of forced biometric submission from the police or something in which case you’d also be forced to take them off. The most I could see these doing against passive surveillance is maybe hiding your real eye color.
1 Like
That’s interesting. I haven’t been looking out for them but I haven’t noticed any. I myself am curious, how prevalent are these smartglasses (dystopian eyewear) these days?
I struggle to imagine situations where smartglasses are not privacy violating, other than using them in places where everyone in sight or in microphone range of the smartglasses consents to it being used in their presence.
My guess is they have some effect when and only when (depending on angles) it reflects enough light back at facial recognition cameras or blocks iris and retina scanning or conceal eye color. However I don’t know if iris/retina scanning at range is a realistic attack. IMO if you’re already concerned enough about facial recognition to want reflectacles, it might be time to focus on protecting other biometric and non-biometric features like other parts of the face, gait, body dimensions, voice, objects you frequently carry, Bluetooth, MAC address etc. in ways you can without receiving repression. For example