Defcon is not the place I’d want to wear something like that and make myself a target. Of course, I’d be embarrassed to wear them anywhere, but afraid at Defcon.

Shit, I’d be scared to go anywhere near defcon with any device.

Eh, it’s not that bad

Random files appearing in the downloads folder on my phone has only happened once
¯\(ツ)/¯

Let me guess, it was an iPhone? Someone just used AirDrop and you might’ve allowed everyone sending you files.

It was Android :-) WiFi, NFC and BT turned off. It was Android 12 I believe, back in 2022.

That’s actually a bit frightening and the feeling of being violated would linger for a while.

My goodness, your username!?!

I think you might already know…

Did you use a “supplied” charger while there?

Nope - aware of juice jackers, so I only used my own cables and adapters (even have a USB condom).

I’m generally pretty security aware, but my only theory of how it landed there is some cellular exploit. Whether it was a crafted MMS, a custom cell site, or something else I don’t know.

I did use mobile data for some ubers, but that was off-site.

I’d go in with an abacus and a notepad.

“Hey, where’d all my beads go?!”

Suddenly your abacus explodes after 65,535 beads suddenly appear.

I was afraid walking into the room with the wall of sheeple just bc I was wearing a button down in spite of being the sole sponsor of the hackathon. I (as instructed) left my watch, phone, laptop etc at hotel and only brought locked down Chromebook and lived in sweaty terror every keystroke. All while they were stoked and loving the sponsor not just buying a logo, and sent me back with like 500 bucks in swag easily to share back home at the office. Still… Terror.

Fortunately most of the attendees are genuinely good folks, so generally what really happens is just that some data gets scraped and everybody has a bit of a laugh at one of the talks.

I know worse happens, I just think it’s worth mentioning it is actually a group of mostly awesome people.

I know worse happens

Such as? I don’t think I’ll ever attend this kind of event due to geographic and financial constraint.

And I can imagine just bringin my EOL android 12 and using it as is even only cellular is a pretty reckless, but if I just bring clean phone for emergency purpose it should be fine right?

I’m not saying that wrt phones only. But credit cards get skimmed and various other atm pranks. Loads of infrastructure takedowns. Zero days released into the wild with viruses attached. All sorts of shenanigans.

Honestly, they should not ban them, and then just low-key encourage enterprising attendees to pwn the devices and any attached accounts. That would be delightful.

This is the way tbh

It’s not 2006 anymore

What’s the matter? Jeremy’s macros too fast for ya?

Just saying there’s not a guarantee all versions will be crackable, the cost of having to deal with a bunch of those at the convention in perpetuity doesn’t seem worth the reward of dunking on a minority of them.

That makes sense. I thought you were commenting on the usage of the word ‘pwn’

I took it to mean that DEFCON is a different place in modern times, which is consistent with what I hear.

It’s maraudering time

When Google glass first premiered, I would, every once in a while, see someone wearing them in public and almost as often see them get punched in the face by some random passerby.

This is one of the very many reasons why I wish I was still living in New York City. I wanna see people wearing these pervert glasses get punched in the face once again.

Arrogant, entitled assholes are not going to learn that their arrogance and entitlement is unwelcome until they get their faces bashed in about it. Repeatedly. That’s why Google glass failed: Google realized that nobody wanted to see anyone wearing their shitty shitty pervert devices spying on everyone constantly. It wasn’t that they didn’t work. It’s that wearing their devices made their users a magnet for physical violence. Meta believes that they are immune to this consequence, and the public at large needs to remind them that THEY ARE NOT.

EDIT: I am not advocating violence, I am just serving a public reminder that acting like a disgusting pervert in public has consequences, and very well deserved consequences at that.

The difference is today 1a auditors will wear them to deliberately provoke that reaction because it will generate clicks.

The line between ‘1A auditor’ and ‘asshole’ was blurry enough already…

Man… Yesterday, I had never heard of “1A auditor”.

That was a good day.

r/thathappened

There were actually a bunch of news articles about this happening a lot at the time. Google it.

You live in a world. Stuff happens.

There seems to have been one incident reported in San Francisco

#doubt

Good for you

Listen, if something didn’t happen within 5 feet of me, then it didn’t happen.

I have decreed that all evidence otherwise must be brought to me for presentation, and you’ll also have to understand it for me, and after all that, I’ll have AI tell you that you’re wrong.

What evidence?

People don’t believe you because they are not the main character like you are, how could they ever understand?

Ok?

What is this comment? He didn’t even say he did it. Just saw articles about it. Grow up.

He didn’t say he did what? Your response doesn’t make any sense I think you’re lost.

At the time they were pretty useless though. Moreso than Meta’s ones. Some hipsters from Silicon Valley bought it following the fad but then found they can’t do anything with it.

Like, I guess I don’t understand why these damn things have a camera in the first place. At most they should be roughly equivalent to a smart watch - a display and some controls. Maybe bone-conducting headphones or something for audio. It’d be neat to have navigation prompts in glasses, for instance. Buy why a fucking camera?!

They tried that already and it bombed.

Yes this is the exact thing I’m interested in. Camera is definitely not something needed here. There are some like this on the market like the MemoMind. I’m waiting for one with progressive lens support like the Even Realities G2 but with audio added.

Part of me understands having a camera for AR lookups and such, and in my line of work a hands free camera would be amazing especially if I could pull the image back up on the glasses and zoom in on serial numbers etc, but I don’t trust Meta with being on my phone let alone having a live video feed from my eye line at all times.

More data for the data monster

I would LOVE to have a nice pair of camera glasses. I love my dashcam, I’m so excited when something crazy happens (that doesn’t involve me) so I can save the video to show to my partner. I’d loooove that while just walking around.

No fucking chance I want that device to have Internet access, absolutely not. I specifically got the best dashcam I could that has NO Bluetooth or WiFi capabilities, local storage only.

I fully see the value in having a hands-free camera while I’m walking around, exploring, people-watching, etc. but anything that I don’t have the control of where the data all goes is incredibly not bueno.

I’m walking around, exploring, people-watching, etc. but anything that I don’t have the control of where the data all goes

I think the ethical problem is that the people you’re watching don’t have any control over where that video go tbh

Nobody has any control over where dashcam videos go, or where videos we take with our phones go… but those are okay. If I put my phone on an armband or a shirt pocket and record, isn’t that basically the same thing as having camera glasses?

I’m fine with someone recording with a camera in public, that’s all cool. But I don’t wanna be anywhere near anything connected to Facebook. I don’t want my pictures there, or my words, or anything to do with me.

It hits a little differently if you’ve ever been a victim of sexual harassment.

If your put a camera anywhere on your person that surreptitiously records people without their consent, I think anyone has the right to presume you’re a pervert, and act accordingly

You’re not gonna believe this lul

I just feel differently. Another poster mentioned bathrooms though and that’s a very good point. If I ever did have a camera that recorded stuff I see locally like a dashcam, I’d take it off, turn it off, and put it in my bag before I entered a private-public space like that.

Yeah, but you can’t enter with your car in a public restroom.

That’s a very good point—if I went into a public restroom, I’d take camera glasses off and put them in my bag for sure.

I guess it depends on where you are from. Data protection is taken relatively seriously where I come from (Germany), and dashcams are heavily regulated (in theory). Dashcam footage must be non-continuous and triggered by specific events, e.g., a collision. It is not meant to be saved or archived without a valid reason.

I personally don’t want to be recorded. I dont have a choice in the matter with it not being illegal, but I’ll avoid people who are obviously recording when possible.

Can’t do much about people going out of their way to be discrete, but if they are trying to be discrete those people tend to be people who are aware others don’t like it but don’t care what others think.

But I don’t wanna be anywhere near anything connected to Facebook.

Same. That’s pretty much why. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t a Facebook device. People might be recording to upload to facebook related socials or end up reposting on facebook media socials. Its an uploading sharing social media society we live in.

I’m not going to go out of my way to stop someone recording. That just makes you stand out more, and end up content. So even if something is legal and people aren’t doing anything it doesn’t mean they are willingly consenting. They’ve accepted that’s how it is.

In OPs example they don’t have that already because whipping out a phone is very easy to do (just not before the situation happened).

Also very visible, unlike a pair of glasses.

Were it not for the fact that it’s the fucking privacy-invading big tech companies doing it, I would admit that there are good use-cases for the camera:

• Reminding you of the name and possibly previous interactions with the person you’re talking to, for instance (if it only did local lookup based on consensual photos you had previously added to your address book). I’m not face-blind or anything, but my memory is bad enough that that would be helpful to me.
• Scanning, OCR-ing and making searchable any papers you’re looking at (hooking to your selfhosted Paperless-NGX).
• Displaying augmented-reality translations of street signs (which is one of the few reasonable things Google Glass actually did).

They’d be helpful when interacting with police. Heck, I could see them being useful when interacting with anyone in a hostile situation. What people will say when they don’t think they’re being recorded and what they will say when they know they are can be vastly different, and the people that will speak and act differently are the very ones you want to record. I’ve had occasions in the past where these would have been very useful, though it turned out recorded audio was sufficent.

Unfortunately the tech is ripe for abuse and I understand the mistrust they cause. Too many crappy people, and too many crappy tech companies that will abuse the video themselves even if the person wearing them only used them with good intentions.

Even though I agree with recording police, the fact that your first thought went straight to “hidden camera for the purpose of recording without consent” makes this a nonstarter to begin with.

Most states it’s legal to record audio without consent if you’re a party to the conversation, and it’s legal federally. Recording video in public is ok most everywhere.

For me personally I went to jail for false accusations of assault. I had no choice but to interact with a very scheming and hostile individual for a long time and if I’d not recorded the conversations - on advice from my friend and attorney - I’d have likely not beat the charges. So yeah… I very much have a scenario in mind where these would have been helpful and there are certainly others who can probably relate.

This is similar to the type of arguments made by those wanting increased surveillance with stuff like flock camera and ID online verification expansion. Pointing to the bad things in the world it helps prevent or track down that happens.

And pointing to the law to keep pushing what they are allowed to record and track.

Privacy and security has been a balancing act. And even examples of bad thing that happens I’m sure you can relate is the very common attempt at emotional appeal used by them.

Not denying your use case, but when it comes to surveillance they all seem to use the argument of safety.

A person being able to record what they see and hear is different than a robot that records everything. I strongly disapprove of flock and online ID verification. Those aren’t related to a person being able to make a personal record.

I’m sure that’s the argument Meta is making for their glasses.

People aren’t any better, since people are more likely to be recording specifically for the purposes of resharing and we do live in a social media age.

And these devices as they gain popularity would be relaying information back to the companies anyways, so make the claims of it being local or private not matter when that wouldn’t be the average wearable discrete tech that would gain mainstream popularity.

As I said I’m not arguing for Meta’s glasses. They’re ripe for abuse and I have no doubt there are people who would use them in inappropriate ways and in non-public places where a person otherwise expects some privacy.

While there are valid reasons for recording things both in public and private, without a doubt the ability to secretly record video will be abused.

Whether its meta or not, discrete wearable video recording is not something I am in favor of. Like the recent LG spyware installing on people’s Windows PC shows, many tech companies aren’t in the business of being privacy respecting in the products they offer. It’s usually those companies that gain market share.

And individuals with how quick they are to live stream and share every picture and video voluntarily to social media sites doesn’t much lend to responsible use either. At least those people aren’t usually hiding that they are recording.

When it comes to legal audio wiretapping those are already sufficient in places where it is legal to be used in cases like yours. So I don’t much see a need to further extend hidden audio recordings to also include hidden video recordings with wearables. Cases where video is also needed seem more like very specific niche cases involving investigations, so to shift it to being an every day casual accessory I dont see as necessary.

They weren’t talking about legality. They were talking about ethics. Recording people without consent is one thing, but doing it secretly is another. For police, I’d argue there’s implied consent as they’re public servants who are theoretically working for us. (I know, they’re working for the owner class, but they’re paid by taxpayers.) Anyone else though? I’d say that’s fairly ethically corrupt. Obviously there are exceptions, but generally it should be seen as a bad thing to do.

38 states believe if you’re a party to a conversation, you have a right to record it and I agree. I would have no problems if a state put restrictions on it, such as it not being legal to share unless the person was lying about or otherwise misrepresenting what was said, but I see no reason you shouldn’t be allowed to protect yourself.

But 12 states do require two-party - technically all-party - concent. I won’t suggest there aren’t reasons that some states are like that but I’m sure glad I didn’t live in one of those because if so my recordings would have been inadmissible in court and I might have went to jail for quite a while.

Legality ≠ morality. 38 states believe you shouldn’t be prosecuted for the act. That is not a statement in what you should or should not do. I agree mostly with not making it illegal because, like I said, there are exceptions that make it something you should do. The law does not handle things like that well.

This isn’t to say someone shouldn’t punch you in the face if you’re filming them doing something they believed to be private. Are you legally allowed to? Sure. Should society allow it, in all cases all the time? Fuck no, and there should be consequences for it.

I’ve heard they can be also quite useful for blind/vision-impaired users to describe surroundings and read signs, etc.

Yep. That’s the sort of thing that interested me as a visually impaired guy (I see about 20 percent with my contacts). It’s a shame I can’t really buy and use them for that since I’d likely get physically assaulted for using them for benign purposes.

Check your local laws, but you can probably buy and carry a white cane so long as you aren’t trying to scam the legal benefits of it.

Everyone can, there’s no legal issues with it. Same as wheelchairs. You can buy and use one if you like. Of course, people will be weirded out if you do it, but there’s absolutely nothing illegal about it.

That said, I’ve never needed a cane even though I’ve been trained to use a ‘recognition cane’ to cross the street (I went to a school for the visually impaired, where they teach everyone how to do that).

Didn’t want to state a blanket “can” - these types of laws vary in a lot of places.

It’s huge for this. Aiming and trying to frame the camera for a phone app sucks. Pointing your head is a lot more natural.

The "medical device " solutions are bulky, exceedingly expensive, and lack creature comforts like Bluetooth audio from your phone.

Even then I could see people not wanting picture, video, or audio recorded of them even if it is just kept locally for private use. And that’s the problem of these glasses with trying to be discrete so people who would have avoided you or asked you to stop recording before having a conversation are left unaware.

Reminding you of the name and possibly previous interactions with the person you’re talking to, for instance (if it only did local lookup based on consensual photos you had previously added to your address book). I’m not face-blind or anything, but my memory is bad enough that that would be helpful to me.

I would rather the person shattered a glass fountain pen in my urethra than scanned my face because they forgot my name.

Most Meta glasses don’t even HAVE a display. The camera is the only thing they do.

Bluetooth audio, as well

So they can tell what you are looking at

1. Go to Def Con
2. Wear internet connected camera in bathroom and while typing all passwords
3. ???
4. Profit

3. Have said glasses hacked and the video stream played on large screens around the venue for the duration of the convention

They don’t have nearly enough battery life for that.

The even-worse-case scenario of "went to a conference and forgot I had my mic still on when I went to the bathroom, so everyone heard me calling the urinal a “thirsty boy”. "

All hidden cameras should be illegal, I don’t care about your “hands free convenience”

This is like anti pervert laws 101

Yep. If you want to record everything going on from your POV, strap a GoPro to your head and see if people’s moods change about it. If they clearly don’t want that, they don’t want the “convenient” hidden cameras either. Simple as that.

They don’t want people knowing they are being recorded.

A gopro or a phone held up is basically an indicator of recording happening, which people can choose to avoid if they want to.

But pervert glasses don’t hold up that signal, and the pathetic attempt to make a signal (the LED) is easily covered or otherwise bypassed so you can creep on people without them ever knowing.

I prefer the term ‘pedofocals’

Glasdhole still tracks, regardless of brand.

Lol this a good one too

Let’s be real if we remove pedophilia from device almost everything requires a recording If you riding a bike or car need evidence If you got a false case or you said anything else while other person said other thing Or if some women accuse you of rape etc….

For all of these meta glasses is what we need without meta getting the video

We also need punctuation.

I used new line for other sentences but seems piefed put everything in 1 line

Try putting two spaces are the end of the line, or leave a blank line between each line.

two spaces at the end
of the line test.

blank line

test.

I think the tech can be very useful, especially if we talk about AR Glasses. The thing is… if tech companies restringe the capabilities or people use it unlawfully it sucks. I wish I could record stuff hands free. What happened on the day I talked to Ms X about Y? Then it starts playing? It’s like a human external HDD. We just need something like a bright led that indicates recording or something. We should try to fix the idea not destroy it

Even without meta, or any other shitcorp, receiving that data, I’d hate to live in a world where every single interaction with any person, or even me just walking by would be on camera.

conference organizers said they have imposed a ban on “Meta-style glasses with recording capabilities.”

Dammit. I was hoping they explicitly called them “pervert glasses” like the headline suggested.

especially when its being promoted by a pervert robot, known as ZUckerborg.

A Borg assimilation would be a personality upgrade for that creature.

So have shirt that says, “If you can read this, you may be recorded for your safety and for quality assurance purposes.” That’s what corporations do, right? Should solve the concerns?

That would make an awesome shirt, actually. Reminds me of the protest shirts on policy affecting RSA encryption, “this shirt is a WMD” or something to that effect…

Nah. See the specific phrasing allows for you to record them and them to record you in two party consent states

Do the glasses automatically read QR codes?

PervSpecs®

San Diego ComiCon banned them, and Dragoncon is going to ban them.

I like how these only became a problem because Meta made them which meant a bunch of morons bought it.

Hidden and pinhole cameras have been a commercially available thing for decades, even on glasses.

Hell they even made one as a kids toy you could buy.

Well, morons bought it and the device is directly connected to a data harvesting company. I think that has more to do with it. One lone weirdo with a hidden camera and a home server isn’t the same kind of boogeyman

It’s not the cameras that are the problem, however, it’s the companies behind them that I take issue with. It’s one thing to be spied on by a camera, it’s another thing when data collected from that camera feed is then sold to anyone who is buying. That’s what I have a problem with. The cameras themselves aren’t the issue.

only became a problem because Meta made them

Anyone who remember “glassholes” knows this isn’t new. Wearing a camera on your literal eyes is still a step too far in this otherwise compromised world.

But yes, I think the big issue here, as others pointed out, has to do with the nature of the company producing them. That’d be especially important for a place like DEFCON, which is all about securing your data.

everyone remember google glasses: spying, watching porn was all anyone could think someone is wearing it.

Interesting enough, while a big flop in the retail market (due to bad reception like you mentioned) I believe they ended up being quite successful in the automated logistics space.

And gynecologists. I remember seeing a news segment when they were discontinued that interviewed one, and she was bummed out.

Hidden and pinhole cameras have been a commercially available thing for decades, even on glasses.

And more or less equally problematic?

As usual we advertise the Meta Glasses detecting app:

Glasses Nearby

play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.pocketpc…

While useful, I would not want my device to be constantly pinging every device around it with wifi, bluetooth, or whatever other radio signal, on the off chance it might catch someone wearing the most groucho marx looking spyglasses on the planet when my own eyes can do that for me.

If not for the sake of my battery life, then for the same reason why I dont leave my bluetooth or wifi on- less avenues for people nearby to gain easy remote access to my device.

Yeah, I don’t think that’s how you’d use it.

You’d see some weirdo in wayfarers and load up the app to check. Simple.

I don’t even trust the “only give permission to use [camera/mic/bluetooth/location] while the app is active” setting.

I would not enter a public space with my phone lit up like a EM Christmas tree, sonar pinging every receiver in sight.

Let alone giving some rando app the access to every piece of NFC/radio comms on the off chance it can positively identify someone’s spy glasses, because that means if they are, ive just given their spy glasses my phone’s identifiers, and I’m spending more time near them and more time to possibly end up on some shady company’s panopticon server.

It’s like the people suggesting shining a laser into a flock camera, it might destroy a bit of the sensor, but they’ve also put a highly visible beam of light directly from themselves to it.

I don’t think the app does that, it’s scanning for pings, not sending out pings. Listening for signals from Meta glasses… it’s not listening to connect with anything, it’s just passively listening. Also it only uses blue tooth… I don’t know what you’re going on about with radio and internet signals.

So you have to leave bluetooth on, which means your device is broadcasting an active bluetooth signal.

nytimes.com/…/bluetooth-wireless-tracking-privacy…

If any random shop can use any phone’s active bluetooth to track and profile every user that’s i side or nearby, I don’t want to have bluetooth active when in public. Genuinely not worth it just to fi d some glasshole pervert when my own eyes can do the job without giving away any more of my data. That’s what I’m on about.

So you have to leave Bluetooth on

No, you can spot a weirdo turn blue tooth on and confirm it, then turn it off.

Look, I don’t think this app is for someone like you.

Oh I know it isn’t, because I trust google as far as I can throw a datacenter.

But I’m still struggling to see the use of an app that makes you stop and go “let me ask my app to turn on my remote connection feature and search to see if this person is wearing the pervert glasses.” instead of using my eyes and going “That guy looks like he’s wearing pervert glasses, I’m leaving the area.”

iOS version: apps.apple.com/us/app/…/id6761056896

I see some others in the iOS app store that claim to detect nearby “smart” glasses via BLE. I have not tested any of them, so I have no opinion on their usefulness, reliability, privacy, etc:

Nearby Glasses (same name, different app): apps.apple.com/us/app/…/id6776279207
Nearby Lens: Glasses Detector: apps.apple.com/us/app/…/id6760046620
NoGlasshole: Glasses Detector: apps.apple.com/us/app/…/id6760988897
Nearby Glasses Ray-Ban Scanner (in-app subscription required): apps.apple.com/us/app/…/id6760216782

I’d like to know how well they handle being exposed to IR and/or UV LED flares.

Once that experiment has been performed, try a targeted laser turret.

Human eyes are also sensitive to high intensity IR and UV light so you will also blind a human wearing them. Depending on the wavelength, permanently.

I meant to include ‘strobe’ in the definition. A low duty cycle would cut down on the biological impact, and rapid, random cycling would help blind the sensors as they try to compensate.

Lidar would probably do the trick

I’m already in favor of using high-powered lasers, you don’t have to keep convincing me

So what? They were okay with wearing glasses anyway.

I love the fact lately meta glasses are called pervert glasses constantly.

I personally hate the fact that capatilists have fucked our trust so much we can’t have augmented reality glasses. I was really looking forward to that.

If they were only just that, AR.

Instead they’re “record everyone around you without their consent and post the footage online without their consent to be commented on and shared by others” glasses.

We need an Open Source version of these glasses. It’s the only solution that will work.

Open source doesnt solve them having a camera and recording everything.

No but at least the data isn’t being immediately uploaded to Meta / Google / Apple or whatever for storage and processing.

If they are Open Source it also opens the door for some kind of control device that a person could have that broadcasts a “Do Not Record” signal that could in theory prevent Open Source glasses from recording in your presence. That kind of thing will never happen with Commercial / For Profit glasses.

These camera lenses are nowhere near AR.

MS HoloLens was the closest we got and it was targeted at businesses. Flopped badly. Died.

If someone other than Microsoft managed it, it might have gone farther, honestly. Nobody kills a good idea as efficiently as Microsoft.

MS usually does it before anyone else, releases a product, fails to market it, product dies to exec cutback, then three years later Apple does it and it’s amazing.

Apples business models has always been about figuring out why something a competitor did flopped then fixing the flaw (either by improving the tech or just better marketing and management). The industry feeds apple as much as they steal from it. It’s a slow grown company.

Microsoft is basically “we were really aggressive back in the day, established a monopoly everybody hates, and cannot figure out how to compete with modern alternatives in a way that won’t piss off investors”.

Apple is no saint, but they never lied about what they were doing. Microsoft, on the other hand, deserved everything that happened to them.

It wouldn’t have flopped if they didn’t just gave up on it. They were so far ahead of everyone else but just like they did with WP, they refused to continue building up its potential.

Probably a good place to ask, how many of my fellow lemmings are in vegas next week for the conferences??

Nah, man, it clashes with PervoSpecs Con.

They better get ready on finding these idiots because now they got people who remove the LED lights.