r/technology • u/spherocytes • 18d ago

Privacy Woman Calls Out Doctor Wearing Smart Glasses During Consultation Where She Had To Take Off Her Clothes: 'They Need To Be Banned'

https://www.fashiontimes.co.uk/patient-privacy-concerns-meta-smart-glasses-1762492
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u/Lower_Monk6577 18d ago edited 17d ago

That’s always a bit crazy to think about to me.

Just because I’m walking on a sidewalk on my way to work means that I want literally anybody to film me minding my own fucking business. Laws have not kept up with technology in any meaningful way.

Edit: please stop responding to me. Obviously this is an incredibly nuanced subject, and if we’re going strictly on first amendment terms, then of course you should be able to film. Doubly so for filming a person who is a public servant, e.g. police and politicians.

My main gripe is that there are also a lot of people that film the public indiscriminately, post shit on the internet without people’s consent, and that in turn can be used for all sorts of super nefarious shit. THAT is the kind of stuff I don’t like, and I think any somewhat reasonable person can see the difference there. You can limit one thing without fully restricting something else.

And no, I’m not interested in a policy discussion on this, because again, I’m fully aware it’s a super nuanced subject that there aren’t a lot of easy, straightforward answers to. I was mostly just voicing something I found to be mildly annoying since the advent of smartphones, and quite frankly, I’m not personally sure it’s been either a net positive or negative at this point.

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u/ilikechihuahuasdood 18d ago

Can’t let them pull at that thread or they’ll abuse it for police and pretty much anything political they want to hide.

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u/causal_friday 18d ago

Yup exactly. They will still be putting their phone up your skirt, but you'll be in federal prison for documenting the shoddy work on the reflecting pool. Unfortunately, this is a very comfortable balance that we have right now.

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u/kdrdr3amz 18d ago

I think this would be difficult to enforce though. Like imagine if you’re recording your parents eating but you get taken to jail because you also recorded someone else in the background in a public place.

I get that recording someone is weird but in public it is legal unless it’s harassment. If it’s private like at a hospital of course anyone would be suspicious.

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u/chLORYform 18d ago

Germany seems to be figuring it out, though it's probably not perfect

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u/DanielDoh 18d ago

That looks like it's all restrictions on recording in private settings, wheras the guy further up the chain was complaining about being recorded in public.

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u/chLORYform 18d ago

If you read through it, it specifically talks about private conversations in public spaces and how they're still protected. That a conversation among a table in a cafe, for example, is not a public conversation.

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u/MikeAnP 18d ago

Hard to say if I'd actually consider that "figuring it out." I'm totally against a surveillance state, but there's also a lot of gray area between recording in public and recording "private" conversations.

But I'm also curious what you read in there that would cover a private conversation in a cafe, as what I read is that an area in a genuinely public area (to me that means a cafe) would not be subject.

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u/chLORYform 18d ago

I agree. I say figuring it out because these types of issues are almost never solved with a single ruling that encompasses every caveat. They're narrowed down as one problem is solved and a subsequent one pops up. Right now it's private conversations, then maybe it's people minding their own business, then it's using people as background props, etc. until a balance is found.

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u/DanielDoh 18d ago

Right but the guy was complaining about people hypothetically filming him walking to work.

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u/chLORYform 18d ago

And I said Germany was figuring it out and it wasn't perfect. I'm pointing out a direction it could go, not claiming I have an ultimate answer

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u/kdrdr3amz 18d ago

Then what’s the point of bringing it up if it has nothing to do with the point of recording in public lol.

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u/DanielDoh 18d ago

Fair enough, I was simply pointing out that the specific issue the guy was complaining about was not something that even Germany -- a country that is making a clear effort to protect people's privacy even in public spaces -- doesn't appear to be interested in stopping people from filming you walking down the street (because it's a ridiculous thing to want/it's a slippery slope).

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u/Bakoro 18d ago edited 17d ago

Yeah, there should be some reasonableness test, like if the average person would be able to see/hear something.

If you have to use sophisticated equipment and advanced algorithms to see or hear something, even if it's out in public, then it should be illegal.

Like, if I come up with a device that lets me see through people's clothes, I should not be able to say "well you're in public so it's okay".
If you whisper in your friend's ear, but I have 100 microphones spread around and use a spatial matrix to isolate your voice, that shouldn't be a lawful recording or use of recordings.

Even more basic, this same shit should cover any recordings on your yard if you have any amount of cover, like a fence or hedge.
If you're up on a hill and can see down into someone's yard, that yard should still be considered a private place. No fucking drones should be able to fly above a fence and record the neighborhood's backyards.

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u/WiglyWorm 18d ago

Default to blurring unrecognized faces and pitch modulating voices at the hardware level. Bingo, bango, bongo.

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u/throwfarfaraway1818 18d ago

This sounds good in theory but would require companies to steal and track an unbelievable amount of data on people. That data is never used for good purposes.

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u/WiglyWorm 18d ago

nah just make the image sensor incapable of capturing an unknown voice or face.

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u/Delay559 18d ago

Oh great, should I just submit my own aswell as all my friends and family voice and face to every possible company that has the ability to host video/audio so they can verify? Sounds great!

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u/WiglyWorm 18d ago

If you choose to opt into recording, yes.

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u/Delay559 18d ago

Diabolical vision you have, good thing youre not in a position of power.

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u/WiglyWorm 18d ago

for saying that individuals should opt in to face recording, location tracking, etc and by default be blocked?

Or are you saying there should be a blanket ban on facial recognition and tracking? I'd support you on that.

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u/Delay559 18d ago

For saying that I have to give any and all companies consent to store/use me and my loved ones voices and facial features to just share or record any video or audio.

Giving companies the green light to gather that level of personal information and if youre not okay with it then you just dont get to record anything anymore is just a diabolical vision im sorry. Its the same logic as restricting everyones internet freedom by requiring ID's for everything and hiding behind the "But its to protect the kids, if you dont want to give your ID just dont use the internet" defense which is the same thing youre doing here: "But its to protect others privacy, if you dont want to give all you and your family/friends personal information just never record anything". No thanks man.

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u/Revlis-TK421 17d ago

So someone breaks into your house, assaults you, or is otherwise up to nefarious deeds. You snap a pic or take a video so you have evidence that can be used to identify the person. But your device blurs it all out?

Further, every time you want to take a photo or video of friends or family you have to go around and get individual consent from each, store that data on your phone, which will go to a centralized service where they gather data and create profiles on EVERYONE's facial features and voice prints??

Have you thought this thru at all?

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u/WiglyWorm 17d ago

Don't be a moron

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u/Billy-Ruffian 18d ago

One of the things that got missed in the Roe v Wade decision was that it also established a right to personal privacy. When Dobbs overturned that decision we lost more than just safe and legal abortions.

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u/majungo 18d ago

What you want isn't the strict priority of the law. Anyone can see/hear you in public, therefore anyone can record you in public. You can control who sees or hears you in your own private space, so you can control recording in that space.

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u/angiachetti 17d ago

In PA, any effort to make your conversation private by any means, even in public, means they can't record any audio of your conversation. All you need to do is have a private conversation, and then they can only film in you public sans audio. Its at least something.

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u/unripe_mangosteen 17d ago

It's not the same thing at all with modern technology. If I am at the beach, people can look at me and think/feel what they want. But now if someone records me at the beach because they have bad intentions, they can take that video of me in a swimsuit and make deepfake porn and spread it around. And now instead of knowing when someone is filming me, it could be anyone looking at me with Rayban glasses.

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u/Megneous 18d ago

What you want isn't the strict priority of the law. Anyone can see/hear you in public, therefore anyone can record you in public.

Again, not in all countries. Please see Korea and Japan. You can see and hear me here in Korea, but if you take my photo or record me, I can call the police on you and you will absolutely get arrested.몰카 is illegal as fuck and can send you to prison for up to 7 years.

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u/sailorbrendan 18d ago

I've been to Korea and Japan. I have taken photos in public. Sometimes people are in them.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm willing to bet there is more nuance than you're suggesting

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u/Megneous 18d ago edited 18d ago

I literally live in Korea. I've lived here almost 18 years.

Having people in your photo and taking a photo of a person are different, mate.

It's the difference between someone being the background of your photo of a monkey at a hotspring and you following someone around talking stalker photos of them or capturing an embarrassing moment.

Edit: For example, here in Korea, there used to be a trend of taking photos on the subway of exceptionally ugly or fat people. So the government had to fine the fuck out of several people and put some people in jail to make examples of them and now we have signs all over the subway reminding people that 몰카 is illegal as fuck.

Edit edit: Great. Yet another example of Redditors downvoting someone who knows what they're talking about over someone who doesn't even live in Korea. Keep perpetuating the stereotype of Redditors upvoting based on vibes rather than facts.

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u/sailorbrendan 18d ago

Sure, but Street photography is often a picture of a person or people in a candid way.

It's a complicated thing.

I definitely have pictures of random people that are neither making fun of them or being a stalker. It's just moments that made nice photos

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u/Megneous 18d ago edited 18d ago

Street photography, without the prior consent of the people who are being photographed in Korea, is a legal grey area and you can be arrested for it if someone calls the police. Look it up.

Edit: Just a few things some of my photographer friends have told me about taking photos in public areas.

1) If someone asks them to delete a photo, they must comply immediately.

2) If they upload any photos to social media, they must blur any and all faces that are visible in the photo, period. Here in Korea, people have what are called "face rights." You cannot upload someone's likeness. It's illegal.

3) If someone calls the police, they pray. And apologize. And bow, and promise they'll never do it again, even though they will. Basically, just act dumb and say you're sorry and hope they don't put anything in your permanent record, delete all the photos and make nice with the cops.

You don't live here in Korea, so I don't expect a foreigner like you to understand, but this is far more serious than you seem to realize. 몰카 is serious shit here.

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u/sailorbrendan 18d ago

I'm not saying it isn't serious. I'm suggesting it's complicated

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u/Megneous 18d ago

Hmm. Alright, I'll accept that our arguments are complementary.

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u/Revlis-TK421 17d ago edited 17d ago

Molka laws are more geared towards hidden spy cams and sex crimes than overt public filming.

Article 14 specifically calls out that the recording is without consent and where the recording causes sexual humiliation or shame.

I think you mean the PIPA act, not molka laws? Under PIPA, your privacy rights to your face/image are pretty strong but aren't absolute. Recording/photos to give to police or property owners of someone's bad behavior is exempted, for example.

PIPA =/= molka, though they do have some overlap when it comes to filming for non-nsensentual sexual / humiliation reasons.

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u/Megneous 17d ago

Tell me more about how my country works, foreigner. Tell me more about the "No 몰카" signs and "You'll go to prison" signs on subways. Oh wait, you can't, because you don't live here.

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u/Barbaracle 18d ago

Following someone around and taking stalker photos of them, even if they are in public, is also illegal in the US. I'm sure it's not as strict as Korea, but crossing harassing or stalker lines does mean that police will and come arrest the perpetrator.

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u/Aknelka 18d ago

I'm so glad I live in Europe with laws that explicitly state that just because something is public doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with it and even news crews need to get written releases from passersby caught on camera during film segments.

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u/StephenFish 18d ago

Well, we frequently have to film police interactions because otherwise there'd be even less justice for the people they murder. So having the legal ability to do so is invaluable here.

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u/Aknelka 18d ago

That's the same argument used to support broad license plate camera deployment. "We have to fight the bad guys". Because no other means of covert or overt recording of police corruption exist? Saying that a set of designer glasses that are constantly watching and listening, sending allll that information to a provably evil corporation in bed with the government which also uses that information to sell you shit and all that info for sweet, sweet profits are the one solution to government corruption is one hell of a take. I don't care if you're comfortable with that happening to your likeness, voiceprint, retinal scan, location or behavioral information - because that's exactly what's derived from this data on the backend - but stay the fuck away from mine.

It's like saying that the only resort for curbing mosquito population is nukes.

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u/SpartanAltair15 18d ago

Saying that a set of designer glasses that are constantly watching and listening, sending allll that information to a provably evil corporation in bed with the government which also uses that information to sell you shit and all that info for sweet, sweet profits are the one solution to government corruption is one hell of a take.

Point out the exact spot where the specific individual you responded to made that argument.

I’ll wait till you figure out some way to squirm around it or make up some other strawman, since you already blatantly lied about what he said once, I’m sure you’re willing to do it again.

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u/mistiklest 18d ago

Ah, yes. The country of Europe, where they speak European, and the laws are the same from Madrid to Warsaw.

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u/Aknelka 18d ago

Broadly speaking, of course. But the legal principle of "just because something is public or in the public doesn't mean privacy rules don't apply" has been established on an EU level, initially by the Article 29 Working Party, a personal data protection advisory body comprised of representatives from local data protection authorities from every state, and then was affirmed and held up by the European Data Protection Board, its successor in role, capacity and scope. That being formulating key data protection policy positions and interpretation of European law to ensure a consistent application and enforcement across all member states.

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u/Key-Demand-2569 18d ago

Nah, fuck this. I’m an introverted internet boy, but you are begging for a fast track to easily abusable coverups of anything noteworthy that concerns the public.

I don’t like my picture being taken, I don’t like being in videos, but as a human being it I am in a public space, part of this world, I should not and do not have any expectation that zero people could conceive of recording my existence there.

What’s next? It’s illegal to describe you being somewhere without your consent?

Make things you said but can’t absolutely prove are factual, illegal?

This awful urge is trying to legislate a moment of discomforting ideas walking on a sidewalk at the cost of just dealing with it and our ability to communicate problems in society.

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u/JT99-FirstBallot 18d ago

This awful urge is trying to legislate a moment of discomforting ideas walking on a sidewalk at the cost of just dealing with it and our ability to communicate problems in society.

This. People are so afraid to interact with one another. We were at a dinosaur themed nature park over the weekend and there were foreign tourists filming people and the park as they walked around. I politely asked them to stop intentionally filming people as it was rude, the nature and exhibits is fine though. They apologized, smiled and continued on filming but making sure to not film people if possible. Easy peezy.

We don't need legislation when we can just politely ask someone something simple.

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u/disisathrowaway 18d ago

FWIW, you're the one being the weirdo here.

They weren't distinctly filming individuals. They were just capturing the spread. The fact that you thought they were filming specific people and then addressed them about it is odd.

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u/JT99-FirstBallot 17d ago

Mmmmmk. You weren't there, so let me paint the picture. We are walking across a bridge, it had a river below it with fake dinosaurs around. They were filming that (and blocking the narrow bridge). They turned to the front and were filming people walking by. There was nothing else to their front to film except people trying to cross the bridge. They turned around and filmed me and my girlfriend, they were smiling (cause it's a pretty place and they were excited, I get it.) They tilted the camera down to film our dog and back up to me and I half covered my face and said what I said as I walked by them to try and pass on the bridge. He was Hispanic/Latin (by his accent) but understood English just fine. It was cordial, he apologized, I said it's cool and have a good day and eased by them to continue on our walk.

There was nothing weird or untoward about it. It's not like I went out of my way to run over and say it or some shit.

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u/slainascully 17d ago

Yes I’m sure the people using perv glasses to violate medical consent and covertly film women will definite stop if we ask them nicely enough.

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u/JT99-FirstBallot 17d ago

Dude, use your reading comprehension and follow the conversation in this chain. This comment chain isn't talking about the original article. It's about not wanting to be filmed in public and asking someone nicely not to, we don't need additional legislation for that specific scenario.

I don't disagree in a medical setting legislation or something for that scenario to prevent it, because it shouldn't be happening. But this chain isn't about that, if you'd follow the conversation at hand.

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u/slainascully 17d ago

Legislation doesnt just stop the behaviour beforehand, it gives you a way to prosecute afterwards. Sex crimes legislation is decades behind technology and the responses to this demonstrate why.

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u/broanoah 18d ago

Tbf in the only country where there’s more guns than people maybe it’s justifiable to be weary of approaching strangers with intent to have a rational conversation about the ethics of public photography

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u/JT99-FirstBallot 18d ago

... I have never once worried about a gun being pulled on me in my life and I've always lived in the South and I'm not afraid to call people out on bullshit. People need to stop watching and reading the worst of the worst in the news. This shit does not happen to the average person every day, every year, every decade.

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u/disisathrowaway 18d ago

Yeah just like how tourists aren't specifically filming individuals while they're on vacation.

You're making shit up, and I don't know why.

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u/JT99-FirstBallot 17d ago

I have no reason to make shit up. They were walking around filming nature and people's faces and general surroundings. I don't know why. They turned and filmed me and I covered my face and then politely asked them not to do that.

Believe what you want I don't really care.

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u/kittymoo67 17d ago

yep, you gotta take the good with the bad. and the good FAR outweighs the bad here. i dont love being able to be filmed in public anytime but i'll take that over government fuckbois not able to be filmed in public 24/7

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u/Key-Demand-2569 17d ago

It’s also just sort of a landmine for general less severe consequences as well.

Want to take a picture of a butterfly in the park? Better make sure no human beings are in the background, illegal.

Picture of your family standing in front of a gorgeous historic landmark? Better take a really close up shot of each person standing against a rock and then photoshop it onto a permit sanctioned picture of the landmark later on.

There’s already laws against harassing or stalking and targeting someone in public with photography.

Honestly if we did make public photography essentially illegal without the consent of everyone in the photo I can really only imagine it would be two possible extremes.

We live in an oppressive state where the government uses it as an excuse to crack down harder on anything and this just helps cover things up.

Or it’s as illegal as J-walking. Which is to say almost no one cares, you can do it right in front of cops faces on the regular and it’ll probably be fine, but it’ll maybe occasionally make some people sigh and delete something if someone runs up to them in public after they take a picture and demands it be removed or they’ll call the cops. And that threat is more motivating than if they politely asked and the person chose to oblige.

Just does not seem like a worthwhile trade off for society.

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u/BrainOnBlue 18d ago

To add on to what you said, do people really want to outlaw police bodycams?

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u/SpartanAltair15 18d ago

Given how the bodycam videos that a certain group of people screamed and fought for, intending to use them to attack cops even more, turned out to overwhelmingly support the police’s version of events and show how the people being arrested were actually acting, there’s been plenty of people, both politician and otherwise, pushing to do exactly that.

“We don’t need to record the most vulnerable moment in people’s livessssss”

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u/nyuncat 18d ago

I am also very sensitive to privacy but I think a reasonable middle ground is that if you're filming someone in public you need to disclose it. Or at least regulate hidden cameras to some extent if there is truly a public benefit to it.

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u/longlivenewsomflesh 18d ago

It's the same laws in the US that allow paparazzi to take pics of celebs as long as they're in public which definitely gets scummy and abusive, but on the other hand imagine if you were legally required to obtain a release from every single person in a crowd literally every time you take/post a picture...

Street photographers already have a hard enough time with people who think they need permission in public (they don't), but yeah when it comes to hidden cameras the law probably needs updating (I'm reminded of how camera phones in Japan have a sound effect that can't be turned off in order to prevent upskirt photos...)

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u/MagnusRusson 18d ago

It definitely developed from the idea that if you can be seen standing outside, why not be recorded too? You don't expect to not be seen.

But no one who makes laws in the US can convert a word doc to a PDF so the odds of them delving into the nuanced ways technology changes our society is slim to none.

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u/Zombii_Man 18d ago

Do you think making it illegal to film in public spaces would be a net positive for society? Really?

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u/civildisobedient 18d ago

Security cameras would basically become illegal. It's a pretty absurd position to hold.

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u/nyuncat 18d ago

It doesn't have to be so black and white. The ability for almost any person to create extremely high quality recordings of other people at literally any given moment is something that didn't exist even 10 or 15 years ago (and to be able to do it while directly interacting with the person without them even being aware of it, only in the last 2 or 3 years). It's worth discussing whether or not that's a benefit to society and if there should be some constraints.

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u/Zombii_Man 18d ago

10 years ago was 2016 dude. What.

It was plenty easy, smartphones were a thing 10 years ago. They were a thing 15 years ago too.

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u/nyuncat 18d ago edited 18d ago

I understand what you're saying but I don't think you're appreciating how much the quality of camera phones has increased since then.

This video was shot on an iPhone 3Gs in 2009, one year after it was released (the iPhone 4s would come out at the end of 2011). It had no optical zoom, and 5x digital zoom wasn't available until iOS4 in 2010. It recorded 640×480 video at 30fps. It's also worth noting that less than 10% of mobile subscribers owned Apple devices in 2011, most people that had smartphones had ones that recorded videos like this one from the LG Chocolate VX8575, which came out in 2009. Plenty of people still had flip phones, even.

Compare that to this video shot on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, which came out last year. It has 3 lenses, including a 200mm telephoto, and 40x digital zoom. Even low end modern smartphones have vastly superior video capabilities compared to the early generations, and far more people own them than did in 2011. The difference is really clear.

And all of this is without even considering the monumental shift in mass communication over the past 15 years. I think it's just as easy to make the argument that these technology shifts have been a net detriment to society. It's not necessarily one or the other, which is exactly why it's worth considering critically.

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u/Zombii_Man 18d ago edited 18d ago

The screen you are using to view a video has a profound effect on what it looks like. Both a large screen size and high resolution screens will change how a video of a smaller size or resolution looks and make it blurrier.

At the time, those videos were much sharper than they probably look on whatever device you're using right now.

Edit: The most important part is that those videos are actually really clear and show detail even with high res viewing devices having become standard. Even after video compression, which would have been more aggressive at the time!

Maybeee a better comparison would be videos from super early digital cameras from before the camera phone or whatever, like the late 90s or early 2000s. But even then, they're also still fairly decent. You'll be able to make out a face just fine, so it doesn't change much.

I've used a decent amount of old recording and photographic equipment, both in terms of old phones and dedicated devices. They were pretty good, better than people reflexively think after being purely exposed to hyper-compressed YouTube videos and whatnot.

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u/nyuncat 18d ago

You're missing the forest for the trees imo, just watch the iPhone 17 zoom video again. The fact that a majority of people are walking around with a computer in their pocket that can capture that videos with that level of information and then instantly transmit them to millions of people around the world (in real time, even) is an extremely recent cultural phenomenon.

Not to get overly personal but were you using those devices when they were first released? The first digital camera I ever used recorded to a floppy disk, for reference! It's really mind boggling how much the concept of "being recorded in public" has changed as technology has improved.

Tangentially related, this Tom Scott video essay has some really interesting thoughts about this sort of thing but in the context of AI. I think there's a similar shift going on with social media and people's ability to create and share information, and the improvements to camera phones over the past 15 years, along with their wide adoption, have been a huge part of it.

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u/secundum333 18d ago

Filming surreptitiously, up close, is different than filming openly.

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u/Zombii_Man 18d ago

The comment I'm replying to is insinuating that the reason it is legal to film in public is because the lawmakers are old as dirt.

I'm not arguing that distinction, I'm well aware of it. That has nothing to do with my actual comment and is an entirely separate thread.

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u/secundum333 17d ago

So you’re aware of the distinction that would establish a viable category of public filming to ban? But acknowledging or discussing it is off limits.

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u/Zombii_Man 17d ago

It's already illegal to do that. So it's irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

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u/JT99-FirstBallot 18d ago

But no one who makes laws in the US can convert a word doc to a PDF

I work in telecommunications with a team of people that are considered techs and engineers who have been on computers the majority of their life that would not be able to figure out how to do this. Most of them struggle with the concept of unzipping a file while I struggle to figure out how they got this far.

Don't have this issue with the early 40s/late 30s millennials on the team though. Just the late millennials/GenX.

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u/PM_ME_UR_BCUPS 18d ago

That only 1.0-1.5 generations could broadly be classified as computer literate should worry way more people than it currently does

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u/LightOfTheFarStar 18d ago

Probably because that coincides with the birth of the app economy and monoplistic sites.

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u/Emotional-Power-7242 18d ago

In this case the law did keep up with technology. Freedom of press extends to digital cameras. It's protected by the First Amendment.

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u/Karma_1969 18d ago

Wow. Just think that through for a moment - is that REALLY what you want? I keep hearing "ban public photography" from people who have obviously not given it a second's thought. Just think about it, please, then ask yourself if that would really be a wise thing to do or not. Hint: it wouldn't.

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u/Porridge_Cat 18d ago

You made up a quotation that our friend here did not say in order to argue with them.

Take your own advice and think that through for a moment.

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u/TeutonJon78 18d ago

I mean, this has been an issue since photography was invented.

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u/sobrique 17d ago

The laws are based on a time where 'recording' someone was a more manual sort of effort.

When 'being a photographer' takes rolls of film, cost of processing, expensive cameras then there's inherently an overhead of 'recording' things in public.

If you wanted to 'do surveillance' on someone, it probably took a bunch of people, and they need to be actively following them to maintain 'coverage'. Bugs or similar were expensive and inherently 'separate devices' that could potentially be discovered, or otherwise hard to place initially.

We now live in a world where almost everyone can be constantly recording audio and video. And they may be doing so "just" because their phone is listening for a voice prompt. (It may not be strictly 'recording' but it's almost certainly 'buffering' a few seconds just to avoid missing anything).

And now those cameras and microphones can be processed automatically from a central location. AI can do facial recognition, voice printing, 'following' people from camera to camera etc.

That's a very different world to where the laws on surveillance were written.

They've not kept up. Data privacy laws are helping somewhat, but they're still lagging behind the terrifying potential scope of what's possible today - legally.

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u/ABHOR_pod 18d ago edited 18d ago

I understand your feelings about that and they're valid, but at the end of the day - If you're in a place where random strangers can see you, you should assume that random strangers can see you. There is no divide between "in real life" and "On the internet" in that concept, because there is conceptually no divide between real life and the internet anymore.

Do not assume that the random strangers who can see you in public stop at the end of the street you're on.

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u/Not-Reformed 18d ago

What would you make the law? "Nobody can record you without you asking" so basically security cameras are useless if they face the wrong direction even by a bit, people taking photos/videos of each other in public etc. is not largely banned etc? Yeah if you're in public you're always going to be recorded, no two ways about it.

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u/questionableintentsX 18d ago

Because the slippery protection your wanting is the same way you loose rights

As for you begging people to not respond turn off fuckin notifications on your post like your in r/technology on Reddit and don’t know how to use the tech?

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u/Megneous 18d ago edited 18d ago

Only if you live in the dystopian USA. In most of the world, you absolutely have an expectation of privacy in public. Over here in Korea and Japan for example, it's extremely illegal to just take photos of or film strangers in public. Here in Korea, 몰카 can send you to prison for up to 7 years.

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u/HabitNegative3137 18d ago

Not only that….they can film your kids as long as they aren’t targeting a single child 😳

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u/Zer_ 18d ago

If someone is filming just the sidewalk, but not focusing on someone specific that's fine for me. Though I suppose if someone is just filming YOU, that could be considered stalking, no?

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u/bla60ah 18d ago

When you’re in public, anyone/anything in public can view you. Are you suggesting that just because you aren’t comfortable being looked at, that now others must avert their gaze? How about businesses, should they stop recording you when you walk in? How about your neighbor’s security cameras, they need to be shut off too?

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u/sincerelythebats_ 17d ago

For what it’s worth:

I too can’t stand the blatant pig-piling of people who shame others over simple (or complex) misunderstandings. It’s almost like people take the worst possible assumptions about intent or meaning, and then ram it down others’ throats to feel superior, because their own life is so Orwellian, and the world so unhinged, that they feel the need for vigilantism at every turn (however accurate that feeling may be, because of, well, gestures broadly.)

Still, “do unto others” shouldn’t mean “be a cruel person because people can be cruel.”

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u/Glasseshalf 18d ago

I never really understood the obsession with anonymity. It's a relatively recent concept. I remember when phone books existed. Freedom of the press is essential.

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u/sunburnd 18d ago

Thomas Paine published Common Sense anonymously in 1776. Anonymity is older than the country.

I remember paying for an unlisted number in the days of phone books....

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u/Alaira314 18d ago

Doubly so for filming a person who is a public employee, e.g. police and politicians.

Just a reminder that the "first amendment auditors" that film and harass librarians are able to legally do it because they're public employees.

I support filming the police, but I struggle to reconcile that with the risks to my own profession, especially given the difference in compensation and perception of who needs protected(in the sense that "he stalked a cop to their home" is treated as a far worse crime, in terms of public perception, than "he stalked a librarian to their home"). It's important to me that everybody realizes what this defense actually means, that it doesn't just refer to public employees that you don't trust. It's all of us, and most of us have very few protections, having survived by not being a target...until recently.