Meta, in a press release called “Meta’s A.I. Glasses: Your Questions Answered”:

Can’t people just cover up or disable the LED?

The camera is disabled when people try to do this. Beginning with our second generation of glasses, the camera is automatically disabled if we detect that the capture LED has been blocked. No photos or videos can be taken until we detect that the light is unblocked.

Since the introduction of this safeguard, we’ve seen some people go beyond using tape to sophisticated efforts to modify or destroy the capture LED. We are continuously improving our ability to detect tampering, and now we’re updating the glasses to disable the camera if they detect the LED was physically tampered with or destroyed. No other kind of camera has done this and we’re proud to lead the industry forward.

Meta is not being entirely honest here. For many, many years, Apple’s laptops have contained a camera indicator light with among the highest security protections possible. Over ten years ago, iSight cameras were not adequately secured. I cannot find a more recent example showing a similar vulnerability, at least suggesting a better level of protection in today’s cameras. Other computers also have built-in cameras with in-use indicators, with various approaches to security, some of which have vulnerabilities. In general, though, it is not new for an indicator light to resist tampering as long as the camera remains functional.

What is different is the threat. Cameras built into computers need protection mostly from remote attacks, while Meta’s glasses need protection from an owner deliberately altering them. Meta is selling creep glasses and hoping it can outsmart everyone buying them — and that the rest of us similarly trust Meta to protect our privacy.

David Gerard, Pivot to A.I.:

But it gets better! Meta’s planning a new version of the glasses that records continuously! [FT, archive]

a new hardware line of smart glasses that would continuously record audio while taking photos every few seconds.

And they won’t have a recording light. […]

This product is still rumoured, and perhaps the shipping version will have some kind of external recording indicator. But given the way Meta would intend a device like this to be used, I doubt it will, otherwise it would be indicating basically all the time.

Meta is in the business of asking for forgiveness instead of seeking permission. It will release these regardless of public approval, and with the belief it can control how that continuous recording is used. But determined people will surely find workarounds and vulnerabilities, and Meta surely believes it can trust itself to fix them. But I do not. Meta has not earned the right to ship anything like this without incurring deep suspicion about the product and anyone using it.

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Naipanoi Lepapa, Ahmed Abdigadir, and Julia Lindblom, Svenska Dagbladet:

The workers in Kenya say that it feels uncomfortable to go to work. They tell us about deeply private video clips, which appear to come straight out of Western homes, from people who use the glasses in their everyday lives.

Several describe video material showing bathroom visits, sex and other intimate moments.

Another worker talks about people coming out of bathrooms.

It is appalling that massively rich corporations like Meta continue to offload critical tasks like these onto people who receive little support or pay. I recently finished “Ghost Work” by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri and, while not my favourite book nor surfacing anything conceptually new, is worth your time. Meta can and should be doing far better, but can avoid association with labour atrocities better than, say, Nike in the 1990s in part because I doubt most people think too much about human intervention in artificial intelligence. Meta does not celebrate the hard work of its contract labour in Kenya; it does not even acknowledge them.

Speaking of not acknowledging the human labour involved, this story is the obvious nightmare you would expect. Some of these incidents of sensitive video recordings appear to be accidental, while others are seemingly deliberate. Without excusing the people who seem to be recording creepy videos on purpose, I assume few people would have believed it would be seen by someone at a company they probably have not heard about.

At first glance, it appears that we have significant control over our data. It states that voice recordings may only be saved and used for improvement or training of other Meta products if the user actively agrees.

But for the AI assistant to function, voice, text, image and sometimes video must be processed and may be shared onwards. This data processing is done automatically and cannot be turned off.

This is the kind of thing I would expect would be bundled into the additional diagnostic information Meta asks if you would like to opt into sharing. But Meta says this “does not include the photos and videos captured by your glasses”. That is, as this investigation found, part of the mandatory data collection.

This is offensive on behalf of users who might be less likely to consent if they had this full information. But it is also offensive to their romantic partners, friends, acquaintances, and passers-by, none of whom agreed to have their image or conversations adjudicated by these contractors.

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