Yesterday Meta announced that they would be turning off the camera function if any attempt is made to interfere with the LED light.
This includes lens covers, which I have posted about before and even procured a pair on Amazon to try.
Meta states that now:
“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.”
Here’s why, based on my experience wearing AI glasses and a few hundred conversations, that this is not the solution they may be hoping for.
A blinking white light is not consent
The LED flashing lets others know they are being recorded, and the camera disables if the LED is blocked or tampered with.
I think that this is in essence a good step – building in a way to avoid covert filming with no signal is useful, sure.
But, there are two reasons that this is a bit like patching a leak with a plaster (or “band-aid”).
Firstly, the LED tells people that recording is happening right now, the camera is activated. It does not ask anyone if they consent to being captured.
Secondly, The light also requires the wrong person to act. The person who is being filmed, or around someone filiming, has to notice the light on their face flashing, regardless of lighting conditions, angle, and situation. They have to know what the light means, then decide what action to take, without having chosen to be part of a recording in the first place.
We’ve been through this before with Google Glass.
Meta’s chosen to try the ‘detect and disable’ way of solving this problem, but I don’t know if it is really solvable.
Wearing a recording device at your eyeline, at all times, is socially disruptive. I don’t know if any workarounds will fix that, even if we know if it is recording or not.
In short, the LED is an improvement over having no indicator at all, and it is good that they are trying to test how effective it is, working on brightness and visibility in real life conditions.
The main issue is that a hardware light asks a lot of people being recorded, and little from the wearer.
A light tells me you’re filming – it doesn’t ask if that’s OK.
Leave a Reply