College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time
College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time
Privacy will always be a major concern with smart glasses.
Two Harvard students have created an eerie demo of how smart glasses can use facial recognition tech to instantly dox people’s identities, phone numbers, and addresses. The most unsettling part is the demo uses current, widely available technology like the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and public databases.
AnhPhu Nguyen, one of the two students, posted a video showcasing the tech in action that was then picked up by 404 Media. Dubbed I-XRAY, the tech works by using the Meta smart glasses’ ability to livestream video to Instagram. A computer program then monitors that stream and uses AI to identify faces. Those photos are then fed into public databases to find names, addresses, phone numbers, and even relatives. That information is then fed back through a phone app.
In the demo, you can see Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, the other student behind the project, use the glasses to identify several classmates, their addresses, and names of relatives in real time. Perhaps more chilling, Nguyen and Ardayfio are also shown chatting up complete strangers on public transit, pretending as if they know them based on information gleaned from the tech...
Meta
Well there's your problem right there
No actually, in this case Meta just built a phone into a glasses form factor. The entire problem lies with that much data about individuals being allowed to be amassed (apparently even in publicly accessible databases).
You can literally do exactly this with your iPhone and a lanyard right now.
We live in a massive police state already. People just don't realize it yet.
If they didn't figure that out in 2020, they'll never realize it.
We do! But it's interesting that crime is down at the same time.
I did a lot of stupid shit in my youth. Many of us did in the 80s and 90s. Doing that same stupid shit knowing you're on camera somewhere?
Certainly worthy of discussion.
The laser that kept jabbing Hiro in the eye was shot out of this guy's computer, from a peripheral device that sits above his goggles in the middle of his forehead. A long-range retinal scanner. If you turn toward him with your eyes open, the laser shoots out, penetrates your iris, tenderest of sphincters, and scans your retina. The results are shot back to CIC, which has a database of several tens of millions of scanned retinas. Within a few seconds, if you're in the database already, the owner finds out who you are. If you're not already in the database, well, you are now.
Of course, the user has to have access privileges. And once he gets your identity, he has to have more access privileges to find out personal information about you. This guy, apparently, has a lot of access privileges. A lot more than Hiro.
"Name's Lagos," the gargoyle says.
So this is the guy. Hiro considers asking him what the hell he's doing here. He'd love to take him out for a drink, talk to him about how the Librarian was coded. But he's pissed off. Lagos is being rude to him (gargoyles are rude by definition).
"You here on the Raven thing? Or just that fuzz-grunge tip you've been working on for the last, uh, thirty-six days approximately?" Lagos says.
Gargoyles are no fun to talk to. They never finish a sentence. They are adrift in a laser-drawn world, scanning retinas in all directions, doing background checks on everyone within a thousand yards, seeing everything in visual light, infrared, millimeter wave radar, and ultrasound all at once. You think they're talking to you, but they're actually poring over the credit record of some stranger on the other side of the room, or identifying the make and model of airplanes flying overhead. For all he knows, Lagos is standing there measuring the length of Hiro's cock through his trousers while they pretend to make conversation.
"You're the guy who's working with Juanita, right?" Hiro says.
"Or she's working with me. Or something like that"
"She said she wanted me to meet you."
For several seconds Lagos is frozen. He's ransacking more data. Hiro wants to throw a bucket of water on him.
This wasn't the part of the gritty cyberpunk future I wanted. Where the hell is my skateboard with smartwheels and my nuclear powered gatling gun?
Snowcrash, such a good book
I read that book about 30 years ago! I didn't remember the eye-scanning gargoyle, but for some reason I still remember the phrase "Ultima Ratio Regum" from the nuclear powered gun.
Surely, they'll listen to Reason.
Potentially fashionable solution:
Get your own glasses, get some sufficiently powerdul IR emitting LEDs, attach them to the frame, wire them to a battery.
Result: Most cameras will see your face as a blinding white spot.
Apparently 'Reflectables' claims to achieve a similar result passively, with reflective frames and lenses.
I've heard of coats with that passively blinding IR effect before, though the active one is basically IRCM or infrared dazzlers. Another option would be asymmetric makeup with sharp geometric shapes - anything that would help break up the normal identifiers of a face. I remember seeing this proposed many years ago as a countermeasure to facial recognition software.
Public databases have photos of people's faces? Or do they mean private but with access available for purchase? I didn't think those had photos either but I've never paid for access so I don't know.
It's in the article. Public database called PimEyes.
It doesn't go into much more detail than that. Says it's an open to the public face searching database.
These things are going to get people punched in the face.
Glassholes v2
Combine with https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/28859174 for happy fun times
Humanity may be forced into radical openness.
This is, as far as I can tell, tangentially related to this form of dialectical behavioural therapy (RO-DBT).
It uses PimEyes which I find absolutely terrifying. Found photos of myself when I was a child on some obscure newspaper article (or article archive?) with a current photo of myself (at least 10 years apart). I knew of course before that state actors definitely are able to use stuff like this but I don't like that everyone willing to pay can just find out who you are.
Watchdogs level shit