To no one’s surprise, women and girls are disproportionately targeted, making image-based abuse not just a technology issue but a gendered form of violence rooted in misogyny and power. In fact, in Laura Bates’ book “The New Age of Sexism”, she cites research that says that of the 96% of deepfakes that are non-consensual sexually explicit images, 99% of those depict women. In fact, most of the apps, bots and websites that will create deepfake explicit images don’t even work on pictures of men.
Deepfakes can be used to humiliate, silence, intimidate, or punish women for speaking publicly, participating online, or simply existing in digital spaces.
In the UK, women have reported being filmed by men wearing smart glasses while being approached in public spaces, with recordings subsequently uploaded to social media attracting sexualised and other gross comments. Similar “pickup” content has emerged in the US, where men have used smart glasses to record interactions with women in airports, gyms, and other public spaces, often turning those encounters into viral online content.
Last year, an Auckland man used the Ray-Ban Smart Glasses to covertly record a sex worker without her consent while she was naked. The recording was detected only because the woman noticed him activating the device (by touching the side of the glasses). He pleaded guilty to attempting to make an intimate visual recording, but was discharged without conviction - to the dismay of the brothel owner.
This is particularly concerning because wearable devices are designed to blend into everyday life. A child may not recognise that a pair of ordinary-looking sunglasses contains a camera. They may not realise they are being recorded, and will have little ability to control what happens to that image/footage afterwards.
Consent becomes much harder to meaningfully give or refuse when recording devices are hidden inside objects that look completely ordinary.
Too often, we’re told that women and girls should simply be more careful, more alert, and more aware of their surroundings, remain vigilant, and constantly assess whether they are being recorded, instead of placing responsibility on those who design, deploy, and profit from technologies with foreseeable risks of misuse. The same is true for children and young people, who should not need levels of technological awareness beyond their developmental capacity simply to protect themselves from covert recording.
If you didn’t speak out this much about government and corporate mass surveillance, then why care anymore about personal surveillance? This seems like a weird hill to finally give a shit about the surveillance state you already accepted all around you. If it’s legal and acceptable for government and corporations, it should be accepted for individuals who want to benefit from those technology, too. As someone whose railed against the encroachment of surveillance for two decades to deaf ears, hearing those same ppl whining now garners zero sympathy from me.
You enables a surveillance state when it didn’t bother you personally, worsening the world we live in for everyone but now expect support when you finally feel your privacy violated? You helped make this bed, you can sleep in it.
Yes, good - your new allies aren’t good enough for you. Cast them out and go it alone. Alone you will do it. Only you.
You’re not an ally if you only show up when you want something. Once you get it, you’re gone again, right back to tapping ‘YES’ to every term and condition they put in front of you.
I only want your help if you share EXACTLY my views otherwise you’re EVIL
Dude. Anyone recording with a big tech device - from scamazon’s ring cameras or w.e to glasshole glasses - all that data’s going straight to the corporate cloud. Who knows what happens afterwards, from adtech to data breaches of your biometric data to surveillance. You should be concerned about threats way beyond those from the actual person filming you. This aspect of society, where all privacy-naive people are freely spying and collecting data on all of us through the above devices for corporations and states, like a ‘self-checkout of surveillance,’ creeps and bums me out
personal surveillance includes state and corporate surveillance
nah I have a custom rom
I don’t completely agree with all of your sentiment but I agree that individuals filming is far less of an issue than government and corporate surveillance. If we want to stop surveillance we don’t like, let’s remove all government and corporate surveillance first.
I don’t think folks are upset about these for the “surveillance”, it’s more about how it enables creeps. In terms of privacy these aren’t any less worse than iPhones in that anyone can record you without permission — in privacy terms, overt or covert recording are both wrong; but folks are taking issue with covert recording because of course douchebags are going to leverage it on women.
We already know cops stalk ppl with flock and Epstein’s associates traffic girls and boys and we keep giving them more cameras and microphones in more places. But no, folks aren’t upset about that, you’re right.
The Epstein class literally eat children and we do nothing. But cameras in glasses? That’s the line!!!