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…

    • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
      42·
      3 months ago

      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.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      3 months ago

      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.

  • Boozilla@lemmy.worldEnglish
    32·
    3 months ago

    I’m never leaving the house again. I mean, I kind of wanted to do that anyway, but this is the excuse I needed.

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
    18·
    3 months ago

    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 removed 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?

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
    15·
    3 months ago

    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.

    • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      7·
      3 months ago

      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.

  • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    9·
    3 months ago

    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.

      • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        8·
        3 months ago

        I have not come across facial recognition software that contains Facebook pictures in its database. I don’t mean to be creepy, but I’m curious about which software you’re referring to.

          • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            4·
            3 months ago

            That and the following make me suspect that this is a faked publicity stunt rather than a real prototype.

            “The purpose of building this tool is not for misuse, and we are not releasing it,” Nguyen and Ardafiyo write in a document explaining the project. Instead, the students say their goal is to raise awareness that all this isn’t some dystopian future — it’s all possible now with existing technology.

    • testfactor@lemmy.world
      7·
      3 months ago

      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.

      • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        5·
        3 months ago

        PimEyes doesn’t search Facebook. You can try it for yourself. It will show you matching faces for free, but you have to pay to find out where it found them.

        • testfactor@lemmy.world
          5·
          3 months ago

          Fair. I presume that they meant publicly available in the sense that it was accessible to the public, not in the sense that it was necessarily free.

          The article says they are using PimEyes, which I assume means that they’re paying for a subscription.

  • tfw_no_toiletpaper@lemmy.world
    3·
    3 months ago

    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.