Per Wired, a cavalcade of over 70 organizations like the ACLU and Fight for the Future have signed a letter urging Meta to “immediately halt and publicly disavow” its plans to bring facial recognition technology to its growing lineup of smart glasses. In March, a separate group of organizations wrote to Congress to express similar concerns.
These groups agree that Meta cannot be trusted at all to safely incorporate the technology into its glasses, and thus they say the best course of action is for Meta to scrap its plans altogether.
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We, the 75 local, state and national organizations signed below that advocate for domestic violence survivors, worker rights, bodily autonomy, consumer privacy, civil rights and civil liberties, urge Meta to immediately cease and publicly disavow its plans to deploy facial recognition features on its Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses, including the feature reportedly known internally as ‘Name Tags’.
The letter also calls on Meta to “stop opposing privacy legislation that would require Meta to obtain explicit user consent before collecting or processing biometric data.” As Mashable previously reported, facial recognition features may violate some state privacy laws, which prevent companies from collecting biometric data without affirmative consent.
Mashable contacted Meta for comment and will update this story if necessary.
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Of course, the concern here is that facial recognition meta glasses will give predators and other normal people more power to cause harm. Civil liberties organizations have also warned that widespread facial recognition could lead to surveillance.
The letter puts forward a fairly comprehensive case for its argument:
“Facial recognition technology built into unobtrusive consumer glasses presents a serious threat to privacy and civil liberties for every member of our society, and especially for survivors of domestic violence, targets of stalkers and sexual assaulters, historically marginalized and vulnerable groups, including religious minorities, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and women and children. These concerns cannot be addressed through product design changes, opt-out mechanisms, or incremental safety measures. Cannot be done – some of which are meaningfully reflected in the fundamental danger of the technology.”
Meta’s internal name for the facial recognition technology is reportedly Name Tag, and it is rumored to launch soon this year.
According to Engadget, this works in one of two ways: The name tag can either identify people who are actively engaged with the Meta platform at that moment, or it can identify people who have an account on a service like Instagram. In other words, if you don’t have a Meta account it can’t identify you, at least not yet.
These potential disadvantages will also exist alongside ongoing issues, such as the invasiveness of recordings from smart glasses.
If Meta wants to avoid the misfortune that befell Google Glass, it will need to overcome some of these problems, one way or another.
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cyber security meta
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