Philly courts will ban all smart eyeglasses starting next week

My local county is currently in a dispute with the local bar association because they want to upgrade the courthouse security cameras and the sheriff wants to add audio capabilities. This includes to parts of the building just outside the courtroom that counsel will frequently use for brief asides with their clients (due to lack of other private rooms). The county seems to favor adding the microphones and pinky swearing they won't use them and that public records requests won't be used to listen in on privileged communication, but it's obvious how difficult that would be to trust. They keep putting off a decision because they don't want to piss off the lawyers.

I am not into Facebook/Meta nowadays, bet the technology is so lovely freaking magnificent... Back in the days, these were in Sci-Fi and dreams only...

// https://www.ifixit.com/News/113543/theres-groundbreaking-wav...

This is a great rule and I hope to hear about other courts implement it. Smart eyeglasses are an invasion of privacy and inside a courtroom they're certainly a threat. Especially because the tech monopolies and their surveillance technologies have proven to be incredible privacy liabilities.

I couldn't read the article but am curious what the definition of "smart" is. Because if that is the exact wording then it seems to be extremely broad and probably capture some unintended cases.

These kind of blanket bans are going to pose some real problems for the tech because people who wear prescription glasses will often get their prescription built in. So you can't take them off - you need them to see. And then there is another subset of blind and deaf users who are even more dependent on them. What are these people going to do once there are a non-trivial amount of places banning you from wearing them at all?

I think the tech industry is far behind the eight ball on this. To their credit Meta actually did a half decent job out of the gate designing sensor-gated recording lights into the Raybans. But it's not enough. There needs to be an industry wide agreement on a standard where something like a bluetooth beacon can shut off recording. Then maybe you have a chance of this category not becoming Google Glass 2.0. Otherwise I'm struggling to see how this ship won't sink.

Serious question: what will happen when people start getting implants? They’ll probably require some sort of off mode, but not sure how that would be enforced.

Nearby Glasses for Android [0] tries to detect smart glasses.

Before the court makes you shut off your Android device.

An ios BT detector might also work.

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.pocketpc.ne...

It's why I use the classic camera-in-the-pen-in-the-shirt-pocket.

I don't see how these glasses are legal at all. While filming in public places is allowed in the US, commercial use of that material is not. For example, you cannot just use public material with recognizable people in advertisements without their consent.

Meta is likely to use material from these spy devices to build real world networks and use it commercially.

These "glasses" should be outlawed. The only useful purpose is to immediately identify the wearer as an asshole.

There's hardly a worse advertisement for those than Zuckerberg wearing them. The idea was always that Google glass failed because it made you look like a dork because the glasses looked weird, so if the glasses looked normal they'd sell. But now you have a creep with a camera always pointed at you, so it'll go the same way.

All public transit and workplaces next.

Cool. Now do all government offices / properties of any kind please (and also go national with the policy).

Absolutely fuck these things and anyone who advocates for them. No exceptions.

> reasonably affordable and available smart glasses have finally begun catching on within the last year.

Also, no they haven't.

What’s to hide?