alt Hacker NewsTech Companies Are Trying to Shift the Concept of Privacy (Again)
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UN Human right article 12
"Article 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
"arbitrary interference with his privacy"
That is tech companies does not have right to private data through data fusion. We humans collectivly have the right to privacy.
If the OG Google Glass got so much backlash 10 years ago, why should the current crop of recording products face any less hostility when they all pose the same privacy problem?
There is no other solution here if you want to both participate in the modern economy and preserve some semblance of privacy, and even then some idiot somewhere will leak your medical records or family photos.
1. A public profile that is your real self.
2. Throwaway identities.
3. Air gaps
4. EFF[1], IJ, or EPIC membership
[1]EFF is a serious organization, but I would happily pay their $1k or even $5k membership tiers if they ran a larger, more concentrated pipeline of affirmative lawsuits like FIRE and ACLU do. Hire liberty-minded sharks to find bad laws, find plaintiffs, file challenges across jurisdictions, and keep a large docket moving continuously.
For what it's worth IJ and EPIC do this well, but EFF has a bigger profile and the technical bench to make this approach highly effective.
A decade ago, I would have said that's an individual person problem. Though these companies don't understand the word "No" and have already pushed the boundaries to the point that they're all in collusion with each other, resulting in broken privacy.
At least US-side, nothing will change until people start holding their representatives accountable and start voting for people that will actually do something about it.
This wont happen anytime soon, we have a much bigger problem we're dealing with for the next two years.
The issues around privacy are inherent in an internet that is paid for by targeted advertising. If there is privacy there is no way to pay the small amounts for email for example.
If we want privacy, we need an alternative business model.
I feel like we need to have privacy laws enshrined in the constitution before bigtech stops their bullshitting.
More & more tech is starting to look like a pretty sketchy industry
Seems like this is flatly illegal in two party consent states, but I see no mention of this in the article or comments. Am I missing something?
> ...while they also expect the owners of these devices to use them responsibly and to notify those around them of their capabilities to act within whatever laws their states may have.
Hell, no. They expect you to act as uninformed and oblivious about it as possible so they can scrape the maximum amount of data while the liability is all yours.
Someone should invest some serious money for a big ad campaign that explains the state of privacy of 2026 to people. From online tracking and fingerprinting to cars and street cameras etc.
Governments could do it. Or tv stations.. (“the more you know..”)
Tell it like it is and perhaps fewer will elect to consume crazy conspiracy theories. And instead make better life choices.
These devices are illegal and make you face jail time ok most European countries.
The goal is so obviously to push the last sane people to isolate themselves from the other humans to not have to cope with all the bullshit.
US Constituion understands privacy as self-sovereignty. As in I am the boss of me.
My prior folk understanding was that privacy is me deciding what is publicly known about me.
Since I am my personal data and that data is me, I own every single bit of my data.
The fix to surveillance capitalists abusing all our data (and by extension ourselves) is to recognize and enforce our property rights.
Any private entity storing, using, or both, any of my data owes me. Pay up.
EFF is onto something HN is not generally on the right side of this. The hacker community, to my observation, is deeply divided. Cynically, I think half of hackers have become dissociative and mildly sociopathic in terms of their views of technology.
Tech should benefit people and be open, and trillionaire are not a healthy long term indicator in a stable society.
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I didn’t read the post. I didn’t have to. They wanna shift it to you have no privacy anywhere at any time correct?
The tech companies leading the charge are mainly the ad companies in short, the companies that have a cost of acquisition because most people do not and will not buy anything from them and in most cases never will ie.. Facebook, Google and soon the AI model makers.
Tech companies respond to incentives. If the technology exists to create and sell devices that are useful to people and legal, then they'll do it, and people will buy and use them. And that is fantastic - I'm great with tech companies making tools that makes my life easier. I absolutely plan on using the heck out of the next wave of AR glasses for digitizing historical documents so I can have both hands free instad of holding a phone in one. Better audio recording devices? Yes, please.
Simultaneously - I own my words, either written or spoken. This isn't really all that different from copyright, and I'm rather surprised we don't more regularly bring that reasoning to bear on this issue. If I give them to you in a private conversation, then those words are for you to hear. If you record them without my consent, then you're violating my (copy)right. If a company takes those words without my consent, then that company is violating my copyright.
I don't know exactly what should happen to people and companies violating my copyright, but I do remember when it was the other way around a few years back and the RIAA was getting people fined thousands to tens of thousands of dollars per incident. That seems about right.
The one moving the goal post is the eff. There is no expectation of privacy in public spaces.
It is legal and moral for me to take a video of someone in public. If I can do it with a phone I can do it with glasses.
A shop having a camera pointed outside is not breaking the law, even if it's hidden from view.
There has never been a requirement for devices to indicate anything to those they are recording. It at most a curtsy.
> *Apple is an EFF donor. EFF donors do not influence our agenda or our positions.
Oh sure, otherwise why would you emphasize over and over again that Apple makes it harder for law enforcement to extract private data of an individual?
Here’s a question I have: every professional meeting I now attend is being recorded & uploaded by seen and unseen AI guests. Even 1:1 conversations between direct managers and colleagues.
That’s a world I don’t want to endorse, but it’s seemingly impossible to opt out and stay employed. Is there anything that I can do to minimize my exposure? Has anyone made it a norm to say “transcription isn’t needed for this meeting so I would like everyone to turn off AI notetaker before we proceed?”