Facebook doesn't seem to mind that facial recognition glasses would endanger women [View all]

rwa Mahdawi
Sat 27 Feb 2021 09.00 EST

Facebook is considering building facial recognition capabilities into its smart glasses – which would make life easy for stalkers

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Tech gets even more in your Face-book
Picture this: you’re sitting in a bar and a creepy stranger keeps trying to talk to you. You ignore them. The next day you get a text from that stranger. Not only do they know your phone number, they know where you live; in fact, they know everything about you. They were wearing Facebook smart glasses, you see. The moment they looked in your direction the glasses identified you via facial recognition technology.

This, it seems, is precisely the sort of Black Mirror-esque future Facebook wants. The tech company (and serial privacy invader) has teamed up with Ray-Ban to develop a range of smart glasses. While it’s not clear exactly what these devices will do yet, Buzzfeed has reported that Facebook is considering building facial recognition capabilities into them. During an internal meeting on Thursday, Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s vice-president of augmented and virtual reality, told employees that Facebook was currently assessing the legal issues surrounding this.

Legal issues are one thing, but what about the very obvious ethical and privacy issues? Would you be able to mark your face as “unsearchable?”, one employee asked. And what about the potential for “real-world harm” and “stalkers”?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/27/facebook-facial-recognition-glasses-would-endanger-women

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