I often get e-mail suggesting topics to cover on SBM or elsewhere in my social media content. I like getting these e-mails when they are organic, coming from readers here with genuine questions about some questionable claim or practice. But often they are press contacts, by a professional promoter pushing a new study or shopping around an author or someone they represent. […]
The post An Unimpressive Reiki Study first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.
It is not difficult to see why critics have called Trump’s forays in Latin America another instance of his hypocrisy and lies. Less than a month after Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had recently been sentenced to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking, U.S. armed forces abducted sitting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on the same charges. But as Aslı Bâli…
In the 1970s, as the Cold War raged, a state-backed television spy drama called ‘Das Unsichtbare Visier’ gripped audiences in East Germany. The title translates as ‘The Invisible Visor,’ and its hero was a Stasi agent who went by the alias Achim Detjen. A cultural counterpoint to James Bond, he foiled dastardly Western plots.
Skip forward 50 years and Achim Detjen appears to have returned as part of another pro-Russia propaganda effort — but this time he’s a journalist.
In February, a German-language website called Anonymous News — which has no connection to the famed hacktivist group with the same name — listed an “Achim Detjen” as the author of an article with a misleading headline that suggested French president Emmanuel Macron was linked to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The hyperlink on the story’s byline led not to a journalist’s profile, but to the German-language website of Russia’s government-owned broadcaster RT, where articles have also been written under the name of the fictitious spy.
As journalists around the world pore over the files released by the U.S. Department of Justice in January relating to the Epstein case, they have found no evidence that the French president ever communicated with or met with Epstein. Macron is only referenced tangentially by other people or in press articles.
However the yarn spun under an apparent pseudonym at Anonymous News was not the only attempt at alleging the two men were deeply connected.
The week before, in France, an article made the baseless claim that a model agent tied to Epstein said Macron would have a party and he would invite young men for him. Emails cited as apparent evidence did not appear in the released files. The claims were published on a clone site of a real outlet called France-Soir in an article which co-opted the byline of a French journalist. A video making the allegations then spread on X.
The French government service known as Viginum, which works to combat foreign digital interference, attributed the narrative to a Russian disinformation operation called Storm-1516. Viginum said in a statement that Storm-1516 had been “publicly attributed to Unit 29155 of the Russian military intelligence service (GRU).”
A report on Storm-1516 published by Viginum last year said its activities “meet the criteria of a foreign digital interference and represent a significant threat to the digital public debate, both in France and in all European countries.”
Pro-Russian disinformation across Europe has surged and evolved since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Many claims seek to discredit Ukraine’s armed forces, its European allies, and the leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky. Others, like the claims against Macron, take aim at Western leaders who support Ukraine.
By digging into Anonymous News reporters sought to understand more about the forces behind pro-Russian propaganda and information manipulation in Europe.
What they found was a cast of real-life characters that could comfortably sit next to Achim Detjen in a 21st century drama — among them a German far-right figure, an officer for Russia’s Federal Security Service, and an impoverished Bulgarian who was paid to be the on-paper owner of a media company receiving reader donations for the outlet.
Anonymous News markets itself to German-speaking audiences as “uncensored news.” Its website, anonymousnews.org, attracts around 100,000 visitors each month, according to traffic analytics tools, and promotes pro-Kremlin and anti-Western narratives. It has also shared hacked U.K. government documents.
There is no information about staff on the site, but one man has proudly emerged as the face of the outlet’s new Moscow-based YouTube channel, ANTVAuslandsStudio, which has drawn over one million views in the past four months for its German-language videos in praise of life in Russia.
In the channel’s first post in October, Mario Rönsch — who has also described himself as Editor-in-Chief of Anonymous News’s website — stood stoically in front of the Kremlin, introducing himself as someone persecuted by German intelligence agencies and committed to delivering portrayals of Russia that are “authentic, uncensored and always committed to the truth.”
Katarina Bader, a disinformation expert and professor of online journalism at Stuttgart Media University, said that while more polished influencers might gain more traction, Anonymous News’ posts are still spread widely. She noted how Rönsch — a long-time fixture of Germany’s far-right — appears to have pivoted to a pro-Russia orientation in his new gig.
“Mario Rönsch ran one of the largest far-right channels; today, he primarily presents himself as pro-Russian. The focus has definitely shifted,” she told OCCRP’s partner paper trail media.
Since Moscow’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been accused of seeking to manipulate narratives in Europe and the U.S. via right-wing media networks.
Rönsch, who did not respond to requests to comment, first made a name for himself in 2014 speaking at anti-establishment rallies in Germany known as “Vigils for Peace,” which included far-right figures and conspiracy theorists. In a YouTube video from one of the weekly gatherings, a casually dressed Rönsch called on the cheering crowd to “publicly shame the media.”
That year Rönsch traveled from Berlin to Moscow, according to leaked border records seen by reporters. The purpose and the length of his trip are not known.
By the time he made the trip to Russia, a Facebook group called “Anonymous Kollektiv” had also been launched. According to German court documents, Rönsch was the operator.
The Facebook group, which disseminated conspiracy theories as well as anti-immigrant and pro-Russian content, reportedly amassed two million followers before it was deleted in May 2016. That same month a successor website, anonymousnews.ru, was established.
Yet Rönsch was not only in the business of news. By May 2016, he had also launched an online shop called Migrantenschreck — which means “migrant terror” — where he sold more than 170 weapons for almost 100,000 euros to German buyers, according to court documents. In 2018, he was detained by Hungarian police on a German arrest warrant and extradited to stand trial, where he was convicted of firearms trafficking offenses. Rönsch was sentenced to two years and 10 months in prison, but served just over a year before being released for early parole in December 2020.
Within months of his release, the current version of Anonymous News — anonymousnews.org — appeared online. Reporters found that the new domain shared the same Russian hosting infrastructure as the previous anonymousnews.ru website.
Rönsch, who posted on social media last year that he had been traveling in Russia since late 2023, also registered a consulting firm in Russia in 2024. That same year he launched the anonymousnews_org_en Telegram channel, which is an English version of the German channel anonymousnews_org. Today the two channels have more than 76,000 subscribers combined.
In 2024 and again in 2025, Anonymous News published a post linking to the distribution of hacked documents from the U.K. Foreign Office and the British Embassy in Moscow — material that was also previously shared by Russia’s foreign ministry.
Benno Zogg, an expert on Russian disinformation, said that tracing who is behind pro-Russia influence campaigns in Europe, and who funds them, can rarely be proven beyond doubt — and that advances in technology are making the task even tougher.
“Influence activities are not a new phenomenon, but technological developments such as social media and artificial intelligence are exacerbating the challenge,” said Zogg, who is Head of Strategic Affairs and Foresight at the Swiss State Secretariat for Security Policy.
When reporters looked into one of Anonymous News’ funding streams it took them to an unlikely media company owner who has also been listed as one of the website’s authors.
Anonymous News solicits donations from its readers, contributing to its image as an alternative, independent media outlet. Currently, the website says it still needs to raise 102,000 euros to cover editorial expenses for its 2026 budget.
Donors are channeled to a PayPal account for the Czech company AN Média a Platební Služby s.r.o. On paper, the company is owned by a Bulgarian man called Ivelin Borisov. Journalists from OCCRP’s Bulgarian member center Bird.bg tracked down Borisov and found the impoverished 56-year-old living in a rundown house in a remote village.
Borisov told reporters that he had worked in Germany in the past and had been paid 200 or 300 euros to sign some papers in Czechia. Since then, he said he had heard nothing about “his” company.
When he was shown Anonymous News articles with his byline on German-language stories, Borisov said “there’s no way I wrote that.”
The company’s documents also list a Czech woman called Magdalena Průšová as AN Media’s “administrator” with power-of-attorney. Průšová told OCCRP’s Czech member center Investigace that she had been working at a company at the time which dealt with setting up firms and confirmed she had escorted Borisov to a notary. She said a German man she knew only as Mario was behind the company.
Průšová said that during its first year and a half of operation AN Media received donations of between 10 and 200 euros.
“These weren’t big sums — certainly not millions,” she said, but stopped responding to reporters when asked for the financial records.
AN Media was liquidated last week, more than a year since a Prague municipal court initiated its dissolution proceedings due to the company’s failure to file financial reports. As of publication, Anonymous News still linked to the firm’s PayPal account to collect funds.
While reporters’ analysis of Anonymous News’ finances led them on a circuitous route via Bulgaria and Czechia, when they looked at who read its narratives, the path led to Moscow.
Russian disinformation relies on dissemination across social media platforms and languages, sometimes involving paid-for troll accounts and bots.
France’s Viginum said the first X account to share the false Epstein-Macron narrative after the article appeared on the fake France-Soir website frequently amplified “Storm-1516 information operations.”
“The narrative was then taken up by a group of accounts known to Viginum,” the agency said in the statement.
In the case of Anonymous News, reporters found its articles were frequently shared from its English-language Telegram channel by a Telegram account with the handle Corob_12.
Reporters from OCCRP’s partner Ukrainian Toronto Television traced the Russian phone number registered to the account to a 38-year-old Russian man named Alexey Bashilov.
They then found a second phone number registered to Bashilov in leaked data which also showed he ordered food delivery in 2018 from the Moscow address Bolshaya Lubyanka, 1 — the headquarters of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).
A digital phone book application called Numbuster shows that people have saved one of Bashilov’s numbers as “Lyosha FSB” (a diminutive version of the name Alexey) and “UK Alexey Pashilov.”
Using additional leaked information, reporters obtained Bashilov’s mobile phone contacts, which included a saved “work” number — a landline registered to Military Unit 43753, which is the FSB’s Center for Information Protection and Special Communications.
Other contacts in Bashilov’s phone include individuals with various FSB sub-departments saved alongside their name.
Corob_12 also shared posts from a Telegram channel called Woland’s Notes, which is registered to one of Bashilov’s phone numbers as the administrator.
This account posts in Russian, but focuses on criticizing Britain and its decision-making around Russia and Ukraine, and also shares posts from Anonymous News.
Woland’s Notes only has some 5,200 subscribers, but the channel has high-profile readers. Its content is regularly reposted by Kremlin propagandist and well-known state media TV host Vladimir Solovyov, and the Russian lawmaker Andrei Lugovoi, who, according to a U.K. independent inquiry in 2016, was one of the men who poisoned former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.
Woland’s Notes shared the claim that there was evidence of Macron communicating with Epstein within an hour of the story going up on the website impersonating France-Soir.
Neither Bashilov nor the FSB responded to journalists’ questions about their relationship with Anonymous News. After reporters sent questions to Bashilov, Corob_12 deleted his account and Woland’s Notes hasn’t posted since.
Disinformation expert Bader said that while Anonymous News might not have the reach of other pro-Russia channels, it is part of a much wider ecosystem that aims to skew the information landscape through false claims.
“Such channels gradually destroy trust in politics and in what they refer to as mainstream media,” Bader said, adding that readers don’t necessarily need to believe in their claims for them to have an effect.
“Being regularly exposed to such narratives is enough to end up considering almost everything as potential propaganda,” she said.
Research support by Misha Gagarin, OCCRP.
Microsoft Corp. today pushed security updates to fix at least 77 vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and other software. There are no pressing “zero-day” flaws this month (compared to February’s five zero-day treat), but as usual some patches may deserve more rapid attention from organizations using Windows. Here are a few highlights from this month’s Patch Tuesday.
Image: Shutterstock, @nwz.
Two of the bugs Microsoft patched today were publicly disclosed previously. CVE-2026-21262 is a weakness that allows an attacker to elevate their privileges on SQL Server 2016 and later editions.
“This isn’t just any elevation of privilege vulnerability, either; the advisory notes that an authorized attacker can elevate privileges to sysadmin over a network,” Rapid7’s Adam Barnett said. “The CVSS v3 base score of 8.8 is just below the threshold for critical severity, since low-level privileges are required. It would be a courageous defender who shrugged and deferred the patches for this one.”
The other publicly disclosed flaw is CVE-2026-26127, a vulnerability in applications running on .NET. Barnett said the immediate impact of exploitation is likely limited to denial of service by triggering a crash, with the potential for other types of attacks during a service reboot.
It would hardly be a proper Patch Tuesday without at least one critical Microsoft Office exploit, and this month doesn’t disappoint. CVE-2026-26113 and CVE-2026-26110 are both remote code execution flaws that can be triggered just by viewing a booby-trapped message in the Preview Pane.
Satnam Narang at Tenable notes that just over half (55%) of all Patch Tuesday CVEs this month are privilege escalation bugs, and of those, a half dozen were rated “exploitation more likely” — across Windows Graphics Component, Windows Accessibility Infrastructure, Windows Kernel, Windows SMB Server and Winlogon. These include:
–CVE-2026-24291: Incorrect permission assignments within the Windows Accessibility Infrastructure to reach SYSTEM (CVSS 7.8)
–CVE-2026-24294: Improper authentication in the core SMB component (CVSS 7.8)
–CVE-2026-24289: High-severity memory corruption and race condition flaw (CVSS 7.8)
–CVE-2026-25187: Winlogon process weakness discovered by Google Project Zero (CVSS 7.8).
Ben McCarthy, lead cyber security engineer at Immersive, called attention to CVE-2026-21536, a critical remote code execution bug in a component called the Microsoft Devices Pricing Program. Microsoft has already resolved the issue on their end, and fixing it requires no action on the part of Windows users. But McCarthy says it’s notable as one of the first vulnerabilities identified by an AI agent and officially recognized with a CVE attributed to the Windows operating system. It was discovered by XBOW, a fully autonomous AI penetration testing agent.
XBOW has consistently ranked at or near the top of the Hacker One bug bounty leaderboard for the past year. McCarthy said CVE-2026-21536 demonstrates how AI agents can identify critical 9.8-rated vulnerabilities without access to source code.
“Although Microsoft has already patched and mitigated the vulnerability, it highlights a shift toward AI-driven discovery of complex vulnerabilities at increasing speed,” McCarthy said. “This development suggests AI-assisted vulnerability research will play a growing role in the security landscape.”
Microsoft earlier provided patches to address nine browser vulnerabilities, which are not included in the Patch Tuesday count above. In addition, Microsoft issued a crucial out-of-band (emergency) update on March 2 for Windows Server 2022 to address a certificate renewal issue with passwordless authentication technology Windows Hello for Business.
Separately, Adobe shipped updates to fix 80 vulnerabilities — some of them critical in severity — in a variety of products, including Acrobat and Adobe Commerce. Mozilla Firefox v. 148.0.2 resolves three high severity CVEs.
For a complete breakdown of all the patches Microsoft released today, check out the SANS Internet Storm Center’s Patch Tuesday post. Windows enterprise admins who wish to stay abreast of any news about problematic updates, AskWoody.com is always worth a visit. Please feel free to drop a comment below if you experience any issues apply this month’s patches.
A host of improvements, refinements, bug fixing… Let’s see what this minor version has in store for you!
Since PeerTube v7.1, there’s been support for podcasts, but apps haven’t been playing well with HLS files generated by PeerTube. This new version of PeerTube lets admins force the creation of an optimized audio file and fixes most issues reported with podcasts.
PeerTube’s image management (for avatars, thumbnails, favicon, etc.) dates back to the early daysof the project and needed a major overhaul to adapt it to changes in the project and the Web.
Over the past few weeks, we have worked extensively to completely overhaul the system and make it both more efficient and more robust in the face of change.
Among these developments are improved video thumbnail quality (if your administrator has regenerated it), particularly for podcasts, support for WebP and PNG image formats for video thumbnails, and a preparatory work to enable images to be moved to object storage in the future.
These improvements are part of our ongoing efforts to optimize PeerTube’s performance in order to facilitate the scaling of platforms.
From now on, video creators will be able to restrict the domains on which their videos can be embedded.
This enables institutions, media outlets and other organisations to exercise greater control over access to their videos and integrate PeerTube more efficiently into their existing publishing process.
Unlike some alternatives to PeerTube, you don’t need a premium account here to enjoy x3 playback speed!
With this new version of PeerTube, you’ll no longer experiment this feeling of slowness when watching a video! You can now watch videos at the ultrasonic speed of your brain and listen to the sweet melody of voices under helium!
Lucide is the new player that came with PeerTube v8. It’s now the standard player for all new PeerTube installations.
If you’ve already got a PeerTube platform and you want Lucide to be the default player, you can enable it in the customization settings of your platform.
Notable new features include also an improved user experience with notifications grouped by date, an improved experience for managing a channel collaboratively, increased compatibility with other Fediverse softwares, and improved video SEO.
Finally, we have optimized the management of the transcoding queue to enable faster publishing and improved the robustness of channel synchronisation again (thanks to community feedback)!
Of course, many other improvements have been made in this version and you can view the complete list of changes on the dedicated page.
All of these changes have been made possible thanks to the feedback you have provided, either by reporting an issue on the software repository or by sharing your ideas on our dedicated platform!
If you’re running a platform, please read the important notes carefully before upgrading.
Thanks to everyone for following the PeerTube project over the years! If you wish and are able to, please, consider making a donation to Framasoft (the non-profit organization that develops PeerTube) to support the project!
The government should not help a religious institution to punish or deter members from inquiring about their faith. Yet, once again, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society is trying to use flimsy copyright claims to exploit the special legal tools available to copyright owners in order to unmask anonymous online speakers. And, once again, EFF has stepped in to urge the courts not to give Watch Tower’s attempts the force of law, with the help of local counsel Jonathan Phillips of Phillips & Bathke, P.C.
EFF’s client, J. Doe, is a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who became interested in the history of the organization’s public statements, and how they’ve changed over time. They created research tools to analyze those documents and ultimately created a website, JWS Library, allowing others to use those tools and verify their findings through an archive that included documents suppressed by the church. Doe and others discovered prophecies that failed to come true, erasure of a leader’s disgrace, increased calls for obedience and donations, and other insights about the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ practices. Doe also used machine translation on a foreign-language document to help the community understand what the church was saying to different audiences and also to help understand potential changes in the organization’s attitudes towards dissent.
Within the church, dissent or even asking questions has often been punished by labeling members as apostates and ostracizing—or “disfellowshipping”— them. As a result, Doe and others choose to speak anonymously to avoid retaliation that could cost them family, friend, and professional relationships.
There is no law against questioning the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Instead, Watch Tower argues that Doe’s activities constitute copyright infringement and seeks to use the special process provided in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to unmask them. It sent DMCA subpoenas to Google and Cloudflare, seeking information that would help them uncover Doe’s identity.
The problem for Watch Tower is that Doe’s research and commentary are clear fair uses allowed under copyright law. The First Amendment does not permit the unmasking of anonymous speakers based on such weak claims. Indeed, the First Amendment protects anonymous speakers precisely because some would be deterred from speaking if they faced retribution for doing so.
EFF stands with those who question the claims of those in power and who share the tools and knowledge needed to do so. We urge the judges in the Southern District of New York to quash these improper subpoenas and not allow copyright to be used to suppress important, legitimate speech.
As a professor of African American history, whenever I come across a black-oriented historical movie, the first thing I think about is whether the film makes my job harder or easier. Films like A Soldier’s Story, Glory, 12 Years a Slave, and Free State of Jones have enriched our understanding of the complexities driving American race relations. These movies—along with independent films like Nothing But a Man and Killer of Sheep and David Simon’s brilliant television drama, The Wire—offer explorations of human frailties and vulnerabilities that are alive to the possibilities available to human beings in their distinct times and locations. As good art invariably does, each takes some artistic license. However, the filmmakers’ sensitivity to context helps them avoid the kinds of anachronistic cliches and character archetypes that treat contemporary values and aspirations as eternal truths.
Over the last decade or so, the tech industry has tried, and mostly failed, to make “smart glasses”—tech-infused glasses with cameras, AI, maps, displays, and more—a thing. But over the past year, products like Meta’s Ray-Ban Display Glasses and Oakley’s Meta Glasses have gone from a curious niche to the mainstream.
Before you strap a dashcam to your face and sprint out into the world filming everything and everyone in your life, there are some civil liberties and privacy concerns to consider before buying or using a pair.
Meta is the biggest company that makes these sorts of glasses and their partnerships with Ray-Ban and Oakely are the most popular options, so we’ll be mostly focusing on them here. Others, like models from Snapchat are similar in form but far less ubiquitous. But Meta won’t hold this space for long. Google’s already announced a partnership with Warby Parker for their “AI-powered smart glasses,” and there are rumors around a competing product from Apple.
With that, let’s dive into some of the considerations you should make before purchasing a pair.
The photos and videos you record with most smartglasses will likely be stored online at some point in the process. On Meta’s offerings, unless you are livestreaming, media you capture when you press the camera button is kept on the glasses until you import them onto your phone, but media is imported automatically by default into the Meta AI mobile app, which is required to set up the glasses.
You can’t use any AI features locally on the glasses. So anytime you use AI features, like when you say, “Hey Meta, start recording,” the footage is fed to Meta. You can use the glasses without the Meta AI app entirely, but considering you can’t easily download footage from the glasses to your phone without it, most people will likely use the app.
Some videos are fed to Meta for AI training, and we know at least in some cases that those videos go through human review. An investigation by Swedish newspapers found that workers were reviewing and annotating camera footage, which includes all sorts of sensitive videos, including nudity, sex, and going to the bathroom. Meta claimed to the BBC that this is in accordance with its terms of use, all in the name of AI training, which states:
In some cases, Meta will review your interactions with AIs, including the content of your conversations with or messages to AIs, and this review may be automated or manual (human).
This all means that Meta and their third-party contractors will have access to at least some of what you record, and it’s very hard as a user to know where footage goes, who will have access to it, and what they will do with it. When you save footage to your phone’s camera roll, which is where the Meta AI app stores content, that might also be sent to Apple or Google’s servers, depending on your settings. Employees at these companies can then possibly access that media, and it could be shared with law enforcement.
The recorded audio from conversations with Meta AI are also saved by default, and if you don’t like that, tough luck, unless you go in and manually delete them every time you say something.
A common argument in favor of using the cameras in smartglasses is that phones and cameras can do this too, and it’s never been a problem.
But smartglasses are designed to resemble regular glasses, to the point where most reviews point out how friends didn’t notice that they had cameras embedded in them. They’re designed to be invisible to those being recorded outside of a small indicator light when they’re recording video footage (that cheap hacks can disable). Whereas it is often obvious that a person is recording if they pull their phone out of their pocket and point it at someone else.
They’re designed to be invisible to those being recorded outside of a small indicator light when they’re recording video footage
Moreover, constant recording of everything in public spaces can create all sorts of potential privacy problems, some more obvious than others. This is another way that cameras on glasses are different from cameras on phones: it is far easier to constantly record one’s whereabouts with the former than the latter. If you continuously record, maybe you just happen to catch someone entering their passcode or password onto their phone or computer at a coffee shop, or broadcast someone’s bank details when you’re standing in line at an ATM. That doesn’t even begin to get into when smartglasses are intentionally used for less socially responsible means. And some people may forget to turn off their smartglasses when they enter a private space like a bathroom.
And if you find yourself caught on someone’s camera, there’s not much you can do in recourse. If you do notice a stranger recording you, it’s up to you to intervene and ask not to be included in that footage, which can easily turn awkward or confrontational.
Our expectations of privacy shift when we’re in public, but bystanders in many cases will still have privacy interests. Public spaces are a place where you will be seen, but that shouldn’t mean it’s suddenly okay to catalog and identify everyone.
Meta, Google, Apple—perhaps one benefit of all the major tech companies entering this market is that we already have a good idea of how much they tend to respect the privacy of their users or the openness of their platforms. Spoiler, it’s often not much.
Meta has a long history of privacy invasive technologies and practices. We’ve heard rumblings that Meta hopes to add face recognition to its smartglasses, preferably, “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.” Yikes. This is a monumentally bad idea that should be abandoned by Meta and any of its competitors considering a similar feature. But regardless of whether they launch this feature, it’s a pretty clear indication of where Meta wants these sorts of devices to go.
You can disable a couple of the features where unnecessary data is sent to Meta. In the Meta AI app, under the device settings, there’s a privacy page where you can disable sharing additional data, and more importantly, turn off “Cloud media,” where your photos and videos are sent to Meta’s cloud for processing and temporary storage.
These glasses can be useful for filming a variety of activities. We’ve seen fascinating scenes of tattoo artists doing their work (with client’s permission), and it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to see how people might use it to film extreme sports. Even on an everyday level, you might find them useful for capturing holidays, birthdays, and all sorts of other private occasions.
But if you buy these glasses for a specific, mostly private purpose, it is probably best to stick to that, instead of wearing them everywhere and recording everything you do.
You often have a right to record in public spaces, but that doesn’t mean other people will like it. Businesses, including restaurants and stores, may want nothing to do with continuous filming and may either post a sign asking you not to use smartglasses, or ask you to stop. This may reflect the preferences not just of the business owner, but the people around you. And don’t use glasses to record when you enter other people’s private spaces like bathrooms or changing rooms.
It’s also a good idea to check in with friends and family before tapping that record button at a social gathering. Some people may not be as comfortable with these glasses as they are with other recording equipment.
Blurring video footage isn’t an easy task, but if you’re considering uploading footage from something like a protest, it may be worth the effort to do so (apps like Meta’s Edits simplify this process, as do some other video sites, like YouTube). Some people don’t want the government to see their faces at protests, and might be afraid to attend if other people are uploading their faces.
Some people don’t want the government to see their faces at protests, and might be afraid to attend if other people are uploading their faces.
It would be better if Meta leveraged its AI features to offer this sort of feature automatically, especially with livestreaming. It’s not that outlandish of a request, as it seems like the company tries to blur faces automatically in footage it captures for annotation, though it’s not always reliable. After all, Google began redacting faces in Street View years ago, following privacy concerns from groups like EFF.
Adding facial recognition technology to smartglasses would obliterate the privacy of everyone. We cannot let companies push face recognition into these glasses, and as a user, you should make your voice clear that this is not something you want.
Smartglasses don’t have to be used to decimate the privacy of anyone you encounter during the day. There are legitimate uses out there, but it’s up to those who use them to respect the social norms of the spaces they enter and the people they encounter.