An internal Meta doc reveals far-reaching surveillance plans from Facebook's parent company that rely on the distraction of political turmoil

Meta, the parent company for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, plans to introduce new face scanning tech while people are distracted by current political turbulence. The Trump-adjacent corporation plans to package the feature in new smart glasses. An internal Meta document seen by the New York Times (NYT) says:

We will launch 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.

The media outlet provides further info on what the tech would allow:

The feature, internally called “Name Tag,” would let wearers of smart glasses identify people and get information about them via Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant.

The cynical internal memo likely references the tumult currently sweeping the US amidst the mass criminality carried out by the brownshirts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Trump’s personal paramilitary goons have been violating laws left and right as they beat and kill their way around the US, under the pretext of an immigration crackdown.

ICE have already made extensive use of face scanning tech. Meta’s glasses would represent another privacy violating move, capturing massive amounts of personal data which may ultimately find its way into the hands of an authoritarian state. Meta has form when it comes to handing over info about customers to governments.

  • hector@lemmy.todayBanned from community
    35·
    3 months ago

    Shit, so anyone wearing these glasses is compromising everyone they come into contact with, not just to data brokers, but by extension to the us government, and everyone else the data brokers sell the information to.

    This is something the federal government actually should be regulating under interstate commerce, companies grabbing personal information of groups that didn’t consent is hardly fair, not the least when the information is being used commercially and to the detriment of people.

    I guess that is why previous google glasses wearers were accosted and chased out of establishments, they didn’t want a corporate spy sending everyone’s likeness to headquarters and data banks.

    • FineCoatMummy@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      3 months ago

      Shit, so anyone wearing these glasses is compromising everyone they come into contact with, not just to data brokers, but by extension to the us government, and everyone else the data brokers sell the information to.

      That’s what gets to me. In this case yah, but so many other situations too. I can try to improve my own privacy environment. I cannot stop random people from biometricing me as I walk around the city.

      My friends tell me sometimes, you were always visible in public, what do you worry about? But it is a vast difference between someone seeing a random unknown person walking who they forget 30 seconds later, and having a permanent record of everyone’s movements attached to their IDs.

      I can refuse to opt in. I cannot stop total strangers from opting me in tho.

      FFS.