🦄Big Tech has repeatedly followed a familiar playbook: rush new technologies to market, normalise potentially harmful practices, and then fight regulation and slow-roll enforcement when policymakers try to catch up. Meta’s smart glasses should be seen in this context.
(See the video for parts of my intervention on Norwegian national TV and radio last Friday (english subtitles)) 1/
#privacy
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😰 Earlier this year, the New York Times exposed how Meta planned to roll out face recognition technology in a “dynamic political environment”, when they thought everyone would look the other way. Then WIRED exposed how Meta had made the tech "nearly ready to go" in the software of the app itself. Swedish news outlet Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) and Göteborgs-Posten exposed how employees had access and was exposed to sensitive videos by users. 2/
The glasses themselves are highly problematic, even without that tech embedded, as the glasses allow for “frictionless” capture of photos, video and audio. Sadly, we are already hearing countless stories of people being filmed without their knowledge or consent, harassed and being outed online. Lives are ruined in the process, and we risk a massive chilling effect on the freedom of movement, freedom of expression and the right to privacy, as these devices are normalised in society. 3/
🛑 This is why we have argued for a temporary sales ban on these glasses in Norway, while giving policy and decision makers time to consider a tech-neutral approach to counter these challenges. I hope more countries and the EU will consider the same. The precautionary principle matters here: democratic red lines should be drawn before intrusive technologies become normalised, not afterwards. /end
