A Boring Dystopia

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College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time (www.theverge.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/aboringdystopia

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Two Harvard students have created an eerie demo of how smart glasses can use facial recognition tech to instantly dox people’s identities, phone numbers, and addresses. The most unsettling part is the demo uses current, widely available technology like the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and public databases.

AnhPhu Nguyen, one of the two students, posted a video showcasing the tech in action that was then picked up by 404 Media. Dubbed I-XRAY, the tech works by using the Meta smart glasses’ ability to livestream video to Instagram. A computer program then monitors that stream and uses AI to identify faces. Those photos are then fed into public databases to find names, addresses, phone numbers, and even relatives. That information is then fed back through a phone app.

In the demo, you can see Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, the other student behind the project, use the glasses to identify several classmates, their addresses, and names of relatives in real time. Perhaps more chilling, Nguyen and Ardayfio are also shown chatting up complete strangers on public transit, pretending as if they know them based on information gleaned from the tech...

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Public databases have photos of people's faces? Or do they mean private but with access available for purchase? I didn't think those had photos either but I've never paid for access so I don't know.

[–] jewbacca117 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

No, but meta does. Facial recognition will bring up their fb/Instagram.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I have not come across facial recognition software that contains Facebook pictures in its database. I don't mean to be creepy, but I'm curious about which software you're referring to.

[–] jewbacca117 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Whatever software they are talking about in the article, they don't mention a name.

[–] testfactor 10 points 2 months ago

They did mention a name. Publicly available database called PimEyes apparently.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That and the following make me suspect that this is a faked publicity stunt rather than a real prototype.

“The purpose of building this tool is not for misuse, and we are not releasing it,” Nguyen and Ardafiyo write in a document explaining the project. Instead, the students say their goal is to raise awareness that all this isn’t some dystopian future — it’s all possible now with existing technology.

[–] testfactor 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's in the article. Public database called PimEyes.

It doesn't go into much more detail than that. Says it's an open to the public face searching database.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

PimEyes doesn't search Facebook. You can try it for yourself. It will show you matching faces for free, but you have to pay to find out where it found them.

[–] testfactor 5 points 2 months ago

Fair. I presume that they meant publicly available in the sense that it was accessible to the public, not in the sense that it was necessarily free.

The article says they are using PimEyes, which I assume means that they're paying for a subscription.