I fly BA across the Atlantic every few months, and today for the first time the safety briefing included a specific callout of respecting privacy while filming aboard.
In the US anyway it feels like the battle for public spaces has been lost. Everywhere I go people are listening full blast to their phones with no headphones - I find this about 100x more obnoxious than filming. I think both should be banned with Singapore-style punishments but I expect even if companies posture about this nothing will happen. United famously prohibited using your audio without headphones but based on my trip with them last week that has done nothing. At this point it’s a societal problem that needs a tougher approach.
I hope it's not fully lost, I hate when people play music in public and don't have a good answer about filming people in public with these glasses but I don't want it.
Honestly making it socially unacceptable is probably the only solution. Not sure how that happens though...
First amendment doesn't mean anything goes...for example, protesting has a time, place, and manner restrictions, even though you would at first glance think any restriction on protesting would be illegal.
> You can't make it illegal. The first amendment protects it.
I'm not a legal expert but the first amendment doesn't generally give the right to secretly record people, especially in places where there are already laws about hidden cameras, recording, privacy, etc.
It's not about the shape as much as the intention and execution.
Perhpas they were talking about blasting music in public spaces.
In which case, the First Amendment still probably wouldn't apply, unless we're talking about laws against specific musical content, since content-neutral restrictictions on public speech are broadly legal.
The 1st Amendment does not apply to private property. Property owners, even owners of public utilities, can absolutely set boundaries and trespass people. In some states, property owners can literally shoot trespassers to death.
Yes, but the top post said "Public spaces". Private property isn't a public space.
In the case of truly public spaces, historically it's considered that other then in very specific situations (bathrooms for example) you have no expectations of privacy and can be recorded regardless of the shape of the camera.
On private spaces, which people constantly mix up with public spaces, you're absolutely correct that it is able to be restricted and can define very granularly what's acceptable. A plane is a private space. They can restrict anything they want (limited by protected class/characteristics in the US. Other countries may vary).
Public space is precious, but I’d just like to make it clear for the casual HN reader that suggesting “Singapore-style” punishment for antisocial behavior implies a pro-caning stance. Caning is a violent, abhorrent, and cruel practice that violates the fundamental human rights of the convicted person. It leaves the victim of state violence with permanent scars and long-lasting trauma. Time and again it has been shown that capital punishment is not any more effective at preventing recidivism than rehabilitation or compulsory community service.
If you want positive, lasting change, you have to start at the start, modeling positive social and emotional programs in public schools and community programs. Our society is only as healthy as the core beliefs that are willingly held and practiced by its population. Raw state power through fear and intimidation does not change people’s minds as much as widespread belief about what is inherently right and wrong.
> Time and again it has been shown that capital punishment is not any more effective at preventing recidivism than rehabilitation or compulsory community service.
I think you meant corporal punishment, not capital punishment. The latter is when you lose your life.
Do the same studies hold true for corporal punishment? I am not familiar with the literature.
I would suspect that they do. My understanding is the vast number of people who commit crimes do not consider the ramifications of their actions, so there is no amount of punishment that materially changes their behavior.
I struggle with this. Growing up, I was spanked and it was highly effective at changing my behavior, but my older brother was very impulsive and he would get spanked a lot and it never seemed to chang his behavior. He settled down in his 20's after a lot of legal consequences, but I do wonder is there would have been any change for him if my parents went with a different style or if I would have turned out differently.
> people are listening full blast to their phones with no headphones - I find this about 100x more obnoxious than filming
Two very different concerns. One is annoying in that very moment and has no lasting consequences. The other can have all kinds of consequences depending on what was secretly recorded, and where that recording was used.
> listening full blast to their phones with no headphones
There's something even worse, taking my 97 year old mother to her gerontologist :-). Her HMO has a group office of 8 gerontologists with a shared waiting area which easily seats >60, but is always packed since most 80+ year-olds treat doctor appts like plane flights and arrive an hour early. Most of the patients can't hear well and take calls on speaker phone at FULL VOLUME, then constantly remind the caller to talk louder.
It's maddening enough when I go maybe once a quarter and sit there for an hour but imagine working in that room every day. Last year the reception desk relocated closer to the elevator and a very solid wall with thick auto-close door was constructed in-between. Perhaps OSHA has a 'cruel and unusual' designation :-)
[Empathetic side note: hearing loss in the elderly is a serious hardship which not only socially isolates but also accelerates cognitive decline while decreasing independence. According to several audiologists we've consulted, my mom isn't an outlier. It's normal that even state-of-the-art, high-end (>$5,000) hearing aids, properly calibrated, only help a limited amount at >80+ yrs old. My mom, despite occasionally struggling to remember an infrequent word, is still mentally sharp. Yet it's rare she can understand people on the phone well enough to make her own appts etc. I'm really hoping DSP, MEMS and AI offer better hearing solutions before I need them.
Inevitable hearing loss combined with forced 'app-ification' and mobile UX trends are increasingly making the modern world inaccessible to the very elderly, cutting off even those who are mentally capable. Talking to the staff at my Mom's independent living facility, it's a shit show and getting worse with every major OS update. They've been forced to staff a Mobile Phone Support Desk. I really wish Apple & Android UX teams were required to work a week at that desk.]
It takes deliberate effort to hide that you're filming with a smartphone. It doesn't require extra effort to disguise the act of filming with Meta glasses as simply looking at someone.
False. The Meta glasses have a blinking white LED while filming. The camera gets disabled if you try to cover it. Filming someone with a phone is much easier to disguise.
It's much more obvious that someone is holding up their phone to record than someone wearing glasses containing an inconspicuous camera and recording LED that may have been tampered with.
Sometimes it is. I regularly see people scrolling TikTok and Instagram in public, they might as well be shooting ultrawide 4k footage and I'd have no idea.
Social mores. The desire of individuals to farm social capital and the desire of corporations to monetize this drive completely displaced "is it okay if I film this?" for a decade or two, but it seems to be coming back somewhat. I'm not holding my breath, though.
What prevents murder in areas where everyone has a gun?
Consequences.
The consequences of these glasses should be that in any private space, the offender either remove them, or remove themselves. Just like there are consequences to trying to hold up your phone in a way that looks like you are recording staff or other patrons in many private spaces.
> I have heard the middle east has some very strict public filming laws, especially for women and children. Would be very popular globally!
Yeah right, because they respect and value women so much in middle east that they beat women to death for not covering their hair and we don't want that in video
There's nothing new here. European airlines generally prohibit filming the activities of their employees, regardless of technology. In fact, most of them (unlike U.S.-based airlines) try to anonymize their employees. They don't wear name tags, for example.
I've had this be a problem when I was trying to capture a FA's photo while disembarking the aircraft after he rudely chastised me for using the bathroom "too many times" due to a bladder condition.
As a former customer service representative I have no sympathy for you. this is in no way the FAs fault. And this way of thinking, believing it is the service employee's fault seems to be the American way of thinking, you don't see it anywhere else in the world. Did you ever tell the airline it was a bladder condition? Most people do not and just say the service employee is an inconvenience and should be reported or fired
Any service employee acting in a way that does not favor the customer does so because it is their job to do exactly that. You do not report the employee, you take it higher up. The problem is never the employee. The problem is never caused by the employee. The problem is the policy that was created by some director at the company, that the employee is just following like a robot because that is their job. The employee has never heard of that director and not even their superiors have heard of them or know who they are. You could have contacted customer service and gotten credit for it. The service employee is powerless. You can even report the company itself but never the employee because they are just robots.
> As a former customer service representative I have no sympathy for you.
Given this response, I can see why you are a "former" CSR and not a current one. You need empathy skills.
> this is in no way the FAs fault.
Are you really arguing that the FA was in the right for criticizing me for using the bathroom when it was safe to do so? My medical issues are a private matter; I don't have to disclose them to anyone as a condition of using it.
> The problem is the policy that was created by some director at the company, that the employee is just following like a robot because that is their job.
I find it difficult to believe that a director ordered their FAs to humiliate their customers for having to use the bathroom. You're going to need some evidence that this is the case.
It's not like anyone likes the job, it's just the one that happens to hire the fastest. It's delusional to think anyone gets the job because they like it.
And an airplane has a limited amount of bathroom water that has to be shared among all passengers. Unbelievable I know.
> It's not like anyone likes the job, it's just the one that happens to hire the fastest. It's delusional to think anyone gets the job because they like it.
I don't see how this is relevant at all. Just because you don't like your job doesn't mean you should be rude to your customers, and that you shouldn't be identified and terminated if you are.
> And an airplane has a limited amount of bathroom water that has to be shared among all passengers. Unbelievable I know.
This isn't relevant. First, this was as we were disembarking (the plane had already landed), and second, it is incredibly rare for a flight to be diverted because it's exhausted its lavatory water supply. Have you even seen a story of this? I can't recall one in my (somewhat long) lifetime.
You seem to persist in making points without any supporting evidence. How about you stop that?
I feel like you've just seen red and ignored the given situation.
Your response seems to indicate it's perfectly normal and inline with standard policies to admonish a passenger for using the bathroom too much. Does any airline have a bathroom visit quota?
> The service employee is powerless
You're saying they're forced to monitor bathroom trips and pass comment?
It's really unfortunate that to make the world visual-legible to a machine we have to permit recording in a high-fidelity format. I'd love to have an AI assistant perceive the universe around me and assist but I prefer to give people a measure of discretion in personal interactions. I've used the Meta Glasses in public, though, and they're really fantastic. You can ask about fish you can see, or you can capture your kids in a moment. Such a pity about this perhaps immutable property of life.
Willing to bet that after all the Meta glasses backlash companies are going to start releasing AI devices that have cameras but don't store photos or videos.
Haha, "RAM-only camera!". We'd lose the candid moments with the babies but a small price to pay to have the intelligence available at a moment's notice.
The more we ostracise people doing that now, the less likely it will come up in the future.
In any place of business that I patronize, if I see one, I will request that staff should ask the offender to remove them, or remove themselves from the property.
Tell that to someone with bad vision, or wants to listen to podcasts without having in earbuds while walking through the city. There are many reasons this type of technology is useful outside of trying to record people without their knowledge.
My opinion (which is about filming in general, not the glasses) which seems to contradict others' but:
So if someone acts up and starts screaming it's suddenly ok to film, or even when people are committing crimes on board it's not ok? Who's to say when this is happening or not?
If filming is banned there will be less evidence for when this does happen, and people could get away with more crimes (although admittedly the bar is higher on a plane and the flight staff's testimony will carry lots of weight).
I think planes are public places (because 200 people are crammed into a tiny tube of metal) and your expectation of privacy should be diminished there. There are too many potential things that could happen on a plane. People are too close and vulnerable while on a plane. We cannot run or protect ourselves as well.
And as far as flight attendants, unfortunately they are at least partially responsible for both the safety and wellbeing of those on board. That is literally their job.
Banning filming of them will reduce their sense of urgency and responsibility, just like it would of cops if we were not allowed to film them.
There are just too many things that need to go right and also that could go wrong on a flight.
Just recently someone took a photo of an ostensible pedophile while on board conversing on a website for pedophiles and now the world knows. If all photography or filming was banned then this wouldn't have happened.
We have had convenient, ultra-portable, widely available video taping for what, 20 years now? Closer to 15 years for any resemblance of quality or faces being recognizable. Commercial flying has existed for over a century now, and somehow it all worked out for decades upon decades before portable digital video cameras (like what we have now) became cheap. It's funny how once we gain some extra convenience, no matter how marginal in the given situation, it only takes a few years for it to be considered indispensable, the right to use it utterly essential.
No one's getting away with a crime on a commercial flight, there are hundreds of people around you and upwards of a dozen or more flight crew on board, with a button to call over one of them in short reach of every passenger.
This is unsupported, but I feel like the vast majority of people filming flight attendants are not doing it for any valid reasons, but to try to start a harassment or doxxing outrage campaign online because they've caused them some brief inconvenience. 90%+ of flight attendant interactions with passengers are about convenience and not safety, and people should not have a right to hold a stick over these largely underpaid and overworked employees because they've not topped up their drink in 5 minutes. For the remaining minority of reasons, recording their voice should cover most cases.
However, the strongest argument against this is that it is possible for things to be banned in general but allowed when doing the banned thing would prevent a greater harm. This idea already exists in legal system. Zero-tolerance and free-for-all are not the only options, you could be allowed to film in emergencies or to prevent worse things from happening.
While you're right that your expectation of privacy is obviously lower in a place like this, the blurry term here is 'privacy'. Is 'you expect yourself to be seen by others' the same kind of privacy as 'you expect anyone to be able to get a permanent record of you without your knowledge or agreement'? What about when these glasses start doing facial recognition? Wouldn't you also have to steelman the 'you should expect anyone to be able to know exactly who you are and to upload your identity, location and appearance to a megacorporation' kind of privacy?
Oh they are trying their very best to go the way of policing. For example just last week Delta's PR team has been working overtime to make sure one of their South American customer abuse cases don't get picked up by the English speaking media. You won't see this anywhere in major US media because the victim was a foreigner (Santiago Daza) from a poor country like Colombia. Delta's team did a wonderful job of suppressing it. If they tried this with a rich French or Chinese they would have been raked over the coals and on their knees apologizing. The foreign media and internet users would not let them go so easily.
They literally aren't, though. They are the airline's private property, and you've entered into a contract of carriage with them to temporarily have access to their property under the terms of the contract. To some extent these terms are circumscribed by law, but in the absence such law, you are bound by whatever terms you agreed to in the contract. If you don't agree not to film in the plane, you're free to not accept the contract.
They literally are. They are common carriers, which is a legal concept with a lot of precedent. The UK term for this, ironically, is "public carrier" and while yes it's a privately owned it has distinctly public characteristics encoded in law that sharply distinguishes these spaces from genuinely private areas.
That's a distinction without a difference. There are enough structural constraints in launching airline alternatives that they might as well be, especially the national carriers. They are not too far from being a utility (and in a lot of places they are subject to enormous amount of public funding to stay solvent because it's a national security issue when you don't have a pool of pilots and airplanes).
It's one of those "too big and too important to fail" businesses. There can be the occasional M&A or bankruptcy but no structural industry collapse is allowed. It's as important as the car industry in some places, though the reasons differ.
Do you expect the masses to fly private jets or Cessnas to cross the globe? It's like saying electrical companies shouldn't be regulated too much in certain jurisdictions because the generators are privately owned rather than being publicly owned. People will laugh you out of the court of public opinion.
I think their quasi-public status means that contracts of carriage should be tightly hemmed in by law and not have as many degrees of freedom as ordinary contracts, but they are still contracts regarding the use of private property, and in the absence of such hemming, the terms and conditions still apply.
If you want to launch a public campaign to change the law and add "you can always surreptitiously record people on airlines" to the set of unenforceable contract terms, go ahead and attempt it. You'll deserve the furious blowback you get, though.
The people that are doing this are self absorbed assholes and confronting them will almost always lead to an escalation that makes it worse for you. Management is unfortunately the better approach here.
Sure, but if someone’s being an asshole they don’t always respond well to being confronted. If they were a calm and reasonable sort they wouldn’t be behaving like that in the first place.
Airplanes are a great use case for display glasses. They make using a computer or watching a movie in economy class so much nicer. I like using display glasses that don't have a camera. But unfortunately everybody assumes they do have one. Assuming I'm a dork because I'm wearing them is fair. Assuming I'm a creep isn't.
I haven't been bothered over them yet, but I fully expect a conversation where someone yells at me for "filming", I show there's no cameras, and they insist they're simply hidden.
I haven't been bothered over them yet, either. They're tethered to the computer, so you naturally take them off when you go to the bathroom, et cetera. I try and lower them when I speak to the flight attendant, but I know that I don't always do so. Even without the camera misunderstanding, keeping them on while talking to people is rude in the same way that wearing mirror sunglasses while talking to people is rude.
It's mostly curiosity, people wondering what they are. They expect them to be camera glasses but believe me when I tell them they aren't.
It’s probably less about the sunglasses specifically and more about seeing the person’s eyes. Many neurotypical people think it’s rude to not maintain eye contact during conversations.
There is no accessibility reason ever for covering up the light or recording. I will accept describing objects in FOV etc but nothing should be persistable or sent to a third party that trains on them and saves them without the consent of everyone in view, a company should build non-criminal glasses without these feature sets and have insurance pay for them.
A camera and some rudimentary software should be a pretty good fix for color blindness. A camera and modern AI is a decent mitigation to partial or perhaps even complete blindness (prior art: Be My Eyes). A microphone, STT, and display would help with deafness.
One of the few rare real reasons to owning and if that's the real reason. In that instance the better approach is that the glasses should be held under a permit.
The camera should be disabled until you obtain a permit.
Drones require a license and agreement to fly, these should be too.
Do people not lie? It's not assumption it's more a tally. I meet you at zero. I can't trust words without facts. The former of what you said builds trust.
I would hope the same that I am trusted after proven and not trusted until known.
We all should be able to trust each other but that's not case in todays world.
I am not saying that. I am saying that the glasses should be under permitted use.
You can fly a drone on your own land. You can wear meta glasses on your land. I don't give a shit about that.
What I am saying is that if you want to wear the glasses in public, get a permit otherwise the camera or any geo-tracking features should be disabled.
It should be traceable to who wears these. I don't want to be filmed in public by some creep with a hidden recording device as to the likes of public not wanting hobbyist drones flown over their head.
You may act responsibly with them and that's great, but I doubt those do. Unfortunately that drags you in to the mix and others who use them legitimately too.
Unless they who wear the glasses tell me why they're wearing the glasses I will make association that you're in the same crowd. You stated you don't, so I believe you.
I have decidedly mixed feelings about this. In general, I don't think people should just be allowed to record and post other people's private moments. I think we don't want to live a life where we are at risk of every single thing that we've ever done being posted as video.
On the other hand, I travel a lot, and I take videos frequently to protect myself. Almost invariably, what I'm talking about here is walking around a rental car when I pick it up and drop it off. But there are other scenarios, like documenting that I was at a gate on time if they're claiming I was late and denying me boarding.
Of course, there are the ones that are contemplated by this article, like a dispute with another passenger or someone about what happened or what's happening, since the consequences of that stuff can be so severe.
I think a lot of European countries have laws around this that usually have exceptions for scenarios like that. For example, I was once recording the condition of a drop-off rental car in Italy. The rental car employee started screaming at me, claiming that, since he had been in the frame at some point or another, what I was doing was illegal. Meanwhile, he was refusing to give me a written receipt or some other proof that I had actually returned the car. If you know anything about rental cars in Italy, you want that, so I just took the video to confirm that I had, in fact, given them the keys and the car.
After it blew up and some research was done, it became clear that, while Italian law does have very strict restrictions on publishing recordings of people, recording your own customer service interactions for purposes of protecting yourself is clearly allowed.
I think a fairer policy here would be sharing, publishing, or distributing any recordings is very strictly prohibited, but merely possessing them can be permitted if the recorder can make a bona fide assertion that it was done for purposes of recording or protecting themselves and their rights as a customer.
Depends. Is British airways also agreeing not to record as well, or is just one of those paternalistic 'we don't want YOU to have evidence of wrongdoing'?
My guess, given England, is that they double down on more cameras, and conveniently lose recordings they don't like.
Why? Airports are probably the most surveilled places aside from casinos. Why should corporations or the establishment have a monopoly on surveillance and the footage, especially when the footage is (presumably) for the purposes of scrutinizing the corporation/establishment itself? I think the "this call is recorded for quality control purposes" principle should apply. If you're recording, I should be able to record too.
I don’t think anyone really objects to you being able to record video in public, but do object to you being able to secretly record video in public. There’s a huge difference imho between you holding up a phone to record an interaction and surreptitiously recording one with glasses.
>I do not board a plan to be discreetly recorded by a pair of glasses. It's creepy and just privacy invasive.
That's not what's under debate though.
>British Airways Warns Filming Crew With Meta Smart Glasses Could Get Your Tickets Cancelled
>The reported change builds on restrictions introduced earlier this year against photographing or filming BA employees without their consent. Livestreaming employees without permission is also prohibited.
>>“This includes filming, live streaming or taking photographs of any BA crew or other colleagues without their consent.”
Emphasis mine.
If they're doing this to protect their passengers privacy, they're doing a really good job at hiding that.
Seems like a fair question. There is a reasonable current of thought out there that rights and responsibilities should be reciprocal between businesses, government, and individuals.
In contrast, this is the only reasonable take. Given the extensive history of large multinational corporations abusing the rights of consumers with impunity, letting one of the two parties in any such dispute record the other, but not the reverse, is obviously unfair and unreasonable.
Assuming that nobody is gonna exploit it for marketing or other nefarious ends. A society that constantly videos everything would be kindof great. Everything documented. Everything searchable. Crime might become impossible. Like, no more murder or illegal dumping.
best use I’ve seen for meta glasses have been parties, where the host hands them out and takes your phone as collateral or locks them up in some way
everyone gets content and gets to be present, optionally or mandatory turn in of the glasses when leaving
everyone knows what they're walking into and some level of curation and community lets people still be loose, or know what level of discretion they should have
> where the host hands them out and takes your phone as collateral
You got me curious... what kind of parties do you go to where everyone trusts everyone else with filming and the privacy around it, but the host doesn't trust guests to return the glasses?
I fly BA across the Atlantic every few months, and today for the first time the safety briefing included a specific callout of respecting privacy while filming aboard.
> today for the first time the safety briefing included a specific callout of respecting privacy while filming aboard
This policy change isn't that new, should have been included in the briefing since April/May 2026?
KLM have been doing so in Europe for a couple of years now from my memory.
How much of that was driven by CYA after that guy was assaulted on Delta and the evidence was recorded
In the US anyway it feels like the battle for public spaces has been lost. Everywhere I go people are listening full blast to their phones with no headphones - I find this about 100x more obnoxious than filming. I think both should be banned with Singapore-style punishments but I expect even if companies posture about this nothing will happen. United famously prohibited using your audio without headphones but based on my trip with them last week that has done nothing. At this point it’s a societal problem that needs a tougher approach.
I hope it's not fully lost, I hate when people play music in public and don't have a good answer about filming people in public with these glasses but I don't want it.
Honestly making it socially unacceptable is probably the only solution. Not sure how that happens though...
Play Disney songs on your phone, they won't be able to use the footage.
You can't make it illegal. The first amendment protects it.
Trying to police the shape of the camera is silly.
First amendment doesn't mean anything goes...for example, protesting has a time, place, and manner restrictions, even though you would at first glance think any restriction on protesting would be illegal.
> You can't make it illegal. The first amendment protects it.
I'm not a legal expert but the first amendment doesn't generally give the right to secretly record people, especially in places where there are already laws about hidden cameras, recording, privacy, etc.
It's not about the shape as much as the intention and execution.
Perhpas they were talking about blasting music in public spaces.
In which case, the First Amendment still probably wouldn't apply, unless we're talking about laws against specific musical content, since content-neutral restrictictions on public speech are broadly legal.
I think the relevant law is the fourth amendment, settled in Katz v. United States in 1967:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_expectation_of_priv...
I'm not a USian but doesn't the first amendment apply to restrictions by the state?
It also doesn't protect from any consequences of your free speech of course.
Not endorsing OP's POV, but OP specifically talked about legal consequences. Legality is something the state defines.
> Trying to police the shape of the camera is silly.
Why?
> The first amendment protects it.
The 1st Amendment does not apply to private property. Property owners, even owners of public utilities, can absolutely set boundaries and trespass people. In some states, property owners can literally shoot trespassers to death.
Yes, but the top post said "Public spaces". Private property isn't a public space.
In the case of truly public spaces, historically it's considered that other then in very specific situations (bathrooms for example) you have no expectations of privacy and can be recorded regardless of the shape of the camera.
On private spaces, which people constantly mix up with public spaces, you're absolutely correct that it is able to be restricted and can define very granularly what's acceptable. A plane is a private space. They can restrict anything they want (limited by protected class/characteristics in the US. Other countries may vary).
People have a right to enjoyment of public spaces with out having creepers filming them.
It doesn't apply in most of the world in any case.
A lot of jurisdictions have some sort of provisions for open taking of photos and videos, for freedom of assembly and for freedom of speech.
Public space is precious, but I’d just like to make it clear for the casual HN reader that suggesting “Singapore-style” punishment for antisocial behavior implies a pro-caning stance. Caning is a violent, abhorrent, and cruel practice that violates the fundamental human rights of the convicted person. It leaves the victim of state violence with permanent scars and long-lasting trauma. Time and again it has been shown that capital punishment is not any more effective at preventing recidivism than rehabilitation or compulsory community service.
If you want positive, lasting change, you have to start at the start, modeling positive social and emotional programs in public schools and community programs. Our society is only as healthy as the core beliefs that are willingly held and practiced by its population. Raw state power through fear and intimidation does not change people’s minds as much as widespread belief about what is inherently right and wrong.
> Time and again it has been shown that capital punishment is not any more effective at preventing recidivism than rehabilitation or compulsory community service.
I think you meant corporal punishment, not capital punishment. The latter is when you lose your life.
Do the same studies hold true for corporal punishment? I am not familiar with the literature.
I would suspect that they do. My understanding is the vast number of people who commit crimes do not consider the ramifications of their actions, so there is no amount of punishment that materially changes their behavior.
I struggle with this. Growing up, I was spanked and it was highly effective at changing my behavior, but my older brother was very impulsive and he would get spanked a lot and it never seemed to chang his behavior. He settled down in his 20's after a lot of legal consequences, but I do wonder is there would have been any change for him if my parents went with a different style or if I would have turned out differently.
> people are listening full blast to their phones with no headphones - I find this about 100x more obnoxious than filming
Two very different concerns. One is annoying in that very moment and has no lasting consequences. The other can have all kinds of consequences depending on what was secretly recorded, and where that recording was used.
It's more obnoxious, but less creepy. They're not really bad in the same way.
> listening full blast to their phones with no headphones
There's something even worse, taking my 97 year old mother to her gerontologist :-). Her HMO has a group office of 8 gerontologists with a shared waiting area which easily seats >60, but is always packed since most 80+ year-olds treat doctor appts like plane flights and arrive an hour early. Most of the patients can't hear well and take calls on speaker phone at FULL VOLUME, then constantly remind the caller to talk louder.
It's maddening enough when I go maybe once a quarter and sit there for an hour but imagine working in that room every day. Last year the reception desk relocated closer to the elevator and a very solid wall with thick auto-close door was constructed in-between. Perhaps OSHA has a 'cruel and unusual' designation :-)
[Empathetic side note: hearing loss in the elderly is a serious hardship which not only socially isolates but also accelerates cognitive decline while decreasing independence. According to several audiologists we've consulted, my mom isn't an outlier. It's normal that even state-of-the-art, high-end (>$5,000) hearing aids, properly calibrated, only help a limited amount at >80+ yrs old. My mom, despite occasionally struggling to remember an infrequent word, is still mentally sharp. Yet it's rare she can understand people on the phone well enough to make her own appts etc. I'm really hoping DSP, MEMS and AI offer better hearing solutions before I need them.
Inevitable hearing loss combined with forced 'app-ification' and mobile UX trends are increasingly making the modern world inaccessible to the very elderly, cutting off even those who are mentally capable. Talking to the staff at my Mom's independent living facility, it's a shit show and getting worse with every major OS update. They've been forced to staff a Mobile Phone Support Desk. I really wish Apple & Android UX teams were required to work a week at that desk.]
I don't see this outside of NYC. Where are you specifically?
You can always join in with baby shark until they get a hint.
Amazing news! Something like this should implemented in all areas. What if my family and I are on the flight and I don't want them filmed?
I have heard the middle east has some very strict public filming laws, especially for women and children. Would be very popular globally!
What was preventing this in the era of "everyone has a smartphone"?
It takes deliberate effort to hide that you're filming with a smartphone. It doesn't require extra effort to disguise the act of filming with Meta glasses as simply looking at someone.
Why do they need to hide it?
His family doesn't want recorded whether it's hidden or not.
But it's public, so...
> Why do they need to hide it?
Because if they don't, they'll be shamed or ordered to stop? Like, why does anyone ever hide anything frowned upon?
False. The Meta glasses have a blinking white LED while filming. The camera gets disabled if you try to cover it. Filming someone with a phone is much easier to disguise.
It seems that some people are able to disable the indicator light.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gghlzrmfWH8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awCU4RtorMY
Though I see that Meta are trying to make disabling difficult:
https://shattered.io/meta-ai-glasses-led-camera-disable-2026...
It's much more obvious that someone is holding up their phone to record than someone wearing glasses containing an inconspicuous camera and recording LED that may have been tampered with.
Sometimes it is. I regularly see people scrolling TikTok and Instagram in public, they might as well be shooting ultrawide 4k footage and I'd have no idea.
... and streaming it live to Instagram or YouTube
Tampering is much harder than using an ordinary phone in a way that looks inconspicuous.
Shirt pocket
Social mores. The desire of individuals to farm social capital and the desire of corporations to monetize this drive completely displaced "is it okay if I film this?" for a decade or two, but it seems to be coming back somewhat. I'm not holding my breath, though.
What prevents murder in areas where everyone has a gun?
Consequences.
The consequences of these glasses should be that in any private space, the offender either remove them, or remove themselves. Just like there are consequences to trying to hold up your phone in a way that looks like you are recording staff or other patrons in many private spaces.
> I have heard the middle east has some very strict public filming laws, especially for women and children. Would be very popular globally!
Yeah right, because they respect and value women so much in middle east that they beat women to death for not covering their hair and we don't want that in video
There's nothing new here. European airlines generally prohibit filming the activities of their employees, regardless of technology. In fact, most of them (unlike U.S.-based airlines) try to anonymize their employees. They don't wear name tags, for example.
I've had this be a problem when I was trying to capture a FA's photo while disembarking the aircraft after he rudely chastised me for using the bathroom "too many times" due to a bladder condition.
It is not just company policies, this reflects the law across the EU.
Do you have a reference to this law? I researched it in Germany (where the incident happened) and did not find anything that prohibited it.
As a former customer service representative I have no sympathy for you. this is in no way the FAs fault. And this way of thinking, believing it is the service employee's fault seems to be the American way of thinking, you don't see it anywhere else in the world. Did you ever tell the airline it was a bladder condition? Most people do not and just say the service employee is an inconvenience and should be reported or fired
Any service employee acting in a way that does not favor the customer does so because it is their job to do exactly that. You do not report the employee, you take it higher up. The problem is never the employee. The problem is never caused by the employee. The problem is the policy that was created by some director at the company, that the employee is just following like a robot because that is their job. The employee has never heard of that director and not even their superiors have heard of them or know who they are. You could have contacted customer service and gotten credit for it. The service employee is powerless. You can even report the company itself but never the employee because they are just robots.
> As a former customer service representative I have no sympathy for you.
Given this response, I can see why you are a "former" CSR and not a current one. You need empathy skills.
> this is in no way the FAs fault.
Are you really arguing that the FA was in the right for criticizing me for using the bathroom when it was safe to do so? My medical issues are a private matter; I don't have to disclose them to anyone as a condition of using it.
> The problem is the policy that was created by some director at the company, that the employee is just following like a robot because that is their job.
I find it difficult to believe that a director ordered their FAs to humiliate their customers for having to use the bathroom. You're going to need some evidence that this is the case.
It's not like anyone likes the job, it's just the one that happens to hire the fastest. It's delusional to think anyone gets the job because they like it.
And an airplane has a limited amount of bathroom water that has to be shared among all passengers. Unbelievable I know.
> It's not like anyone likes the job, it's just the one that happens to hire the fastest. It's delusional to think anyone gets the job because they like it.
I don't see how this is relevant at all. Just because you don't like your job doesn't mean you should be rude to your customers, and that you shouldn't be identified and terminated if you are.
> And an airplane has a limited amount of bathroom water that has to be shared among all passengers. Unbelievable I know.
This isn't relevant. First, this was as we were disembarking (the plane had already landed), and second, it is incredibly rare for a flight to be diverted because it's exhausted its lavatory water supply. Have you even seen a story of this? I can't recall one in my (somewhat long) lifetime.
You seem to persist in making points without any supporting evidence. How about you stop that?
Partly true, but rudeness is the fault of the employee.
> The problem is never the employee.
That's not true. Humans don't magically become 100% good just because they are employed.
I feel like you've just seen red and ignored the given situation.
Your response seems to indicate it's perfectly normal and inline with standard policies to admonish a passenger for using the bathroom too much. Does any airline have a bathroom visit quota?
> The service employee is powerless
You're saying they're forced to monitor bathroom trips and pass comment?
It's really unfortunate that to make the world visual-legible to a machine we have to permit recording in a high-fidelity format. I'd love to have an AI assistant perceive the universe around me and assist but I prefer to give people a measure of discretion in personal interactions. I've used the Meta Glasses in public, though, and they're really fantastic. You can ask about fish you can see, or you can capture your kids in a moment. Such a pity about this perhaps immutable property of life.
Willing to bet that after all the Meta glasses backlash companies are going to start releasing AI devices that have cameras but don't store photos or videos.
Haha, "RAM-only camera!". We'd lose the candid moments with the babies but a small price to pay to have the intelligence available at a moment's notice.
Seems fair; I won't speak to people wearing glasses with cameras in them.
How many times has this come up now? Like how many refusals?
The more we ostracise people doing that now, the less likely it will come up in the future.
In any place of business that I patronize, if I see one, I will request that staff should ask the offender to remove them, or remove themselves from the property.
Twice
It's unfortunate that Meta Glasses found PMF with folks who want to nonconsensually record social interactions
they’re not called Pervert Glasses for nothing
The only other group besides creeps that wants these (and that I think should be gifted them for free) are the visually impaired.
They have no other purpose.
Tell that to someone with bad vision, or wants to listen to podcasts without having in earbuds while walking through the city. There are many reasons this type of technology is useful outside of trying to record people without their knowledge.
My opinion (which is about filming in general, not the glasses) which seems to contradict others' but:
So if someone acts up and starts screaming it's suddenly ok to film, or even when people are committing crimes on board it's not ok? Who's to say when this is happening or not?
If filming is banned there will be less evidence for when this does happen, and people could get away with more crimes (although admittedly the bar is higher on a plane and the flight staff's testimony will carry lots of weight).
I think planes are public places (because 200 people are crammed into a tiny tube of metal) and your expectation of privacy should be diminished there. There are too many potential things that could happen on a plane. People are too close and vulnerable while on a plane. We cannot run or protect ourselves as well.
And as far as flight attendants, unfortunately they are at least partially responsible for both the safety and wellbeing of those on board. That is literally their job.
Banning filming of them will reduce their sense of urgency and responsibility, just like it would of cops if we were not allowed to film them.
There are just too many things that need to go right and also that could go wrong on a flight.
Just recently someone took a photo of an ostensible pedophile while on board conversing on a website for pedophiles and now the world knows. If all photography or filming was banned then this wouldn't have happened.
We have had convenient, ultra-portable, widely available video taping for what, 20 years now? Closer to 15 years for any resemblance of quality or faces being recognizable. Commercial flying has existed for over a century now, and somehow it all worked out for decades upon decades before portable digital video cameras (like what we have now) became cheap. It's funny how once we gain some extra convenience, no matter how marginal in the given situation, it only takes a few years for it to be considered indispensable, the right to use it utterly essential.
No one's getting away with a crime on a commercial flight, there are hundreds of people around you and upwards of a dozen or more flight crew on board, with a button to call over one of them in short reach of every passenger.
This is unsupported, but I feel like the vast majority of people filming flight attendants are not doing it for any valid reasons, but to try to start a harassment or doxxing outrage campaign online because they've caused them some brief inconvenience. 90%+ of flight attendant interactions with passengers are about convenience and not safety, and people should not have a right to hold a stick over these largely underpaid and overworked employees because they've not topped up their drink in 5 minutes. For the remaining minority of reasons, recording their voice should cover most cases.
However, the strongest argument against this is that it is possible for things to be banned in general but allowed when doing the banned thing would prevent a greater harm. This idea already exists in legal system. Zero-tolerance and free-for-all are not the only options, you could be allowed to film in emergencies or to prevent worse things from happening.
While you're right that your expectation of privacy is obviously lower in a place like this, the blurry term here is 'privacy'. Is 'you expect yourself to be seen by others' the same kind of privacy as 'you expect anyone to be able to get a permanent record of you without your knowledge or agreement'? What about when these glasses start doing facial recognition? Wouldn't you also have to steelman the 'you should expect anyone to be able to know exactly who you are and to upload your identity, location and appearance to a megacorporation' kind of privacy?
Oh they are trying their very best to go the way of policing. For example just last week Delta's PR team has been working overtime to make sure one of their South American customer abuse cases don't get picked up by the English speaking media. You won't see this anywhere in major US media because the victim was a foreigner (Santiago Daza) from a poor country like Colombia. Delta's team did a wonderful job of suppressing it. If they tried this with a rich French or Chinese they would have been raked over the coals and on their knees apologizing. The foreign media and internet users would not let them go so easily.
See for yourself. https://viewfromthewing.com/delta-passenger-got-kicked-off-a...
https://www.reddit.com/r/delta/comments/1x0ej7v/passenger_re...
> I think planes are public places
They literally aren't, though. They are the airline's private property, and you've entered into a contract of carriage with them to temporarily have access to their property under the terms of the contract. To some extent these terms are circumscribed by law, but in the absence such law, you are bound by whatever terms you agreed to in the contract. If you don't agree not to film in the plane, you're free to not accept the contract.
> > I think planes are public places
> They literally aren't, though.
They literally are. They are common carriers, which is a legal concept with a lot of precedent. The UK term for this, ironically, is "public carrier" and while yes it's a privately owned it has distinctly public characteristics encoded in law that sharply distinguishes these spaces from genuinely private areas.
> They literally aren't, though.
That's a distinction without a difference. There are enough structural constraints in launching airline alternatives that they might as well be, especially the national carriers. They are not too far from being a utility (and in a lot of places they are subject to enormous amount of public funding to stay solvent because it's a national security issue when you don't have a pool of pilots and airplanes).
It's one of those "too big and too important to fail" businesses. There can be the occasional M&A or bankruptcy but no structural industry collapse is allowed. It's as important as the car industry in some places, though the reasons differ.
Do you expect the masses to fly private jets or Cessnas to cross the globe? It's like saying electrical companies shouldn't be regulated too much in certain jurisdictions because the generators are privately owned rather than being publicly owned. People will laugh you out of the court of public opinion.
I think their quasi-public status means that contracts of carriage should be tightly hemmed in by law and not have as many degrees of freedom as ordinary contracts, but they are still contracts regarding the use of private property, and in the absence of such hemming, the terms and conditions still apply.
If you want to launch a public campaign to change the law and add "you can always surreptitiously record people on airlines" to the set of unenforceable contract terms, go ahead and attempt it. You'll deserve the furious blowback you get, though.
Saw a guy the other day in the gym wearing these
I joined many others in giving him a “shit on a shoe” look.
Have you considered raising it to management?
Or heaven forbid even communicating with the other human directly.
The people that are doing this are self absorbed assholes and confronting them will almost always lead to an escalation that makes it worse for you. Management is unfortunately the better approach here.
Sure, but if someone’s being an asshole they don’t always respond well to being confronted. If they were a calm and reasonable sort they wouldn’t be behaving like that in the first place.
Ironically you have shown that you probably don't go outside often because this doesn't work out the way you think it does.
The whole "recording glasses" thing puts a damper on that.
I don't want to purposefully engage people who already ignore social norms.
High risk activity.
Airplanes are a great use case for display glasses. They make using a computer or watching a movie in economy class so much nicer. I like using display glasses that don't have a camera. But unfortunately everybody assumes they do have one. Assuming I'm a dork because I'm wearing them is fair. Assuming I'm a creep isn't.
Airplanes are a great use case for just chilling out and doing nothing or being bored and enjoying a drink in the sky.
That would mean I was fully prepared for the meeting I am flying to before the flight. Would be nice, but alas I am not that organized.
I haven't been bothered over them yet, but I fully expect a conversation where someone yells at me for "filming", I show there's no cameras, and they insist they're simply hidden.
I haven't been bothered over them yet, either. They're tethered to the computer, so you naturally take them off when you go to the bathroom, et cetera. I try and lower them when I speak to the flight attendant, but I know that I don't always do so. Even without the camera misunderstanding, keeping them on while talking to people is rude in the same way that wearing mirror sunglasses while talking to people is rude.
It's mostly curiosity, people wondering what they are. They expect them to be camera glasses but believe me when I tell them they aren't.
> wearing mirror sunglasses while talking to people is rude
Never heard this one before. And my family cares about being rude.
It’s probably less about the sunglasses specifically and more about seeing the person’s eyes. Many neurotypical people think it’s rude to not maintain eye contact during conversations.
We need to bring back the term "Glasshole".
I think the 2026 term "Pervert Glasses" is stronger.
Those glasses should be an actual crime everywhere.
unless perhaps you need them for accessibility reasons.
There is no accessibility reason ever for covering up the light or recording. I will accept describing objects in FOV etc but nothing should be persistable or sent to a third party that trains on them and saves them without the consent of everyone in view, a company should build non-criminal glasses without these feature sets and have insurance pay for them.
Which accessibility reasons are these?
A camera and some rudimentary software should be a pretty good fix for color blindness. A camera and modern AI is a decent mitigation to partial or perhaps even complete blindness (prior art: Be My Eyes). A microphone, STT, and display would help with deafness.
They're fabulous for blind people. https://afb.org/aw/fall2025/meta-glasses-review
There is a short video on the BBC website of a blind person using them to give an audible warning of uneven pavement/sidewalks in front of them.
E.g. video to speech for a blind person.
Video doesn't do speech, that's audio.
So a microphone vs a camera
Video to speech is audible narration.
I use them alone, in a glider, to help review my own flights. It gives a very helpful PoV, and I can see the instruments and where I was looking.
That should be a crime?
It may be that a solo activity is not what the GP had in mind.
One of the few rare real reasons to owning and if that's the real reason. In that instance the better approach is that the glasses should be held under a permit.
The camera should be disabled until you obtain a permit.
Drones require a license and agreement to fly, these should be too.
Why wouldn’t it be the real reason? You like to assume people are lying?
Yes, it’s the real and ONLY reason I have these. When my flight is over I take them off and revert to regular shades.
Do people not lie? It's not assumption it's more a tally. I meet you at zero. I can't trust words without facts. The former of what you said builds trust.
I would hope the same that I am trusted after proven and not trusted until known.
We all should be able to trust each other but that's not case in todays world.
Then what’s the point of discussion? You claim all usages should be illegal. I give you what I think shows a valid use.
And what next? The answer is it’s not true? What’s even the point?
I am not saying that. I am saying that the glasses should be under permitted use.
You can fly a drone on your own land. You can wear meta glasses on your land. I don't give a shit about that.
What I am saying is that if you want to wear the glasses in public, get a permit otherwise the camera or any geo-tracking features should be disabled.
It should be traceable to who wears these. I don't want to be filmed in public by some creep with a hidden recording device as to the likes of public not wanting hobbyist drones flown over their head.
You may act responsibly with them and that's great, but I doubt those do. Unfortunately that drags you in to the mix and others who use them legitimately too.
Unless they who wear the glasses tell me why they're wearing the glasses I will make association that you're in the same crowd. You stated you don't, so I believe you.
I assert the right and duty of surveillance reciprocity. Little brother may and should watch big brother, and share.
Sure, go ahead and film corporations and governments to your heart's content [1], but please make sure no humans are in your frame.
[1] If legally permitted in your jurisdiction
Who do you think runs governments and corporations, if not humans?
Nowadays? a magic 8-ball piloting a meat puppet.
I hope more airlines follow and governments do it too. Such a ridiculous product.
Oh good for British Airways. "Nonce Goggles" are incredibly unpopular in the UK. The only good one is one that's smashed into tiny bits.
What about filming them with a regular smartphone?
I believe the guidelines are general - not specific to glasses.
Interesting that the title chooses to editorialize and call out the glasses specifically then. Kind of enragement bait imo
I have decidedly mixed feelings about this. In general, I don't think people should just be allowed to record and post other people's private moments. I think we don't want to live a life where we are at risk of every single thing that we've ever done being posted as video.
On the other hand, I travel a lot, and I take videos frequently to protect myself. Almost invariably, what I'm talking about here is walking around a rental car when I pick it up and drop it off. But there are other scenarios, like documenting that I was at a gate on time if they're claiming I was late and denying me boarding.
Of course, there are the ones that are contemplated by this article, like a dispute with another passenger or someone about what happened or what's happening, since the consequences of that stuff can be so severe.
I think a lot of European countries have laws around this that usually have exceptions for scenarios like that. For example, I was once recording the condition of a drop-off rental car in Italy. The rental car employee started screaming at me, claiming that, since he had been in the frame at some point or another, what I was doing was illegal. Meanwhile, he was refusing to give me a written receipt or some other proof that I had actually returned the car. If you know anything about rental cars in Italy, you want that, so I just took the video to confirm that I had, in fact, given them the keys and the car.
After it blew up and some research was done, it became clear that, while Italian law does have very strict restrictions on publishing recordings of people, recording your own customer service interactions for purposes of protecting yourself is clearly allowed.
I think a fairer policy here would be sharing, publishing, or distributing any recordings is very strictly prohibited, but merely possessing them can be permitted if the recorder can make a bona fide assertion that it was done for purposes of recording or protecting themselves and their rights as a customer.
Well done, more of this.
Depends. Is British airways also agreeing not to record as well, or is just one of those paternalistic 'we don't want YOU to have evidence of wrongdoing'?
My guess, given England, is that they double down on more cameras, and conveniently lose recordings they don't like.
This is the worst take I’ve seen all day. I’m going outside.
Why? Airports are probably the most surveilled places aside from casinos. Why should corporations or the establishment have a monopoly on surveillance and the footage, especially when the footage is (presumably) for the purposes of scrutinizing the corporation/establishment itself? I think the "this call is recorded for quality control purposes" principle should apply. If you're recording, I should be able to record too.
I don’t think anyone really objects to you being able to record video in public, but do object to you being able to secretly record video in public. There’s a huge difference imho between you holding up a phone to record an interaction and surreptitiously recording one with glasses.
>I don’t think anyone really objects to you being able to record video in public, but do object to you being able to secretly record video in public.
See the quotes in my other comment. It's pretty clear it's not about being "secretly" recorded.
The article makes clear that BA prohibits any sort of filming of their employees without consent.
I enter a building in acknowledgement that I am going to be under surveillance. If I don't agree then I don't enter that building.
I do not board a plane to be discreetly recorded by a pair of glasses. It's creepy and just privacy invasive.
>I do not board a plan to be discreetly recorded by a pair of glasses. It's creepy and just privacy invasive.
That's not what's under debate though.
>British Airways Warns Filming Crew With Meta Smart Glasses Could Get Your Tickets Cancelled
>The reported change builds on restrictions introduced earlier this year against photographing or filming BA employees without their consent. Livestreaming employees without permission is also prohibited.
>>“This includes filming, live streaming or taking photographs of any BA crew or other colleagues without their consent.”
Emphasis mine.
If they're doing this to protect their passengers privacy, they're doing a really good job at hiding that.
Seems like a fair question. There is a reasonable current of thought out there that rights and responsibilities should be reciprocal between businesses, government, and individuals.
In contrast, this is the only reasonable take. Given the extensive history of large multinational corporations abusing the rights of consumers with impunity, letting one of the two parties in any such dispute record the other, but not the reverse, is obviously unfair and unreasonable.
Assuming that nobody is gonna exploit it for marketing or other nefarious ends. A society that constantly videos everything would be kindof great. Everything documented. Everything searchable. Crime might become impossible. Like, no more murder or illegal dumping.
what are they scared about?
BA sells the accent folks. not service.
best use I’ve seen for meta glasses have been parties, where the host hands them out and takes your phone as collateral or locks them up in some way
everyone gets content and gets to be present, optionally or mandatory turn in of the glasses when leaving
everyone knows what they're walking into and some level of curation and community lets people still be loose, or know what level of discretion they should have
> where the host hands them out and takes your phone as collateral or locks them up in some way
can't tell if it's a joke or not, if not, i'd turn right back and walk away
that sounds absolutely awful, i would just turn around in the door and leave
yeah thats how consent works, you’re informed and have an option
> optionally or mandatory turn in of the glasses when leaving
"optionally?" What sort of parties are you going to where the host casually hands out Smart Glasses as party favors? :)
I don't even know what I'd do with a pair but I definitely want to be invited to parties hosted by folks who have this kind of wealth!
It doesn’t happen, nobody is buying tens or dozens or pairs of these things just to hand out at a party.
> where the host hands them out and takes your phone as collateral
You got me curious... what kind of parties do you go to where everyone trusts everyone else with filming and the privacy around it, but the host doesn't trust guests to return the glasses?
it’s just dual purpose at events that already take or lock up your phone
before you had no user generated content, and now you do
so trust is a misnomer, the exchange is just built in and nearly foolproof
Where have you seen this take place?
What was the content for?
wedding,
yacht party with no particular occasion behind it,
renegades (referring to what the term “rave” used to refer to)
Why do people need to "get content"?
need? they don’t, it’s catering to a want that was already going to happen in a less-present way with their phones
This is a simulation of content production, not a party.
Good. More of this