Secret filming of women using smart glasses - another new form of sexual harassment

[KnottyAuty]

Interesting article on BBC Breakfast this morning (about 8.17am) and also covered on the website.

Young women being stopped in public and asked for their phone number/for drinks while being covertly filmed. The man then posts the films on line with the aim of objectifying women and monetising content.

The thing that stood out for me was that the Commissioner of Sussex Police was interviewed. She said this was worrying as it potentially indicated a worrying attitude that might lead to worse behaviour.

What is wrong with these men that they think this is acceptable behaviour?

Theres no restriction on being filmed in public without permission but I don’t think this extends to posting the material online without permission with the aim of making money.

Should women be seeking out these accounts and reporting them en masse?

Is there anything that can be done about removing this content if the person posting can’t demonstrate permission was granted?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx23ke7rm7go.amp

I don’t think this extends to posting the material online without permission with the aim of making money.

At the moment it does. There's no end of publicly captured footage online - dash cam videos, funny / shocking CCTV or ring doorbell videos etc with accounts dedicated to that kind of thing - and it's all legal and legitimate.

This new trend of aiming to set women up for mocking / humiliation is worrying though. I'm not sure how it's tackled within our current legal framework if I'm honest. Is it the content creator who's responsible or is it those posting abusive comments in response? Or both?

I don't have answers to the above, I'm just thinking on it.

BBC - "The video was then posted on social media, getting about a million views and hundreds of comments - many of them sexually explicit and derogatory."

Kate - "All of this is being done for cheap clicks online. Then you get loads of nasty comments which then affect your confidence, your self esteem."

I think the most important thing to remember is that people posting "sexually explicit and derogatory" things and "nasty comments" are probably not people worth listening to. Work on your self-esteem and mental health, stop seeking validation from others, and work on the assumption that anyone making vile comments is saying much more about themselves than they are about you.

I've never understood how smart glasses are legal for general sale. They have valid applications, but I suggest these are rare and specialised.

I'm pretty sure that the ones you can buy easily and cheaply online are likely to be used for filming, and sometimes also audio-recording, people without their knowledge or consent.

From AI - In the UK, it is generally not a criminal offence for an individual to secretly record a conversation they are a party to, provided it is strictly for their own personal use. However, this is a legally complex area, and there are significant risks if the recording is shared or if the person recorded had a strong "reasonable expectation of privacy".

I think that - for good or bad - we need to get used to the idea that we have ZERO privacy in public places, and that our privacy in private places where the public can come and go (shops, libraries, police stations etc) is no better, and even if we are in private places it is not open and shut that we cannot be recorded and the recording put in public, and even if we can't be recorded it might still happen illegally.

My take is that if you are talking about marital problems with your best friend in a private house then you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. But does that expectation of privacy even extend to the circumstance where you go to a coffee morning with close friends and some acquaintences and step into the next room for a chat with your bestie, let alone if you choose to have the chat in a coffee shop or park.

Wishing to film what you see and hear is a valid application (subject to caveats such as sharing a deeply intimate conversation with a close friend that you had in a private place with no-one else around).

People act differently if they think they are being filmed, so if you want to know how people really think and act then spy glasses are essential.

I get privacy concerns, but I think less privacy is better than the alternative... eg not being able to film in public without getting consent from everyone walking by in the background; getting consent, chatting for 30 mins and having your time wasted by someone then withdrawing consent for you to share the footage).

You make a reasonable point but other people aren’t reasonable and are pushing beyond acceptable limits. There’s a big difference in my mind of capturing someone in a background or an incidental film from a dashcam, compared to actively seeking someone out with the purposes posting the discussion online without their agreement.

I think the difference here is the covert nature of the glasses. If I see someone with a camera then I can choose to avoid being filmed. I can withdraw myself snd my permission by not being captured. But with glasses I don’t get that choice.

What if these women had given their phone numbers? What if they gave their names and details of where they lived? They didn’t think that was going on the internet and would reasonably expect privacy in a 1-2-1 conversation surely?

Now just add this into problems with changing rooms, toilets, AI porn… What could possibly go wrong?

All this stuff is in danger of turning me into a misandrist. Forget the conversation about tech and let’s get on to imposing curfews on males who are known to be problematic so the rest of society can go about their business in peace and safety….

I think this is probably correct, although I also think it might be reasonable to think about limits to what use information gained in public places can be put to.

There are all kinds of images and information that aren't in any way sexualised that could be captured and recorded, and for that matter even just overheard, which people would not want, say, sent to their employer, or spouse, or neighbours. Maybe you don't want your boss to know your politics, which you talk to your friend on the park bench about.

It's a wide issue and there are a lot of threads and possible consequences of any kind of legislation.

But secret filming is not new and there are already rules around it.

If there's a way to use tech for a perverted use some pathetic men will utilise it for that purpose.

"I think the difference here is the covert nature of the glasses." I agree, and there is certainly an argument to be made that the law could /should treat open and covert filming differently. (It probably already does in some ways)

"What if these women had given their phone numbers? What if they gave their names and details of where they lived?" I think publishing names and addresses without consent is very different in the eyes of the law to showing how people behave or interact or their opinions.

"They didn’t think that was going on the internet and would reasonably expect privacy in a 1-2-1 conversation surely?" I think that people need to get used to the fact that the starting point is "do not assume privacy". I think that to have an genuine expectation of privacy you need to be in a definitively private place (ie a home) with one or a small number of close friends. Anything else and you have no expectation of privacy.

My daughter worked in Sunglass Hut over the summer. The meta glasses and sunglasses can be ‘hacked’ to not show the flashing light when recording. Doing this would only be for the purpose of peeping and filming women. I don’t know if meta fixed this issue. I hope they did.

That is quite simply not true.

There are plenty of people out there - not least police auditors on youtube - who hide the fact that they are recording because they want to see how people in power react, not to see how people in power react when they know that if they break the rules or the law they'll be all over youtube.

Also, if the loophole is fixed then people will just paint over the light.

So what? Women doing exactly the same thing, going on the dates with men, filming and uploading content to social media.

Well that’s also sexual harassment and therefore unacceptable. I wasn’t aware of this but I find your “so what?” reaction rather lacking.

The idea that we all gave to assume we will be filmed at all times in all situations is going to result in societal breakdown. No one will want to engage with anyone in good faith. It’s very sad

In no way does that meet the definition of sexual harassment, unless perhaps they're filming them in a state of undress.

One could argue the reverse. When anything that you say is "he said she said" then you can say almost anything without fear of consequence. If you assume that you are being filmed then you are likely to walk away, or have a conversation in good faith, because if you act in bad faith you'll be called out in the comments on social media.

I think one could make an argument that it is sad that we have cameras, audio recorders, video recorders and the internet - our brains were designed for a hunter gatherer existence, not an industrial world and certainly not a post-industrial tech-filled world.

But unfortunately we need to live in the real world.

This is a very very very good point. Every piece of new technology gets used to sexually objectify or harass women.

The telephone: great invention, but 'dirty phonecalls'.

video recorders: great invention, but the main driver for them was porn.

the internet: great invention, global village, I'd like to buy the world a Coke and all that, but....

smart glasses: great invention... hang on though, I can't see them as being that great an invention, I think they are something the human race could have done very well without, and I wouldn't be surprised if their nefarious uses far outnumber their practical ones.

It's like men have to mark their territory, and any thing new undergoes the same process and is marked out as theirs, and theirs to be used against women.

Very disturbing.

Is there a sensible legal position which could be taken on where secretly filming others has restrictions or penalties? I’m glad there aren’t restrictions on filming in public, but obviously if someone sees you holding a camera they then have the opportunity to avoid being on film, and aggressive pursuit of that person crosses a line.

There are obvious difficulties in proving that the intent was to film secretly (claiming the light just stopped working on the sunglasses), and issues with curtailing legitimate secret filming like undercover journalism, but there are already laws in place about what your own surveillance cameras can legally film in order to restrict others’ privacy.

Wearable film sunglasses are an obvious edge case, because the majority of the population aren’t expecting sunglasses to contain cameras, regardless of whether there’s a blinking light on them. It seems like it would make prosecution a lot more cut and dry in these circumstances, as the perpetrators clearly do this intentionally as part of a social media grift.

It really angers and disappoints me that so many men see a new technology and the first thing they want to do with it is make pornography or use it for sexual harassment of women and girls.

It really makes me believe that some men don't see women as human beings.

Really?
I thought harassment was “unwanted or unwelcome” behaviour directly related to a protected characteristic.

The glasses wearer in the article were targeting women as a “pick up artist” and the videos were posted online with objectifying comments related to their sex.

In the dates example women were targeting men to humiliate on the basis of their sex - I have to declare ignorance here but im assuming that there aren’t loads of videos of lesbians filming their dates and posting them online?

Yes that’s my feeling- well put!