Dilara was on her lunch break in the London store where she works when a tall man walked up to her and said: “I swear red hair means you’ve just been heartbroken.”
The man continued the conversation as they both got in a lift, and he asked Dilara for her phone number.
What Dilara did not realise was that the man was secretly filming her on his smart glasses - which look like normal eyewear but have a tiny camera which can record video.
The footage was then posted to TikTok, where it received 1.3m views. “I just wanted to cry,” Dilara, 21, told the BBC.
The man who filmed her, it turned out, had posted dozens of secretly filmed videos to TikTok, giving men tips on how to approach women.
Dilara also found out that her phone number was visible in the video. She then faced a wave of messages and calls.
This is so fucked up, and the guy who did this needs to be doxxed and have his whole life made hell, but…
Back when the ubiquitousness of smartphone cameras was still fairly new, and the prospect of being secretly recorded and posted online at any given moment was still unthinkable yet real, I tried raising the concern whenever/however I could.
Like, I would tell people “this is fucked up, and we shouldn’t normalize this.” And you know what they told me, nearly without fail? They called me a creep and said if I wasn’t doing anything I wouldn’t want people to see online, then I wouldn’t be worried about being secretly recorded.
It was like this pseudo “women’s empowerment” sentiment where they thought this gives them the ability to ruin men’s lives (often over short clips out of context that only look bad based on how it’s spinned in the caption), thus “protecting” women, and they didn’t think it would ever turn back on them and blow up in their faces.
Unbeknownst to them, one of my main concerns was the danger this poses for women. But of course, no one would believe that, because I was a man, so of course the only reasonable assumption was that I was a misogynist and only concerned with privacy so I could get away with predatory behavior. So of course, if I raise a fuss about this then I must be a creep. Of course.
Well, look what’s come home to roost. Amazing. Who could have predicted this?
The ‘if you not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to hide’ argument is a logical fallicy.
Any time someone throws that at you ask them why they have curtains/blinds on their windows, doors on their rooms and fences around their house.
The problem isn’t the recording, this was in a public place where there is no expectation of privacy, the problem is covert recording.
Yes, and covert recording by definition is done without the knowledge or consent of the one being recorded. It should be illegal everywhere, but some states have single-party consent laws which allow it.
(imagine applying such a rule to sexual activity, it would be absurd; yet somehow it’s totally legal to broadcast a person’s name, face, and location to the world without them even knowing what’s happening?)
I think knowledge and consent need to be distinguished, there are lots of people who are filmed in public that wouldn’t consent to it, bike thieves for instance. I don’t think that banning filming or photography in public is a sensible idea.
Do you also support CCTV and flock cameras, then? Because that’s the same argument used to justify those.
“Be afraid of crime. Let the authorities spy on you. Now you’re protected.” What about when the authorities abuse their power? Who’s going to protect you then?
(For the record, I believe all public officials should be required to give up some of their expectations of privacy as a condition of working as a public official. The public requires a level of trust in them that it doesn’t require of ordinary private citizens. They should have to submit financial statements, and they should also have to declare unconditional consent to be recorded by anyone in any given moment, except in confidential spaces like homes, offices, briefing rooms, etc.)
But the thing is, in order to catch a bike thief on video, you have to already be recording either them or the bike, and since it’s nearly impossible to predict, the chances of catching it on camera are slim. Unless you use ubiquitous area cameras pointed at all the bike racks. And even then, if they’re casual enough or hide their face then no one would know they’re stealing it except the owner of the bike, or no one would be able to identify the person who stole it.
I don’t think giving the authorities (or the hive mind, for that matter) unrestricted access to constant recordings of every public space is a sensible idea, because it’s too prone to abuse. That’s how you get a surveillance state, like the USSR or america right now. They misinterpret a movement of your hand and label you “antifa terrorist” and you get flagged for closer scrutiny, where everything they observe you doing is then run through interpretive filters that are biased towards describing you as a terrorist.
Whoever is analyzing those recordings is going to be paranoid to some degree, or their algorithms are going to hallucinate patterns that aren’t there, or someone is going to get vindictive and use the power to abuse anyone they don’t like. Do you want every twitch, gesture, or facial expression being labelled and categorized by AI and then saved into a profile of you that some unknown spook can access at any time? Then when you notice plain clothes agents scoping you out, they get a screenshot of your face looking nervous and label it as “definitely guilty,” and they close in on you tighter and tighter until either your anxiety takes over and you’re labeled as paranoid/psychotic, or they push you into a panic attack and label your conduct “disorderly” and use it as a pretext to make an arrest?
The whole thing is too prone to abuse, and it’s not even an effective deterrent for crime prevention. I can’t agree with it. Better to build community trust and economic empowerment to address crime from the root causes; that’s the only method that’s been shown to significantly reduce crime.
Exactly. But fascists want privacy for themselves, and if they don’t get it then they’ll call people commies. But if anyone else wants privacy, then fascists say they’re acting suspicious and must be guilty of something.
Make it make sense. (Yes I know, conservatives are self-contradictory and have no ideological consistency; rules for me not for thee, we get it…)
They post dudes from the gym just trying to work out to shame them for attention and it’s all fine because ‘safety’ but if they get posted or recorded it’s suddenly an issue. Women’s empowerment has always been hypocritical and self-serving.
The average consumer is stupid as a bag of rocks and care more about doing what they feel like doing than doing what is wise. They’ve helped build a consumer product surveillance state and will never admit any fault for it, even when ICE now uses it to gestapo them. They shamed anyone that dared suggest maybe don’t invite tracking and surveillance technology into every inch of OUR lives, or posting everyone’s shit on Facebook all day. Fuck these ppl for helping usher in the techbro fascist dictatorship we’re now suffering.
And then they hit you with the “If you just don’t bother women, then you won’t be accused of harassment!” and the “Believe victims! No one actually weaponizes false accusations in retaliation for petty grievances. Women never lie!”
Emmett Till begs to differ…