February 18, 2026
"Last summer, Tom Wong was working at the Chubby Crab... when a regular... ordered a combo.... and ate it at a table near the door, muttering to herself in between bites."
"Mr. Wong, 32, didn’t think anything of it. But a few days later, another customer came in and asked for a selfie. Then the asks kept coming. He had been recorded without his knowledge using a lentil-size camera embedded in a pair of Meta Ray-Ban glasses. The resulting video had been viewed more than two million times on TikTok, turning Mr. Wong and the restaurant into unwitting stars. 'At a certain point, I stopped working in the front of the restaurant,' he said. 'It was really uncomfortable.' To be in public is to risk being filmed. And these days, there’s a good chance it’s happening surreptitiously with smart glasses.... Servers, owners and customers can end up as captive participants...."
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28 comments:
Legal question: Can establishments open to the public forbid these devices and/or recordings and seek legal remedy if somebody posts something?
I don't want to live in a panopticon. Do you?
Can establishments open to the public forbid these devices and/or recordings and seek legal remedy if somebody posts something?
Seems to me that if an establishment can ban guns, which is a Second Amendment right, they could ban these cameras.
"lentil-size"? Anything to avoid the metric system.
My knee-jerk response is to pass laws about recording people without their knowledge.
But then, of course, there's the James O'Keefes doing good work out there.
However this shakes out, in the meantime, it might not hurt to burn Zukabug at the stake like a witch, just to sort of...set the tone for those thinking of venturing into developing this kind of technology.
Given this is happening in a private business, shouldn't they be able to ban such recording without permission?
These glasses are waiting another backlash. Didn't go over so great the first time
Ambulance chaser lawyers are going to have a rich new income stream from illegal spying and economic damage and those forced into becoming "public figures" without consent.
This is disturbing and I hate it. Looks like businesses need to put up another sign to correct bad behavior:
"NO RECORDING. PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF OWNER IS REQUIRED BEFORE RECORDING ANY AUDIO OR VIDEO. Name, likeness and image rights reserved. All violators will be prosecuted."
And of
There was an MiT dude that made these glasses twenty five, thirty years ago. I walked by him then found his video on his interwebs…
I am coming to abhor “Influencers”, whether TikTok, FB, X or latest crap du jour. These self-obsessed are a tier down from every day NYT articles treating seriously yet another *precious snowflake* with an exploration of her glorious self (somehow NEVER auto-captioned “It’s All About Me”) and insist, insist, INSIST that we become bit players on their merry-go-round.
Truly odious people.
The government won't do anything to protect privacy, they'll just try to leverage people's anger about this to legalize censorship.
Most bars and restaurants already have cameras filming you in all of the public parts of their establishment. Many are now adding audio. So I guess it goes both ways.
Too bad Billy Joel didn’t have Meta glasses 45 years ago. CC, JSM
I've had a pair of these for 15 years. The resolution on the old camera is not as good, but, the point is, they've been around a long time.
Why the consternation now?
Everyone who appears in a TikToc should get a share of the money. Anyone who appears without prior consent gets the account holder's share.
I want to know what was on the video that it garnered 2 million views and drew people to the restaurant to get their picture with Mr. Wong.
To this point, the law has been that if you go out in public, you are giving your permission to be recorded--you have no expectation of privacy--but that was before cameras became both ubiquitous and nearly invisible. The law needs to change.
Joe Bar said...Why the consternation now?
Why did people not care about it before they knew about it? Is that what you're asking?
“Servers, owners and customers can end up as captive participants...."
That’s just wong!
"...Looks like businesses need to put up another sign to correct bad behavior:..."
They'll lose a ton of business if they do. People want to capture their dining experience and broadcast it.
The answer is #Learn to Code, or #Cook.
The issues here relate to First Amendment, right of privacy (intrusion upon solitude), right of publicity (commercial appropriation), and anti-wiretapping/eavesdropping laws (consent requirements vary from state to state). You should consult grok, Claude, or chatgpt if you want explanations.
Peter Diamandis: “Privacy is obsolete.”
Bob Boyd,
The prime cause of current social degradation is the dearth of "Pour encourager les autres"
youtube is loaded with videos of these First Amendment Auditors recording everything that happens in front of their chosen locations, which vary from liquor stores, banks, weed stores. They place themselves on the public sidewalk and don't go on or in the places being recorded, just recording the activity of others going in and out of the stores. Naturally there's conflict which is the point of the filming along with the police being called. No privacy when you're out in public is the lesson.
You have no right to privacy - in public. And you are voluntarily entering a private business and playing by their rules. If you don't want to be filmed while there, you should talk to the manager and see if you your request can be fufilled.
Of course, this is a common sense view. But that wont stop a Judge from creating a new "right to privacy in the chubby Crab" - because Judges can do anything.
Perhaps its time to wear a veil in public. Or a hoodie with the Tux while dining out.
If cameras become a big issue, I expect that restaurants will adopt the Irish "snug" concept. These are private rooms in the shared dining space -- fancy booths with doors. Still, those nearby could hear your naughty words.
I wonder if there is some kind of light, outside the visible spectrum, that you can emit from your own smartglasses, to interfere with other peoples' smartglasses? Like they look at their recording and it's all lens flare? And similar with sound - turn your smartglasses into a dog whistle that messes with everyone else's audio? CC, JSM
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