Students film passers-by with a hidden camera and find out their name and place of residence in seconds

earthpressnews

Thanks to glasses from Meta with a camera, an AI and a smartphone, students show how quickly anonymity can be lost on the street.

The cover image is a symbolic image.

How did the students do that? Students at Harvard University in the US have set out to show what is already possible today by combining modern, freely accessible technology. The goal: to warn of the dangers.

Using meta-glasses, they recorded randomly selected passers-by and, just seconds later, knew a number of personal details about most of them – name, age, address, origin, employer and so on. The students describe their project, called I-XRAY, in detail in English in this Google Docs document.

Recommended editorial content

At this point you will find external content from Twitter that complements the article.

View Twitter content

I agree to external content being displayed to me. Personal data may be transmitted to third-party platforms. Find out more in our data protection declaration.

Far more harmless, although at first glance certainly arousing suspicion, are USB sticks that stick out of house walls almost at random. But there is an art project behind it:

In Germany there are over 400 USB sticks sticking out of walls – What is the “Dead Drops” project?

More videos

Autoplay

Meta glasses, AI, computers and smartphones

How exactly did the spy trick work? A camera is built into the meta glasses (via Apollo). The students used this to film random students while they were walking. The images were played back via Instagram livestream on a computer nearby. Here, an AI similar to ChatGPT analyzed the recordings using facial recognition.

She compared the data with publicly accessible websites, databases and social networks. In most cases, a number of details were found on the students’ smartphones within a few moments. There was an app running here that was constantly connected to the AI.

What data did the students get? In addition to the name and address, other details about the life of the scanned people often came to light, for example:

  • Commitment of a man from India who campaigned for the Muslim minority there.
  • The long-term work of an elderly lady in a welfare association.
  • Names of relatives
  • Completed educational trips
  • Parts of the Social Security Number (similar to our ID card number)
  • and generally dozens of long-forgotten photos

    • What can we all learn from this? We cannot really fully protect ourselves from such cleverly combined technology. The only way to ensure that you contribute as little as possible to the spying on your own life is to be careful. Think carefully when sharing personal information publicly online. Is it really necessary? Who can see all of this? In particular, photos labeled with names that associate you with situations, places or other people can become a problem.

    Combined with data from criminal leaks, this can create a shockingly comprehensive picture of your life, including friends, colleagues and family.

    Artificial intelligence can help a lot, including cheating in state exams. What a candidate for a university career is said to have tried to do during a state exam will probably stay with him for the rest of his life: his attempt to cheat with a camera, cell phone and AI failed, but the police are certainly impressed.

    mmod-game