Turning smart glasses into surveillance tools
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Turning smart glasses into surveillance tools

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(Photo: Reuters)
(Photo: Reuters)

I'm sure most readers are familiar with the Apple Vision Pro, and may have also been witness to someone wearing one out in the real world, because I have. Since then, there has been a new version of the Meta Ray-Bans that look like a pair of nerd glasses from the 1970s. The latter have turned into something from the TV series Person Of Interest by a couple of Harvard undergrads. The pair, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, are known for their punch-activated flamethrower. This time they built a system that allows the Ray-Bans to scan faces of people in view, pass this to an AI system that scans the internet for identification, and builds a dossier that is passed back to the glasses. It's called I-XRAY and challenges the concept of privacy because, if available, it will even provide details like address and social security number.

- Currently the system can take a minute or two to return data but it is new and uses publicly available information. The pair could have used a digital camera but thought that using glasses was a better choice. It took the pair around three days to code the system using tools like ChatGPT. The primary goal was to show that it could be done and warn the general public what was possible, so they might protect themselves in the future. I expect others will copy this technology in the near future, and not all the actors will be good ones.

- In the latest hacking story, and by latest I mean one that occurred in the recent past, Chinese actors breached Verizon, AT&T and Lumen. Salt Typhoon, a Beijing related group, hacked into a number of US broadband providers and may have even grabbed some court-ordered wiretaps as part of US internet traffic. This is what happens when a government actor is given access to communications, foreign actors can piggyback on the system and grab all kinds of data. There is still some mystery around the hack, what was accessed and retrieved, and most of the players are not talking. The Chinese authorities have published a story that claims Salt Typhoon is an invention of the US and its allies, and not a crew run by Beijing. I'll let the readers make up their mind on this one.

- In other China news, OpenAI has suggested that a China based group called SweetSpecter targeted their staff and tried to get information on their intellectual property. They planned to do this with malware called, and you have to love some of these names, SugarGh0st RAT, to take over compromised machines. This malware takes screenshots and passes back any data it finds. Luckily, OpenAI was tipped off about the attack and banned any associated accounts so that emails were blocked before getting to employees. I expect there will be a denial from China any day now.

- If you are a Windows 11 24H2 user, the recent update will have taken more disk space than required. Since the Oct 15 rollout, users have noticed 8.63GB of leftover install data that, as of writing, resists all attempts at deletion. By the time you read this Microsoft may have a patch, but as I type this it is yet another indicator of the thoroughness of testing by Microsoft on their updates before release.

- Sadly, Rumble is almost unwatchable now as the rollout of its advertising implementation continues to worsen. In addition to the usual two pre-show ads, I counted 19 ads during one 60-minute show. Occasionally, when I skipped the ad, the video froze as the sound continued, requiring manual intervention after each ad break. This is both unprofessional and now worse than YouTube as far as ad inserts. Sorry Rumble, but you are now just discouraging people from using your service.

- If you have ever worked in a large organisation, there will have been a staff survey. Such surveys typically ask questions about happiness, staff satisfaction, how well management is doing and so on.

- I've answered many of these. For those looking to do this and action them afterwards, here is a suggestion. Focus on a single thing to improve, not all of them, just one thing to start. If communication is on the list then focus on this one first, because in my experience this is typically the area that needs to be improved. I don't mean sending out a weekly executive report, I mean real communication across the whole organisation from the top down and the bottom up, with feedback.

- Finally for this week, large AI systems and server farms use a lot of energy. This demand for energy in the US has delayed the closing of coal-fired power stations and even Three Mile Island will be reopening to give additional power to companies like Microsoft. The reliability of coal, gas and nuclear is needed instead of the unreliability of alternative energy systems like wind and solar. Other countries like China and India worked this out a long while back.


James Hein is an IT professional with over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.

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