In the US anyway it feels like the battle for public spaces has been lost. Everywhere I go people are listening full blast to their phones with no headphones - I find this about 100x more obnoxious than filming. I think both should be banned with Singapore-style punishments but I expect even if companies posture about this nothing will happen. United famously prohibited using your audio without headphones but based on my trip with them last week that has done nothing. At this point it’s a societal problem that needs a tougher approach.

I fly BA across the Atlantic every few months, and today for the first time the safety briefing included a specific callout of respecting privacy while filming aboard.

Amazing news! Something like this should implemented in all areas. What if my family and I are on the flight and I don't want them filmed?

I have heard the middle east has some very strict public filming laws, especially for women and children. Would be very popular globally!

It's really unfortunate that to make the world visual-legible to a machine we have to permit recording in a high-fidelity format. I'd love to have an AI assistant perceive the universe around me and assist but I prefer to give people a measure of discretion in personal interactions. I've used the Meta Glasses in public, though, and they're really fantastic. You can ask about fish you can see, or you can capture your kids in a moment. Such a pity about this perhaps immutable property of life.

My opinion (which is about filming in general, not the glasses) which seems to contradict others' but:

So if someone acts up and starts screaming it's suddenly ok to film, or even when people are committing crimes on board it's not ok? Who's to say when this is happening or not?

If filming is banned there will be less evidence for when this does happen, and people could get away with more crimes (although admittedly the bar is higher on a plane and the flight staff's testimony will carry lots of weight).

I think planes are public places (because 200 people are crammed into a tiny tube of metal) and your expectation of privacy should be diminished there. There are too many potential things that could happen on a plane. People are too close and vulnerable while on a plane. We cannot run or protect ourselves as well.

And as far as flight attendants, unfortunately they are at least partially responsible for both the safety and wellbeing of those on board. That is literally their job.

Banning filming of them will reduce their sense of urgency and responsibility, just like it would of cops if we were not allowed to film them.

There are just too many things that need to go right and also that could go wrong on a flight.

Just recently someone took a photo of an ostensible pedophile while on board conversing on a website for pedophiles and now the world knows. If all photography or filming was banned then this wouldn't have happened.

There's nothing new here. European airlines generally prohibit filming the activities of their employees, regardless of technology. In fact, most of them (unlike U.S.-based airlines) try to anonymize their employees. They don't wear name tags, for example.

I've had this be a problem when I was trying to capture a FA's photo while disembarking the aircraft after he rudely chastised me for using the bathroom "too many times" due to a bladder condition.

Seems fair; I won't speak to people wearing glasses with cameras in them.

It's unfortunate that Meta Glasses found PMF with folks who want to nonconsensually record social interactions

Airplanes are a great use case for display glasses. They make using a computer or watching a movie in economy class so much nicer. I like using display glasses that don't have a camera. But unfortunately everybody assumes they do have one. Assuming I'm a dork because I'm wearing them is fair. Assuming I'm a creep isn't.

Saw a guy the other day in the gym wearing these

I joined many others in giving him a “shit on a shoe” look.

We need to bring back the term "Glasshole".

I hope more airlines follow and governments do it too. Such a ridiculous product.

Those glasses should be an actual crime everywhere.

I assert the right and duty of surveillance reciprocity. Little brother may and should watch big brother, and share.

What about filming them with a regular smartphone?

Depends. Is British airways also agreeing not to record as well, or is just one of those paternalistic 'we don't want YOU to have evidence of wrongdoing'?

My guess, given England, is that they double down on more cameras, and conveniently lose recordings they don't like.

I have decidedly mixed feelings about this. In general, I don't think people should just be allowed to record and post other people's private moments. I think we don't want to live a life where we are at risk of every single thing that we've ever done being posted as video.

On the other hand, I travel a lot, and I take videos frequently to protect myself. Almost invariably, what I'm talking about here is walking around a rental car when I pick it up and drop it off. But there are other scenarios, like documenting that I was at a gate on time if they're claiming I was late and denying me boarding.

Of course, there are the ones that are contemplated by this article, like a dispute with another passenger or someone about what happened or what's happening, since the consequences of that stuff can be so severe.

I think a lot of European countries have laws around this that usually have exceptions for scenarios like that. For example, I was once recording the condition of a drop-off rental car in Italy. The rental car employee started screaming at me, claiming that, since he had been in the frame at some point or another, what I was doing was illegal. Meanwhile, he was refusing to give me a written receipt or some other proof that I had actually returned the car. If you know anything about rental cars in Italy, you want that, so I just took the video to confirm that I had, in fact, given them the keys and the car.

After it blew up and some research was done, it became clear that, while Italian law does have very strict restrictions on publishing recordings of people, recording your own customer service interactions for purposes of protecting yourself is clearly allowed.

I think a fairer policy here would be sharing, publishing, or distributing any recordings is very strictly prohibited, but merely possessing them can be permitted if the recorder can make a bona fide assertion that it was done for purposes of recording or protecting themselves and their rights as a customer.

Well done, more of this.

Assuming that nobody is gonna exploit it for marketing or other nefarious ends. A society that constantly videos everything would be kindof great. Everything documented. Everything searchable. Crime might become impossible. Like, no more murder or illegal dumping.

what are they scared about?

BA sells the accent folks. not service.

best use I’ve seen for meta glasses have been parties, where the host hands them out and takes your phone as collateral or locks them up in some way

everyone gets content and gets to be present, optionally or mandatory turn in of the glasses when leaving

everyone knows what they're walking into and some level of curation and community lets people still be loose, or know what level of discretion they should have

Good. More of this

We have had convenient, ultra-portable, widely available video taping for what, 20 years now? Closer to 15 years for any resemblance of quality or faces being recognizable. Commercial flying has existed for over a century now, and somehow it all worked out for decades upon decades before portable digital video cameras (like what we have now) became cheap. It's funny how once we gain some extra convenience, no matter how marginal in the given situation, it only takes a few years for it to be considered indispensable, the right to use it utterly essential.

No one's getting away with a crime on a commercial flight, there are hundreds of people around you and upwards of a dozen or more flight crew on board, with a button to call over one of them in short reach of every passenger.

This is unsupported, but I feel like the vast majority of people filming flight attendants are not doing it for any valid reasons, but to try to start a harassment or doxxing outrage campaign online because they've caused them some brief inconvenience. 90%+ of flight attendant interactions with passengers are about convenience and not safety, and people should not have a right to hold a stick over these largely underpaid and overworked employees because they've not topped up their drink in 5 minutes. For the remaining minority of reasons, recording their voice should cover most cases.

However, the strongest argument against this is that it is possible for things to be banned in general but allowed when doing the banned thing would prevent a greater harm. This idea already exists in legal system. Zero-tolerance and free-for-all are not the only options, you could be allowed to film in emergencies or to prevent worse things from happening.

While you're right that your expectation of privacy is obviously lower in a place like this, the blurry term here is 'privacy'. Is 'you expect yourself to be seen by others' the same kind of privacy as 'you expect anyone to be able to get a permanent record of you without your knowledge or agreement'? What about when these glasses start doing facial recognition? Wouldn't you also have to steelman the 'you should expect anyone to be able to know exactly who you are and to upload your identity, location and appearance to a megacorporation' kind of privacy?

Oh they are trying their very best to go the way of policing. For example just last week Delta's PR team has been working overtime to make sure one of their South American customer abuse cases don't get picked up by the English speaking media. You won't see this anywhere in major US media because the victim was a foreigner (Santiago Daza) from a poor country like Colombia. Delta's team did a wonderful job of suppressing it. If they tried this with a rich French or Chinese they would have been raked over the coals and on their knees apologizing. The foreign media and internet users would not let them go so easily.

See for yourself. https://viewfromthewing.com/delta-passenger-got-kicked-off-a...

https://www.reddit.com/r/delta/comments/1x0ej7v/passenger_re...

> I think planes are public places

They literally aren't, though. They are the airline's private property, and you've entered into a contract of carriage with them to temporarily have access to their property under the terms of the contract. To some extent these terms are circumscribed by law, but in the absence such law, you are bound by whatever terms you agreed to in the contract. If you don't agree not to film in the plane, you're free to not accept the contract.

It is not just company policies, this reflects the law across the EU.

As a former customer service representative I have no sympathy for you. this is in no way the FAs fault. And this way of thinking, believing it is the service employee's fault seems to be the American way of thinking, you don't see it anywhere else in the world. Did you ever tell the airline it was a bladder condition? Most people do not and just say the service employee is an inconvenience and should be reported or fired

Any service employee acting in a way that does not favor the customer does so because it is their job to do exactly that. You do not report the employee, you take it higher up. The problem is never the employee. The problem is never caused by the employee. The problem is the policy that was created by some director at the company, that the employee is just following like a robot because that is their job. The employee has never heard of that director and not even their superiors have heard of them or know who they are. You could have contacted customer service and gotten credit for it. The service employee is powerless. You can even report the company itself but never the employee because they are just robots.