This policy change isn't that new, should have been included in the briefing since April/May 2026?
I have heard the middle east has some very strict public filming laws, especially for women and children. Would be very popular globally!
Consequences.
The consequences of these glasses should be that in any private space, the offender either remove them, or remove themselves. Just like there are consequences to trying to hold up your phone in a way that looks like you are recording staff or other patrons in many private spaces.
Honestly making it socially unacceptable is probably the only solution. Not sure how that happens though...
Trying to police the shape of the camera is silly.
I'm not a legal expert but the first amendment doesn't generally give the right to secretly record people, especially in places where there are already laws about hidden cameras, recording, privacy, etc.
It's not about the shape as much as the intention and execution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_expectation_of_priv...
It also doesn't protect from any consequences of your free speech of course.
The 1st Amendment does not apply to private property. Property owners, even owners of public utilities, can absolutely set boundaries and trespass people. In some states, property owners can literally shoot trespassers to death.
In the case of truly public spaces, historically it's considered that other then in very specific situations (bathrooms for example) you have no expectations of privacy and can be recorded regardless of the shape of the camera.
On private spaces, which people constantly mix up with public spaces, you're absolutely correct that it is able to be restricted and can define very granularly what's acceptable. A plane is a private space. They can restrict anything they want (limited by protected class/characteristics in the US. Other countries may vary).
If you want positive, lasting change, you have to start at the start, modeling positive social and emotional programs in public schools and community programs. Our society is only as healthy as the core beliefs that are willingly held and practiced by its population. Raw state power through fear and intimidation does not change people’s minds as much as widespread belief about what is inherently right and wrong.
I think you meant corporal punishment, not capital punishment. The latter is when you lose your life.
Do the same studies hold true for corporal punishment? I am not familiar with the literature.
I struggle with this. Growing up, I was spanked and it was highly effective at changing my behavior, but my older brother was very impulsive and he would get spanked a lot and it never seemed to chang his behavior. He settled down in his 20's after a lot of legal consequences, but I do wonder is there would have been any change for him if my parents went with a different style or if I would have turned out differently.
Two very different concerns. One is annoying in that very moment and has no lasting consequences. The other can have all kinds of consequences depending on what was secretly recorded, and where that recording was used.
There's something even worse, taking my 97 year old mother to her gerontologist :-). Her HMO has a group office of 8 gerontologists with a shared waiting area which easily seats >60, but is always packed since most 80+ year-olds treat doctor appts like plane flights and arrive an hour early. Most of the patients can't hear well and take calls on speaker phone at FULL VOLUME, then constantly remind the caller to talk louder.
It's maddening enough when I go maybe once a quarter and sit there for an hour but imagine working in that room every day. Last year the reception desk relocated closer to the elevator and a very solid wall with thick auto-close door was constructed in-between. Perhaps OSHA has a 'cruel and unusual' designation :-)
[Empathetic side note: hearing loss in the elderly is a serious hardship which not only socially isolates but also accelerates cognitive decline while decreasing independence. According to several audiologists we've consulted, my mom isn't an outlier. It's normal that even state-of-the-art, high-end (>$5,000) hearing aids, properly calibrated, only help a limited amount at >80+ yrs old. My mom, despite occasionally struggling to remember an infrequent word, is still mentally sharp. Yet it's rare she can understand people on the phone well enough to make her own appts etc. I'm really hoping DSP, MEMS and AI offer better hearing solutions before I need them.
Inevitable hearing loss combined with forced 'app-ification' and mobile UX trends are increasingly making the modern world inaccessible to the very elderly, cutting off even those who are mentally capable. Talking to the staff at my Mom's independent living facility, it's a shit show and getting worse with every major OS update. They've been forced to staff a Mobile Phone Support Desk. I really wish Apple & Android UX teams were required to work a week at that desk.]
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.
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.
Given this response, I can see why you are a "former" CSR and not a current one. You need empathy skills.
> this is in no way the FAs fault.
Are you really arguing that the FA was in the right for criticizing me for using the bathroom when it was safe to do so? My medical issues are a private matter; I don't have to disclose them to anyone as a condition of using it.
> 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.
I find it difficult to believe that a director ordered their FAs to humiliate their customers for having to use the bathroom. You're going to need some evidence that this is the case.
And an airplane has a limited amount of bathroom water that has to be shared among all passengers. Unbelievable I know.
I don't see how this is relevant at all. Just because you don't like your job doesn't mean you should be rude to your customers, and that you shouldn't be identified and terminated if you are.
> And an airplane has a limited amount of bathroom water that has to be shared among all passengers. Unbelievable I know.
This isn't relevant. First, this was as we were disembarking (the plane had already landed), and second, it is incredibly rare for a flight to be diverted because it's exhausted its lavatory water supply. Have you even seen a story of this? I can't recall one in my (somewhat long) lifetime.
You seem to persist in making points without any supporting evidence. How about you stop that?
That's not true. Humans don't magically become 100% good just because they are employed.
Your response seems to indicate it's perfectly normal and inline with standard policies to admonish a passenger for using the bathroom too much. Does any airline have a bathroom visit quota?
> The service employee is powerless
You're saying they're forced to monitor bathroom trips and pass comment?
In any place of business that I patronize, if I see one, I will request that staff should ask the offender to remove them, or remove themselves from the property.
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.
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?
See for yourself. https://viewfromthewing.com/delta-passenger-got-kicked-off-a...
https://www.reddit.com/r/delta/comments/1x0ej7v/passenger_re...
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.
> They literally aren't, though.
They literally are. They are common carriers, which is a legal concept with a lot of precedent. The UK term for this, ironically, is "public carrier" and while yes it's a privately owned it has distinctly public characteristics encoded in law that sharply distinguishes these spaces from genuinely private areas.
That's a distinction without a difference. There are enough structural constraints in launching airline alternatives that they might as well be, especially the national carriers. They are not too far from being a utility (and in a lot of places they are subject to enormous amount of public funding to stay solvent because it's a national security issue when you don't have a pool of pilots and airplanes).
It's one of those "too big and too important to fail" businesses. There can be the occasional M&A or bankruptcy but no structural industry collapse is allowed. It's as important as the car industry in some places, though the reasons differ.
Do you expect the masses to fly private jets or Cessnas to cross the globe? It's like saying electrical companies shouldn't be regulated too much in certain jurisdictions because the generators are privately owned rather than being publicly owned. People will laugh you out of the court of public opinion.
If you want to launch a public campaign to change the law and add "you can always surreptitiously record people on airlines" to the set of unenforceable contract terms, go ahead and attempt it. You'll deserve the furious blowback you get, though.
I joined many others in giving him a “shit on a shoe” look.
High risk activity.
It's mostly curiosity, people wondering what they are. They expect them to be camera glasses but believe me when I tell them they aren't.
Never heard this one before. And my family cares about being rude.
That should be a crime?
The camera should be disabled until you obtain a permit.
Drones require a license and agreement to fly, these should be too.
Yes, it’s the real and ONLY reason I have these. When my flight is over I take them off and revert to regular shades.
I would hope the same that I am trusted after proven and not trusted until known.
We all should be able to trust each other but that's not case in todays world.
And what next? The answer is it’s not true? What’s even the point?
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.
My guess, given England, is that they double down on more cameras, and conveniently lose recordings they don't like.
See the quotes in my other comment. It's pretty clear it's not about being "secretly" recorded.
I do not board a plane to be discreetly recorded by a pair of glasses. It's creepy and just privacy invasive.
That's not what's under debate though.
>British Airways Warns Filming Crew With Meta Smart Glasses Could Get Your Tickets Cancelled
>The reported change builds on restrictions introduced earlier this year against photographing or filming BA employees without their consent. Livestreaming employees without permission is also prohibited.
>>“This includes filming, live streaming or taking photographs of any BA crew or other colleagues without their consent.”
Emphasis mine.
If they're doing this to protect their passengers privacy, they're doing a really good job at hiding that.
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
can't tell if it's a joke or not, if not, i'd turn right back and walk away
"optionally?" What sort of parties are you going to where the host casually hands out Smart Glasses as party favors? :)
I don't even know what I'd do with a pair but I definitely want to be invited to parties hosted by folks who have this kind of wealth!
You got me curious... what kind of parties do you go to where everyone trusts everyone else with filming and the privacy around it, but the host doesn't trust guests to return the glasses?
before you had no user generated content, and now you do
so trust is a misnomer, the exchange is just built in and nearly foolproof