The Chaser Report - Wanko Smart Glasses

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

The future of being a creep is here, with the brand-new Kmart Smart Glasses for the perve on a budget! Charles and Dom review the product and ask, who the fuck wants this?---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the future, future, future, future. And welcome to Kmart where the Anko's smart glasses, which sounds like a contradiction in terms, but we'll see just how smart they are, have sold out either due to terrible supply chain issues or people desperately wanting glasses with cameras in them, Charles. Yes, yes. Look, it's the hottest sensation out there, Dom. Like, if you're just an ordinary every day, because it used to be the case that you had to be quite rich to be a creep, right?

Yes, true. Now, if you're just an ordinary everyday creep, doesn't make a huge amount of money, doesn't pull in the big bucks, isn't in finance, you can still be a creep on a budget, all thanks to angeles. and Kmart and Target and everyone's selling the ANCO smart glasses. $89. Let's talk about this in a few moments. Look, if you are listening and have smartphone glasses, just put them on. So you can really get into the vibe. And particularly if they don't have a light that indicates whether they're actually recording or not.

Because that's always lovely. Well, and the thing is that, luckily that they do have lights, you know, because, you know, gaffer tape doesn't exist anymore. No. And you couldn't just use a text at it. draw it over it. Yeah. Sorry, sorry, Don,

before we go and talk about the smart glasses, we should just note a very big news coming out of the tech world. Oh yeah? Which is that Bluetooth version 6.2 is out now. Really? It's just been launched.

Yes. Wow. Version 6.2. It's pretty amazing. So guess what it does? Um, versus what, 6.1. I don't really record the last version. Yeah, versus just even six, six point out.

Does it have slightly more frustrating error messages? That's just sort of made there. No, I think the area messages are pretty frustrating. I don't think they haven't upgraded any. Well, there might be a few more error messages. Does it in honor of Harold Bluetooth, the Norse King after whom Bluetooth is named, is it now mandated that every time a device connecter goes, No, no.

Treat it with the contempt it deserved. Fair enough. Look, I wish there was. I think that might be version 6.3. Okay. That's coming out. But, no, this is good. It's got a thing called channel sounding, right?

Oh, channel sounding. Which means that you can now track the location of device to within tens of centimeters, right? And what they're saying, this will be used for, mainly is things like, you know how a lot of cars that are coming onto the market now have an app attached to them? Yes.

And you can sort of tap the side of your car and suddenly the car opens up. Yeah. Well, what this is doing is it's sort of saying, actually it'll just be as you walk over, the car will all open up for you

and stuff like that. So it's pretty good. I mean, imagine that. I mean, of course, you'll have to sync it with Bluetooth each time and you spend half an hour setting it up each time you try and do that. But, you know, it's an amazing innovation.

Well, Tesla's had Bluetooth as a key for quite some time. And from what I understand, particularly in the older versions of Bluetooth, it was less precise. That basically meant that if your car was connected to your phone, somebody else could drive it off. But then again, that'd probably be doing you a favour. Get rid of that blasted Bluetooth car that you brought. Yeah, no, yeah.

No, that is exactly right. They're saying that the RSSI, the received signal strength indicator, has a lot more variability in version 6.2, which means that if you're two metres away, it can sense that you're not two centimetres away and therefore, you know, not unlock your car. Just looking at this up, Charles, there's a story from two weeks ago that, yeah,

thieves can use two small Bluetooth relay devices in a laptop to unlock and start your car in seconds. So really glad Bluetooth's coming into more cars. That sounds like a very positive development for car thieves. You know what they didn't update in this version? No. Even though the article I'm reading says a much-needed upgrade, right? This is why I'm so excited by it, right?

Is I just assumed that that would allow Bluetooth to pair properly. But they haven't done any work on that at all. No, that's Bluetooth, I think 13.2 on the web app. Oh, that's 13.2, yes. That'll come in the early 2050s, yeah, yeah. Yes, that's right. Yeah. Anyway, so, but we let's talk about the smart glasses.

First of all, my big question, Dom, because I'm sure you've bought a pair of them already, is do they have Bluetooth? Well, there's unfortunately a wrong premise in that I have never bought them. But surely they do. Looking at the ANCO smart glasses, I can tell you that, yes, indeed, they certainly do connect with Bluetooth. They've got a huge Bluetooth logo on them. Yeah. So they capture photos up to 8 megapixels, record videos. up to 1080P, Bluetooth connectivity for music and hands free calls.

So I don't know whether the photos come through over Bluetooth, but helpfully at the bottom of the Anka website, I'm just going to read this out because they've been taking appropriate measures for people's privacy. It just says warning this product is capable of capturing images, video and audio, users must comply with all applicable privacy surveillance, recording and consent laws. Recording may be prohibited in certain locations or situations. That's all you need to do. Surely.

Just put it on the website for the product. Just have a little warning. And creeps, creeps especially will go, oh my God, I can't record people furtibly. Yeah, I mean,

I feel like that's, that's, the critics are wrong at this point. Khamart's done their job. So, Dom, just run me through, and this is what I really wanted to talk about today, is just run me through

all the use cases of ANCO smart glasses that are legitimate, like that aren't something that's a bit creepy or weird or sort of something that's, you know, illegal. Oh, but yeah. Look, I know because actually some of my people I work with at Sydney

uni have done some research on this. And they found that more than 60% of online videos recorded with smart glasses actually potentially involved, you know, violations of privacy. So I don't think the users have found many examples. Problem. But one that comes to mind is chasing after your own kids so you can keep your hands free while recording an adorable video of your children. Oh, I see.

But wouldn't your kids be running away from you? You'll only catch the back of them because I'll be running away from you going, who's that crazy man in thick-rimmed glasses? Yes. Descending on me. And smiling. The Anko smart glasses, I don't want to malign people who wear glasses. But, I mean, they're the sort of.

glasses you would expect someone creepy to wear. Let's just say they're black, fully kind of, you know, black specks. Yeah. They're Clark Kent. They're not challenging anyone, anyone's stereotypes about creepy glasses. Let's just say that. Right. And so, like, why, if you were, like, what, so what's going on here?

Why is civilisation, like, I just don't understand any, I don't understand why this product can or should exist and how possibly, like, it is against the law to record somebody. And especially actually to record their audio bizarrely. Like actually, recording video you can do relatively furtively as we know. No, it's, I mean, the laws in Australia. But recording somebody's audio without letting them know is sort of a complete no-no. I mean, imagine how many politicians this is going to ruin the careers of. If you sort of go along to a business meeting, you hand over your bag.

You say your sports bed or something like that. Oh, that's very rough. You hand over your bag of cash. There's a bag of cash. Oh, yeah. Somebody in the background has an Anko smart glasses on and suddenly you're all busted. Like, what about think of the poor lobbyists? The only thing I can think of, we need brown paper bags with built in smart glasses detectors.

Smart bags. Yeah, smart bags. It can check whether there's a Bluetooth device recording in the area. And using version 6.2 of Bluetooth, they'll be able to tell just how proximate they are. Yes, a smart bag is what we. We need those Ukraine-style, you know, radar jammers for smart glasses. You know how, you know, one of the things that Ukraine's been doing is doing all this sort of counter- counter-drone sort of thing where they mess with the GPS and all the sort of signals.

And one of the results is a lot of the drones now use fibroptic cables to fly into enemy territory. Oh, yes, we talked about this. amazing. Yeah. We need that, but for smart glasses. Why don't we just not have smart glasses? This is my question is, why do we need them? What would you be losing? Yeah. Well, Charles, I mean, the great thing about smart glasses, forget the cameras for a second. I can understand that they're problematic. But you can make hands-free calls and listen to music using them. And they're only sound, I've tested the meta smart glasses. They only sound, like, they sound as much as 20% as good as just wearing AirPods.

The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. So maybe the point, maybe the way we're looking at this is all wrong and that this is not welcome to the future because the future is today. It's like this is where we're heading in terms of technology. Yeah. And that what we need to do is think about how could we improve these so that they become something that everyone desperately wants to wear? Well, I've got an idea.

Isn't that the whole point about these tech gadgets is you want them to become widely adopted? The whole point is, you know, a million is no longer a viable selling product. You want to be. No, that's a failure. Yeah, that's right. Well, Charles, I think there's an obvious line here. And it's one that our friends in the gun lobby have used for a very long time. And the best defence against a bad guy with a gun, that's always guys, is a good guy with a gun.

Good guy with a gun. The best way to stop yourself being recorded by a creep with smart glasses is to wear smart glasses and record any creep in the the vicinity who's recording you with smart glasses. Yes, that's good. And make porn of the creep. Yes. Give them a taste of their own creepy medicine. And we can even put detectors into the glasses that try and work out, you know,

is the light on what's going on? And use AI to detect other smart glasses in the area. It's predator porn. It's like that Chris Hansen TV show where you catch all the creeps. To catch a creep. To catch a creep. That's very good. There's a whole, there's a whole genre, just waiting to.

be explored. That'll be great. And then we can have vigilantes who hunt them down and murder them. Also while wearing smart glasses. Yes. Oh, and there's a whole extra piece of content there. Although, I think snuff video, we might need to change the law if you can have on screen.

Although actually nowadays, you probably could get away with it. I mean, the police are wearing body cams. How long till police, but police could, if you think about it, police could wear smart glasses to monitor their own use of body cam. The problem is police don't like anything that involves being smart. It has to be like of average intelligence glasses for the police to be able to wear them. Be below average intelligence glasses. Well, maybe the glasses, could the glasses be making the, the glasses, couldn't the glasses make

the policing decision? Well, I'd that. So it's a bit like, rather than the police doing it arbitrarily, you can have smart systems that do racially profiling and inappropriate arrest people. And he would be GROC, wouldn't it, that would do that? Of course. I don't think Claude or a chat GPT wouldn't it. They might not do racially profiling.

I think GROC, the notion that GROC would have any rules against that is fanciful, I think. Yeah. I love that. So what we do is we, what this product is missing is just a whole AI component, which allows it to be a sort of racist law enforcement device. And then everyone can become a cop. That's what you want. and it just delivers you instructions.

And then it's a bit like Uber, but for policing, where you can do a gig. Like, say you're walking to work. That's good. You say a crime. You go, I'm available to be a crime stopper. You put on your glasses. You walk. And then it racially profiles people, identifies people who need to be harassed.

And then gives you instructions and you do that job. And it's like the gig economy, but for cops. Bluber. Yes, Bluber. Yes. For blue lives. that matter. Door bash.

But there are some situations though, Charles. We've got to think of all the edge cases, right? What about situations where you can't wear glasses, where the glasses aren't going to be able to record? And so... What do you mean? Let's say, for instance, you were going out late at night with some friends. Yes.

And you just happened all to be wearing white hoods. Yes. And that way the smart glasses would be able to record because you've just got the eye holes to look through in your white hood. Oh, so we need smart hoods as well. We're smart hoods exactly where I'm going. Yeah. We need them to be able to, I don't know, can you embed cameras in the top of the hood or something or how it works.

Oh, I'm sure they can. Yeah. No, that's good. I like that. What else could be, I mean, is there any sort of humanitarian angle to this? Like if we hand, you know, hand these out to sort of. What does that word mean? What are you trying to do?

You're trying to save people here, Charles? What's going? Sorry. Do we need to point a camera at you to make sure you're doing the right thing? Yeah. And then do we need to point a camera at that camera? make sure that camera is doing the right thing? Where does this end?

This is the only way we can be truly safe, Charles, as you know. Yes, because this is about making society safer, isn't it? Yeah. Handing out whole other people, surveillance, private surveillance. And that's why they're called smart glasses, because if they'd be called scary, Anko-scarry glasses or creepy glasses. Surely there should be called Wanko glasses. Like, has anyone made that joke?

Surely somebody's made that joke. I think it's your first. I think it's yours. I think you've got a t-shirt in the making. What are we going to do, Dom? Technology is just going to ruin everything. I feel like, and look, I'm not a big fan of banning things. No, you're not a Luddite.

You're generally in favour of gadgets, but some. But I think what we're going to do is we're going to, I think you're right. We need a high-tech solution to this high-tech problem. Maybe what we do, I just can't get a, around the fact that... Well, apparently there is a solution. Oh, yeah, okay. Someone was telling me the other day.

A way to stop smart glasses perpetrators in their tracks. Okay, yes, yes. If we cover every inch of Australia with a fleet of drones with cameras, now will be able to detect anyone who's using smart glasses in a property. Yes, of course, all the street cameras, we just got to roll out thousands more street cameras so that every street that you walk down, and probably also bushland, yeah, drones, salivables,

light, just surveil everyone, make sure that they're not using smart glasses. And in the home. Like, I think maybe a camera in every, in every bedroom, just to make sure that nobody's wearing smart glasses inappropriately. Yes. And there you go. We've solved the problem. Ah, Dom, see, I knew that there was a tech solution to the, I think that that's, oh, you've

solved everything, Dom. Just as long as the drones are able to somehow communicate, I don't know, via Starlink or via Wi-Fi somehow, because if the drones connect via Bluetooth, yeah, you can forget about it. We're screwed. But what about 6.2? It'll solve everything. Charles, that's what they said, about 6.1. I know.

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