Regulation 2026-08-13

A German group has asked prosecutors to treat Meta's smart glasses as an illegal covert-recording device

HateAid, a German digital rights organisation, filed a criminal complaint on 12 August with ZIT, the cybercrime unit at the Frankfurt general prosecutor's office. It names executives at Meta Platforms Technologies Ireland, the eyewear brands Ray-Ban and Oakley under Luxottica, and German retailers including Fielmann and MediaMarkt, over the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer Gen 2. The legal hook is a provision of Germany's telecommunications and digital data protection law that forbids selling communication devices built to film people without them noticing; it carries up to two years in prison or a fine. HateAid wants the glasses withdrawn from sale in Germany and 'safety by design' made compulsory — a visible, tamper-resistant signal that recording is happening. Meta says its glasses were 'built with privacy safeguards from the ground up that go beyond what any smartphone offers'. The glasses do have an LED that flashes while recording, and software that disables the camera if the light is covered; Engadget reported last month that a $2 sticker gets past it.

Why it mattersEvery privacy fight over these glasses so far has been about the wearer's data. This one is about everyone else's. The argument is that a bystander has no realistic way to know a camera is running, and that German law already forbids selling a device designed that way — which shifts the question from how the glasses are used to whether they may be sold at all. Naming Fielmann and MediaMarkt is the part with teeth: a prosecutor does not have to reach a company in Ireland to take a product off German shelves, only the shops. Nothing has been decided; a complaint is a request to investigate, not a finding. But it is the first serious attempt to argue the device itself is the problem.

✓ Verified · 3 sources

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2026-08-20

A German group has asked prosecutors to treat Meta's smart glasses as an illegal covert-recording device

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