Meta Addresses One Smart Glasses Privacy Problem, but Many Others Remain Unsolved
Meta Addresses One Smart Glasses Privacy Problem, but Many Others Remain Unsolved
Publish Date: 2026-07-08 12:47:00
Source Domain: www.cnet.com
There’s been a lot of social blowback against camera-enabled smart glasses this year, particularly those from Facebook-maker Meta. A post on Tuesday from the company addresses privacy concerns raised by me and others over the last year, and there’s also a new mandatory firmware update for some Meta glasses that promises to deactivate the camera if any tampering of the small recording LED light is detected.
That’s actually been a thing: There have been services that would mod and deactivate the recording light on the glasses, turning them into even more stealthy recording devices. Meta’s post promises that this update will end the problem of recording people without their knowledge.
But Meta hasn’t yet solved any of the other issues with camera smart glasses, including concerns about how or when the glasses might be recording in public. The LED camera indicator on existing glasses is more than phones offer, but the indicator light is often hard to spot in daylight, and Meta’s smart glasses are so normal-looking now that it’s hard to tell they have cameras at all.
A wave of bans on smart glasses in certain places, such as New York courtrooms and parts of cruise ships, has already begun. Public policies on glasses are likely to get more intense. Some glasses-makers are offering camera lens covers, and Meta’s Andrew Bosworth admitted during a Meta glasses launch a few weeks ago that he’s interested in making camera-free glasses down the road.
Me wearing prototype Meta Orion AR glasses a few years ago. Meta’s aiming to ramp up what its glasses can do, including camera-based AI assistance.
Privacy remains an issue, especially as capabilities increase
Meanwhile, Meta’s own privacy policies for how photos and AI voice interactions are handled in the Meta AI app that’s used to connect with glasses are still murky. Meta tries in its latest post to lay out clearly how personal photos aren’t shared with Meta’s cloud services by default, but it’s still…
