00:01At MetaConnect 2025, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new generation of smart glasses
00:08in collaboration with Ray-Ban and Oakley, visually almost indistinguishable from traditional eyewear.
00:15While smart technology like this entering everyday life is celebrated as a brave new world by some,
00:20it's a nightmare come true for others.
00:23Civil rights organizations are sounding the alarm over the technology's abusive potential.
00:28So, do we need to act fast to keep our privacy rights in place?
00:32There is a battle right now, but there is a battle in many fronts.
00:35This is Cleanthe Sardelli.
00:37Cleanthe is a data protection lawyer with NOIB, an NGO that tries to enforce data protection laws and the right
00:44to privacy.
00:45One thing that many people might not have in mind is that smart glasses have this feature many times
00:56that the footage is being transferred and reviewed by humans.
01:02This means that there are companies and actual humans reviewing your daily recordings and your daily movements in that case,
01:14and maybe even intimate situations that you wouldn't want to be filmed in the first place.
01:20This is a very dangerous scenario and this compromises user privacy to a very, very large extent.
01:32This is a hidden danger that comes with these smart glasses and these devices that users should be aware of
01:41and should be thinking about before buying.
01:44This is pretty alarming, but before we get into the details, let me just give you a quick overview of
01:50the so-called smart glasses that we're talking about here.
01:53These look exactly just like classic Ray-Bans, but there's a camera in the corner that can be activated by
02:00just a single tap of the glasses.
02:03Now, when the camera is filming, there's a white light that flashes, but this can be easily covered by a
02:09sticker.
02:09There are even stickers on the market specifically for this reason.
02:14And these aren't niche products anymore.
02:16Meta says it's sold over 7 million pairs globally.
02:19Metas are the most popular right now, with a market share of roughly 80%.
02:23But competitors are trying to catch up.
02:25Apple is reportedly developing its own pairs, as is Google.
02:29It seems to me that there are two major potential threats here when it comes to privacy.
02:33The threat from a wearer of these glasses who could film me without my knowledge or my consent.
02:40And the threat that big tech companies pose to the user of these wearables.
02:45AKA by wearing these glasses, you're handing over a huge amount of personal data.
02:51But what I want to know, first and foremost, is what are my rights if I'm being filmed in public?
02:57Especially if it's without my knowledge or my consent.
03:00Let's say that the world is separated from Europe and the rest of the world.
03:07So where the GDPR is a reality and where the GDPR is not.
03:13When someone is being filmed in public, the GDPR gives you a certain set of rights.
03:20These rights can be to access the recording itself.
03:24It can be to, if the recording is being done with your consent, to withdraw your consent.
03:31To actually say, please stop this right now.
03:34So this would be actually the biggest tool that we have right now.
03:39However, of course, in the cases where people are being used, being filmed without their knowledge or even their consent,
03:49their rights are becoming essentially diminished.
03:53And that is because they have no knowledge of the processing operation of the filming that is being done at
04:01this point in time.
04:02So within Europe and in Germany, we have the GDPR and in the rest of the world, we can see
04:08that the landscape is quite fragmented.
04:11For example, in the US, we can see that we have different states with different data privacy laws, which require
04:21either consent from both parties or the filmer and the filmee.
04:27And we have other states where the consent is required by only one of the parties.
04:33So we see that there is no actually not a perfect picture worldwide and not an equal set of rights
04:44everywhere.
04:45As a woman, I find it particularly concerning that there could be footage being posted online without my knowledge or
04:52my consent.
04:53Even before these glasses existed, there were plenty of people out there, predators, criminals who would try to secretly film
05:00women.
05:00So how serious is the development of these glasses in terms of the risk of women's safety here?
05:06The risk is quite serious, actually.
05:08We see that women are being recorded from either influencers or other actors without their knowledge or consent.
05:18And most of the cases, it comes down to being approached in public and being filmed with some sort of
05:27intention to bring them to a compromised position, vulnerable position.
05:33We see that these actions are just an extension of the reality that women face in other areas of their
05:42lives as well.
05:43But when it comes to data protection, women are not aware a lot of the times of their rights in
05:52these situations.
05:53And the GDPR is there to protect users and bottom line women as well with the complaint mechanism before the
06:02data protection authorities in Germany and beyond.
06:06And this will allow both the investigation of this incident as well as the enforcement and potential fine to the
06:16perpetrator of this unlawful behaviour.
06:19OK, so in Europe, we are somewhat protected. But what about the rest of the world?
06:24In the US, for example, filming people in public spaces is often legal because there is no reasonable expectation of
06:31privacy.
06:32So if someone approached you on the street wearing these glasses and then posted that interaction online,
06:38the legal framework in Europe that gives you the right to demand it be taken down doesn't exist.
06:44Another major issue is the topic of child safety.
06:47Minors are treated with extra protection in Europe.
06:50For example, it's illegal to film children without parental consent, even in public.
06:56Countries like Brazil, South Africa and parts of Asia are headed in a similar direction.
07:01But in the US and many other parts of the world, minors are less protected in the eyes of the
07:06law.
07:07But Cleanthe says that merely the existence of these laws is still nowhere near enough.
07:12Enforcement is really tough.
07:14How can some supervisory authority really detect and find people who film small childs without the consent of the parents
07:24in the wild?
07:25In fact, Cleanthe was pretty clear that at least in Europe, the necessary regulations are already in place, but that
07:32her main concern is enforcement.
07:35I think that we really have the regulation and the laws in place right now.
07:40The only problem is that we don't enforce them.
07:44I think that I would simply just try to enforce the law instead of just having another piece of legislation
07:53that stays just something to be on paper.
07:58And I would prefer to go in the way of enforcement and applying the law that we already have, because
08:06this is worldwide, the GDPR, a very strong data protection tool.
08:13It's such a strong tool that so many companies actually are trying and lobbying to change it and to diminish
08:22fundamental rights to profit, essentially, from people's data.
08:27Hold up. Companies are trying to change the data protections that we already have in place to protect us?
08:34We have these big tech companies, whether their name is Google, whether it is Meta and so on, that use
08:40user data in many different ways through these smart glasses.
08:45We have the Irish data protection, which is responsible for all the big tech companies.
08:50This becomes even more complicated when we see that national supervisory authorities such as the DPC have very limited resources
08:59or they have appointment of their members with political influence.
09:05Sometimes we even have meta lobbyists joining as members in this Irish data protection commission.
09:12This is an actual event and this is very important to point out because this really, really undermines the enforcement
09:22process.
09:23When there is a potential conflict of interest in the appointment of a member of a supervisory authority,
09:30this member should not be appointed in the first place or they should not be working on cases or have
09:39a management role within the organization
09:41because there might be issues that fall under their jurisdiction as well and their competence.
09:48These smart glasses are not built with data protection in mind from the get go.
09:54And when a technological product is not being designed with privacy by design and by default, as the GDPR tells
10:03us,
10:03then we simply see that it is a product that is problematic and should not be out in the market
10:10in the first place.
10:12However, big tech companies have managed to do that and have managed to bypass the laws.
10:18And we see there the lack of enforcement and the lack of power on behalf of the European Union supervisory
10:27authorities.
10:27Bottom line is that within our daily life, we would be faced with surveillance all over the place without even
10:37having control of our data anymore.
10:41Cleanti's NGO, Noiv, has tried to take on big tech for privacy violations, but we're faced with several big hurdles.
10:48There is a battle right now, but there is a battle in many fronts.
10:52We have the front of the big tech, which have immense resources and continue to essentially avoid the laws or
11:01ignore them altogether
11:02and go forward with devices with processing of personal data that is completely unlawful.
11:09And at the same time, we have a European Commission, which is trying to reform the GDPR and bring it
11:17to a lower standard than it was before.
11:21So we are right now trying both with our litigation and with pressure to the institutions to actually have enforcement
11:32happen.
11:32It's worth noting that when Google came out with their OG smart glasses a decade ago, they were a total
11:38flop.
11:39People found them really creepy and they barely lasted two years on the market.
11:43However, they looked a lot more techy, whereas Meta's glasses look just like normal glasses.
11:51So we asked Cleanti whether she thinks they will become as normal as, say, having a smartphone.
11:57I think that in the European Union, this technology is not as successful.
12:02And the reason is in the European Union, we are really mindful of privacy and data protection.
12:08So I think that even though smart glasses are continuously being sold and available to citizens within the European Union
12:17and residents alike, they will not be mainstream anytime soon.
12:23We will not see our friends and we will not see our friends and family using them all the time
12:28simply because this is such an intrusive technology.
12:32And I think that by now many, many people have realized that I see the potential technological advancement being very
12:43dangerous for privacy because we have already seen that with these smart glasses, Harvard students were able to deploy software
12:55that was recognizing people on the street.
12:58And this is an actual case from Harvard from people that are just researching the potential of this technology.
13:08So the fear and the thought is that maybe there is so much potential that we don't know of yet.
13:17And this is why the enforcement of the GDPR is so important at this time and age.
13:24The smart glasses market has grown rapidly in recent years.
13:28According to US-based market research company Grandview Research, the market was worth just under $2.5 billion in 2025
13:37and is forecast to increase sixfold by 2033.
13:40It seems to me now like yet another example of technology advancing at a rate so fast that regulators are
13:48struggling to keep up.
13:50While at the same time, major technology companies are increasingly investing in lobbying efforts to weaken or roll back existing
13:58privacy protections such as Europe's GDPR.
14:01I'm Hannah Hummel in Berlin. Thank you so much to Cleanthi Sardelli and to my producers, Till Boller, Frank Suyak,
14:08Melissa Chan, Steven Gislem, Matthias Wolff and Valentin Horvath.
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