Meta’s smart glasses are innovative. Are they a security threat?

Last month, Meta made a big announcement. The Big Tech giant took a bold step forward in its wearables division by announcing advanced smart glasses that can play major entertainment apps while remaining completely portable.

When that product arrives next year, it will cement Meta’s status as a wearables titan. Its Orion line has benefitted from a Ray-Ban partnership that makes smart glasses sportier than ever before. An Oakley-inspired design upped the ante last year, and Meta’s rivals have rolled out some innovative wearable tech of their own.

For smart glasses enthusiasts, the wearables renaissance is a welcome turn of events. Lawmakers, however, are grappling with a tricky question: How does the current era of smart glasses affect the right to privacy?

The risee of wearable devices that can surreptitiously record in public spaces has already led to some legislative actions. Reuters published a rundown of the laws that have been passed thus far: Smart glasses have been banned from court facilities in New York, restricted in British movie theaters, and scrutinized across the European Union.

The most significant smart glasses crackdown has occurred in Norway. That’s where government officials are proposing a sweeping restriction that would ban the use of smart glasses in common public spaces. “We do not want a society where people worry about being recorded without their knowledge, photographed or filmed in places and situations where they are accustomed to not being monitored,” said Norway Minister of Digital Affairs Torgeir Micaelsen.

Meta has not yet offered a direct comment on Norway’s proposal, though it has highlighted the privacy features of its smart glasses. An LED light glows when the recording equipment is in use, and the hardware is designed to automatically disable the camera if the user tampers with the LED.

Those ssafeguards are important, but they may not be sufficient on their own. Meta’s wearables push has produced yet another regulatory issue for Zuck and co. Can any lip service — or product updates — quell these widespread security concerns?