Woman Had No Idea Meta Smart Glasses Were Recording Her Until the Video Went Viral

Toluwa Omitowoju had no idea a stranger wearing Meta smart glasses had recorded her until the resulting video started making its way back to her through friends and even people she hadn’t spoken to in years. By then, she says, the footage had already racked up more than 200,000 views across social media.

According to CBS News, Omitowoju appeared in one of a growing number of prank and pickup-line videos recorded using wearable technology. She said she wasn’t told that she was being filmed or asked for permission before the footage was posted online. The video has since been removed, but not before causing significant safety and privacy concerns. 

“I had no say,” Omitowoju told the outlet. She also said other women have contacted her with similar and sometimes more troubling experiences, including videos uploaded through burner accounts without the people being filmed even knowing who recorded them.

While technology appears to speedrun toward the future, the safety of humans seems to become history. 

It’s Getting Harder to Know When You’re on Camera

Unlike someone obviously pointing a phone at another person, smart glasses can make it much less apparent that recording is happening. Omitowoju argued that this difference effectively removes someone’s opportunity to object or walk away before they end up on camera. This is one of the primary reasons why the smart glasses have earned the nickname “pervert glasses.”

“If someone sees a phone in front of their face, they have the opportunity to step away,” she told CBS News. With smart glasses, however, Omitowoju said people are being deprived of that “right of refusal.”

Instagram head Adam Mosseri has previously addressed similar videos involving unsuspecting people. In July, he reportedly said the Meta-owned platform would remove content that exploits or harasses people, specifically mentioning pickup-line videos and people being recorded surreptitiously.

That Tiny Recording Light Has a Big Job

Meta says its Ray-Ban smart glasses include privacy safeguards, including an LED that illuminates while recording. The glasses are also said to have technology designed to stop users from recording when that indicator is obstructed.

CBS News tested that safeguard and found that covering the LED after recording had already started did not appear to stop the recording. Meta reportedly clarified that its tamper detection is designed to prevent capture when the light is obstructed before the user presses record and said it continues working to improve the technology.

While Meta glasses come with numerous perks that can improve one’s lifestyle, it all boils down to who utilizes them and what their intentions are. With great technology comes great responsibility that not everyone is ready for, apparently. The benefits of smart glasses and the dangers of smart glasses all depend on whose hands they end up in, and that speaks volumes on the amount of freedom there is in discreet filming.

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The glasses have already attracted government scrutiny. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into Ray-Ban Meta glasses in May over concerns that their cameras and other features could potentially be used to record people without their knowledge. Meta responded at the time that privacy and data protection are central to its products.

No matter the technicalities, for Omitowoju and anyone who has experienced privacy violations carried out with the help of Meta glasses, the issue is much less abstract. It is a real problem, occurring in the real world, affecting real people. Case in point: She didn’t know she had been recorded until the internet effectively told her, and that can be terrifying in ways that a promise to improve technology cannot fix. 

Meta glasses may be categorized as smart glasses, but its safety precautions might be verging on the opposite meaning of the word “smart.”

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