Smart glasses are not smart....

New privacy frontier: Europe eyes crackdown on smart glasses

Cameras in spectacles have lawmakers and regulators alarmed of surveillance risks.

By Ellen O'Regan

Europe is ramping up its warnings over the surveillance risks of smart glasses, in what is seen as the next big fight over people's physical privacy.

The technology, which integrates cameras into glasses, is facing increased scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators, who are ramping up discussions on whether it goes against Europe's privacy regulations. Privacy activists are warning the glasses violate key principles like consent, since people captured in the built-in cameras can't really object to their data being processed.

Concerns peaked when Swedish media reported earlier this year that subcontractors for Meta in Kenya were reviewing “deeply private” footage captured by the firm's smart glasses to help annotate the content to train artificial intelligence models. It included recordings of people's bathroom visits, banking details, or even them having sex.

“They are selling more and more of these glasses. I think it was Mark Zuckerberg who said that they are some of the fastest-growing consumer electronics in history ... this is when we need to act," said Liberal European Parliament lawmaker Veronika Cifrová Ostrihoňová.

She said there needs to be "some kind of stop" to technology that could breach people's privacy or "target women in a way that is not wanted and that is not welcome on the European market." Her political group, Renew, has written to the Commission asking what could be done at a European level about the rapidly evolving tech.

“The risks are high,” Eric Leijonram, director general of Sweden’s data protection authority, told POLITICO. “We need a discussion, and we need to ensure that this is acceptable in our society, that others can really understand when people are using these to film them or record them,” he said.

Europe's privacy concerns risk spoiling the rollout of Meta's eye-catching flagship product in the region. That could annoy the U.S. administration, which has long complained that EU laws and regulations unfairly target U.S. technology companies.

The European Data Protection Board, which gathers privacy regulators across Europe, has ordered a report into smart glasses which should be finalized this summer, chair Anu Talus told POLITICO. She added that the board will look at actions from there.

Others say things are not moving fast enough and are launching their own actions to curb the technology.

In the U.S., a class action lawsuit against Meta over its smart glasses is already gathering steam (and looking to recruit European users) while in the EU one coder has developed an app to alert people when smart glasses are nearby.

“I didn't want to wait for the EU or national regulators, because it takes a long time,” said Yves Jeanrenaud who developed the Nearby Glasses app, which has been downloaded more than 120,000 times since he launched it in February.

“I'm pretty sure there are some valid use cases for smart glasses, but what we see online is a misuse of them. That's not something that we, society as a whole, should just stand by and watch happen,” he said. He had read reports of women being secretly filmed by men wearing the smart glasses.

Lawmaker Cifrová Ostrihoňová said that, from a gender-based violence perspective, it is "simply unacceptable for any woman to worry about being filmed in public secretly and then worry about those images being shared online.”

A Meta spokesperson told POLITICO that its AI glasses include important built-in privacy safeguards, and the company has "teams dedicated to evolving these measures so that we can continue to deliver safe, secure products that enhance people’s lives." 

“Unlike smartphones, our glasses have an LED light that activates when someone prompts the glasses to take a photo or video that will be saved to their gallery. The glasses feature tamper detection technology to prevent people from covering that light. Unless users choose to share media they've captured with Meta, that media also stays on the device," they said. 

Regulators on the move

Regulators are charging ahead despite Meta's defenses. In Brussels, lawmakers asked the European Commission whether it will take “concrete action” to ensure Meta’s smart glasses and AI training are in line with privacy rules. More lawmakers made a renewed call this month for the Commission to look at whether AI-powered glasses are in line with EU privacy rules.

European Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath previously responded to lawmakers saying GDPR enforcement “lies with the national data protection authorities and courts.”

At the national level, France's privacy regulator (CNIL) issued a stark warning about smart glasses in May, saying they pose a “significant risk” of ushering in and normalizing surveillance that is “almost invisible and omnipresent” and “could lead to a profound transformation of our societies.”

Europe’s board of privacy regulators (the EDPB), has commissioned a report on the “social acceptability of smart glasses,” board chair Talus said, which should be ready this summer. The glasses "really bring the filming, collecting information from people, into a new level if you compare it with smartphones,” she said.

Meta is also reportedly considering rolling out facial recognition capabilities for its smart glasses. A recent investigation found that Meta has quietly written face recognition code into its mobile app, which smart glasses owners use to connect their device to their phones.

Business facilitators

When Meta launched the first iteration of its RayBan smart glasses in Europe in 2021, the product immediately sparked concerns with Irish and Italian privacy watchdogs over whether the specs made it obvious enough to people that they are being filmed. 

Two years later Meta announced a new version of the glasses with extra privacy measures recommended by the Irish regulator, including a bigger, blinking light to alert people to recording.

Apart from Meta, Samsung and Google have also recently announced they're collaborating on a new line of "intelligent eyewear" set to launch later this year, and Apple is reportedly aiming to hit the market with its own smart glasses by the end of 2027. 

European consumers are still warming to the idea of the glasses. First-quarter results from the French-Italian eyewear company EssilorLuxottica that owns the RayBan brand noted that smart glasses sales are ramping up "exponentially" in the U.S., but the distribution rollout is still slow in the EMEA region, with "more than half" of sales points still not served. More than 7 million pairs of Meta smart glasses were sold worldwide in 2025.

U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder praised the “wonderful, wonderful glasses" at a recent Meta event in Brussels, and urged Europe’s regulators to be more like “business facilitators." "This doesn't mean you don't regulate," he said. "It just means you have to focus on allowing businesses to grow and allowing businesses to innovate."

Beyond the privacy concerns, the EU also has an environmental law on the books that is holding Meta’s smart glasses back in Europe. The EU Batteries Regulation requires all mobile devices to have removable batteries by 2027, and Meta’s smart glasses with built-in display don’t.

The battery law is "so broad and so restrictive that it prevents the sale of this wonderful, jointly developed, U.S.-European product from being sold in the European Union. These are the kinds of things that need to be addressed on a very systemic basis,” said Puzder. 

Hitting privacy law limits

While regulators plot their move, privacy activists are already challenging Meta's rollout of smart glasses, arguing they violate key privacy principles like consent.

“In principle, the law is clear. There's no way that people can, in a meaningful way, consent and understand what they consent to if they're being filmed," said Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad, director of digital policy at the Norwegian Consumer Council.    

European authorities have “not been bold enough yet to use all the tools at their disposal” against the tech, Myrstad said, if only to test "whether the law is fit for this purpose.”

In the U.S., Meta is facing a consumer class action suit over its glasses. Filed by public interest firm Clarkson Law, the case argues that Meta made false privacy promises to sell its smart glasses.  

“These products are essentially surveillance products, and they were marketed as tech products centered on user privacy and user control. Those promises turned out to be false,” managing partner Ryan Clarkson said in an interview, pointing to the reports on data annotators in Kenya.  

Clarkson said he is looking for consumers in the EU who have bought Meta smart glasses to join his action, and has “already been in touch” with lawyers in the EU who are thinking about how to frame a similar class action suit.