🤓 Consent Not Included

A few weeks ago, I closed this newsletter by asking: how will anybody consent to having their facial biometrics processed by a smart glasses wearer? I didn't expect that question to be quite so urgent.

Last week, Wired discovered dormant facial recognition code sitting inside the companion app for Meta's Ray-Ban glasses. The feature, internally dubbed "Name Tag," was designed to convert photos of faces into biometric identifiers. The very next day, Meta quietly pushed an update to remove the code entirely. The feature was never activated, we're told—but it shipped in a live product, and nobody told users it was there.

Meanwhile, European regulators aren't waiting around for smart glasses’ latent biometrics-processing features to go active before acting. As Politico reported this week, the EU is actively eyeing a crackdown on smart glasses privacy, with legislators pressing the Irish Data Protection Commission for answers about how Meta's glasses collect and process personal data. The complaints aren't theoretical—women have been filmed without their knowledge, intimate footage was reportedly reviewed by overseas contractors, and it's becoming clear that existing GDPR frameworks weren't designed with a face-mounted camera in every social setting in mind.

The throughline across both stories is consent—specifically, its absence. When you walk past someone wearing smart glasses, there's no cookie banner, no opt-out, no notification. Regulators are starting to ask what meaningful consent even looks like here. I'm not sure anyone has a good answer yet.

Best,

Arlo

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Top Privacy Stories of the Week

Meta Quietly Removes Face-Recognition Code From Its Smart Glasses App

Only a day after a dormant bit of code that seemed to be a facial recognition algorithm was discovered in a companion app for its smart glasses, Meta released an update that removed that code. Wired Magazine uncovered the suspicious code, internally dubbed Name Tag within Meta, while reviewing code for a Meta AI app that handles some core features of the glasses. In other words, the same app necessary for pairing Meta smart glasses to a user's phone over Bluetooth was also ready to start harvesting every face a user passed by while wearing them.

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No Tech Rule Exemption for Apple, EU Regulators Say Amid Spat Over Siri AI Delay

EU regulators ‌slammed Apple on Tuesday for blaming EU tech rules for its decision not to roll out its upgraded assistant Siri AI in the European Union for now, saying they had rejected the company's request for an 18-month exemption from its obligations. The iPhone maker on Tuesday said Siri AI ​would not be available initially in the EU on iPhones or iPads and faulted the European Commission for ​refusing to engage constructively with them to ensure privacy and security on their devices.

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Louisiana Enacts Consumer Data Privacy Law

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Signal Says UK Plan to Scan Devices for Nude Images 'Endangers Us All'

Signal insists that plans to compel tech companies to scan devices for nude images of children announced by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday at London Tech Week "will not keep children safe." Signal argues that the proposed technology could, at some point, be repurposed to enable state-sponsored surveillance of all citizens' communications, or used as a mass censorship tool.

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New Privacy Frontier: Europe Eyes Crackdown on Smart Glasses

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. Privacy activists are warning that 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.

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