More than 70 civil society organisations including the ACLU, EFF, EPIC and Access Now published an open letter on 29 April 2026 calling on Meta to immediately halt and publicly disavow its plans to deploy facial recognition features on its Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses, including the Name Tag feature that would allow wearers to identify people in their field of view. The letter demands disclosure of any known instances of Meta wearables being used for stalking, harassment or domestic violence, and of any discussions with law enforcement agencies about using the technology. The ACLU, EFF and EPIC have written to the FTC and state enforcers requesting investigation. The letter notes that Meta replaced most manual privacy risk reviews with automated systems after laying off more than 100 employees. Consumer-facing FRT built into wearable devices represents a qualitatively different threat model to law-enforcement-deployed FRT: it places identification capability in the hands of any individual, with no accountability, policy or governance framework.
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European Network of Law Enforcement Technology Services
Saturday, May 2, 2026