German advocacy group lodges criminal complaint over Meta AI glasses

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/german-advocacy-group-lodges-criminal-complaint-over-meta-ai-glasses-2026-08-12/

31•tartoran•1h ago

Comments

dgellow•19m ago

Ah, I was waiting for this to happen! That will be interesting to follow. From my non-lawyer read of German laws that should be a n easy win for the advocacy group, but I’m interested to see Meta’s arguments

mschild•17m ago

The main complaint and law that HateAid, the organization that lodged the complaint, is using, is that recording devices have to be visible as such. Glasses are not a known and widely accepted video/photo device and therefore affected by that law.

Effectively, their complaint is that a specific model looks too much like normal sunglasses that other people are unable to distinguish them as such.

Article with a bit more detail:

https://www.heise.de/en/news/AI-glasses-Criminal-charges-aga...

peter_stokes•15m ago

"HateAid said its complaint was based on a federal digital data protection law that prohibits the sale of communication devices designed to film people without them noticing."

I think the light makes it pretty clear it's recording? There will always be devices made to suppress this... I'm not sure I want to go down the path of mandating an audible camera click sound like they have for smartphones in Japan

nemomarx•13m ago

What would be best for a video equivalent of that? I can imagine an old school "film rolling" sound playing for as long as it's recording, or some tape hiss or something.

soco•5m ago

When you film with a camera you are holding a camera and you're pointing it at people. When you film with your glasses, nothing of such happens. And the ridiculous defense "it has a light" is just that, ridiculous: you can't see a light if you're not looking directly at it and have convenient surrounding lighting.

red_admiral•3m ago

There's news articles already about women realising they were recorded without their consent and are now on TikTok or something. Just waiting for the first lawsuit against Meta about that, hopefully it kills the idea.

023847292847•3m ago

It's a regime-organized "N"GO whose only purpose is to suppress dissent.

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