Germany Just Got a Criminal Complaint Against Meta's Smart Glasses

Key Takeaways

• Berlin-based non-profit HateAid has filed a criminal complaint against Meta, Ray-Ban, Oakley, and several retailers, arguing that the sale of Meta's smart glasses in Germany constitutes a criminal offense because the devices allow wearers to covertly film other people.
• The complaint alleges the glasses breach Germany's Telecommunications, Digital Services and Data Protection Act.
• Concerns about the devices have been growing for months following reports of people being filmed without their consent and intimate footage being recorded without users knowing it could be reviewed by Meta contractors.
• Europe's privacy regulators have commissioned a report on smart glasses due to be finalized this summer.

A Berlin-based non-profit has filed a criminal complaint against Meta's smart glasses, arguing that selling the devices in Germany is a criminal offense because they allow wearers to covertly film people without their knowledge, according to reporting by Politico. 

HateAid filed the complaint against Meta, Ray-Ban, Oakley, and several retailers, alleging violations of Germany's Telecommunications, Digital Services and Data Protection Act.

The glasses have attracted growing privacy concerns across Europe and the US in recent months. Reports have emerged of people being filmed without their consent, and separately of intimate footage being recorded without users knowing it could be reviewed by Meta contractors — a disclosure that added a corporate surveillance dimension to what was already a personal privacy concern.

Meta spokesperson Matthew Pollard told Politico the glasses were approved by Germany's regulator BNetzA in 2022 and "were built with privacy safeguards from the ground up that go beyond what any smartphone offers." Those safeguards include an LED light that activates when the glasses are recording, and technology designed to prevent tampering with that light.

HateAid's response is essentially: an LED light isn't enough. The organization argues that smart glasses should only be sold if they are clearly identifiable as recording devices in public spaces, and that there should be limits on where recording is permitted — comparable to the rules that apply to dashcams and bodycams.

The Problem an LED Light Can't Solve

Meta's defense rests on the LED indicator as proof that recording is not covert. The practical problem with that argument is that most people don't know what an LED light on a pair of glasses means, and a small light on a device that looks like ordinary eyewear isn't functionally equivalent to a camera that's visibly a camera.

The distinction matters because the entire privacy framework around photography in public spaces — in Germany and across Europe — is built on the assumption that people have at least some awareness of when they're being filmed. A phone camera held up to record is visible. A dashcam is mounted prominently on a windscreen. A bodycam is worn visibly on a uniform. 

Smart glasses worn as ordinary eyewear, with a small indicator light that most passersby won't notice or interpret correctly, sit in a different category — one where the recording is technically disclosed but practically invisible.

This is the same concern we've written about in the context of facial recognition: the surveillance capability that changes the nature of public space isn't necessarily the one that announces itself. Real-time face scanning on the London Underground comes with signage and alternative routes. 

Meta's smart glasses come with an LED. In both cases, the "safeguard" requires people to know what they're looking for and to have already decided they want to opt out. That's not the same as genuine notice.

What Europe Does Next

Europe's privacy regulators have commissioned a report on smart glasses that is expected to be finalized this summer. HateAid's complaint is, in part, an attempt to accelerate that regulatory process by putting the question of legality before a court before the regulatory report lands.

Germany is a meaningful jurisdiction for this challenge. German privacy law is among the strictest in Europe, and the country's regulators have historically been willing to take enforcement action against major tech companies when other European authorities have been more cautious. 

If HateAid's complaint succeeds in establishing that the current smart glasses design is illegal under German law, it creates pressure on Meta to change the product — not just in Germany, but across the EU, given the practical difficulty of maintaining different hardware configurations for different markets.

The broader question the complaint is raising is one that goes beyond Meta's specific product: at what point does a wearable consumer device become surveillance infrastructure? Smart glasses that record video and audio, potentially feed that data to a company's servers, and can be worn in any public or private space without triggering the social signals that normally indicate recording is taking place — those are a qualitatively different privacy risk from a phone camera. 

Germany is the first country to put that question to a criminal court. It won't be the last.