Uk Venues Tell Meta Smart Glasses To Keep Cameras Off

[Image: PickPic]

Meta’s smart glasses have reached the pub-ban stage of the gadget cycle, which is the point where the bulky oke at the next table starts raising issues of consent, rather than having a go at you for looking at his missus.

Several UK venues are now restricting or banning the £359 (about R7,840) Ray-Ban Meta glasses over privacy concerns, with Wetherspoons, Soho House, ATG Theatres and London restaurateur Jeremy King all drawing lines around filming customers and staff without their permission.

These venues seem to realise that not everyone wandering into a pub wants to be filmed. It’s the only reason tequila and karaoke still exist.

Tim Martin, Wetherspoons’ chief executive, told The Guardian that the pub chain’s general rule is simple: customers cannot film other customers or employees without permission.

“Meta glasses seem to breach this code and common sense by enabling surreptitious surveillance, so our instinct is to say turn off the cameras,” Martin said.

King, who owns London restaurants including Simpsons in the Strand, Arlington and The Park, went further. “I would never knowingly allow any invasion of guest privacy other than with the eyes we were born with.”

Soho House said that filming is not allowed in its venues and that smart glasses are no exception. ATG Theatres said people wearing the glasses during shows would also be asked to remove them.

The obvious defence is that phones can also record people secretly. The difference is social signalling. A phone held up in someone’s direction announces itself, but a pair of sunglasses with a tiny camera tucked into the frame lets the wearer pretend they are just looking at you.

Meta’s answer is the little capture light. A company spokesperson says that every pair has an LED that blinks when the wearer takes a photo or video. “It can’t be turned off,” and the camera is disabled if someone covers or damages the light.

Venues, and their patrons, are not comforted by that. In July, BBC Scotland reported that Police Scotland was reviewing complaints after a TikToker used Oakley Meta glasses to film members of the public, shop workers and ferry staff.

In May, the BBC reported on a woman who said she was covertly filmed by a man wearing smart glasses in London, then told to pay if she wanted the video removed from social media.

Similar videos are often posted on social media under the guise of giving dating advice to other men online. The woman contacted the BBC following an investigation which exposed how smart glasses are being used to create harmful content by male influencers.

Meta told the BBC it was investigating accounts connected to the Scotland footage and said its glasses are “genuinely helpful” for music, translation and hands-free calls.

They are, unfortunately. Smart glasses can be both useful and creepy at the same time, though, which is exactly why the next fight will not be about whether the technology is helpful but whether everyone in the pub agreed to be part of your livestream.

[Sources: The Guardian, BBC Scotland & BBC]

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