German advocacy group files criminal complaint against Meta AI glasses

A German digital rights organization just turned the fight over wearable AI privacy into a criminal matter. HateAid, one of Europe’s most prominent anti-digital-violence NGOs, filed a criminal complaint targeting executives at Meta Platforms Technologies Ireland Limited, along with eyewear brands Ray-Ban and Oakley under the Luxottica Group, and several major German retailers including Fielmann and MediaMarkt. The complaint, submitted on August 12 to the Zentralstelle zur Bekämpfung der Internetkriminalität (ZIT), a specialized cybercrime unit at the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office, centers on a deceptively simple product: the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. Specifically, the Wayfarer Gen 2 model. The core allegation: glasses that spy HateAid’s argument is straightforward. The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses can record video and audio of people nearby, and they can do it without those people having any realistic way of knowing. That, the organization claims, violates Germany’s Telekommunikation-Digitale-Dienste-Datenschutz-Gesetz, or TDDDG, the federal law governing telecommunications privacy and digital services data protection. The specific provisions cited are TDDDG sections 8 and 27. Viol...