"How Meta’s New Face Camera Heralds a New Age of Surveillance" 13 December 2023

...I was testing the recently released $300 Ray-Ban Meta glasses that Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking empire made in collaboration with the iconic eyewear maker. The high-tech glasses include a camera for shooting photos and videos, and an array of speakers and microphones for listening to music and talking on the phone....

...Meta said in a statement that privacy was top of mind when designing the glasses. “We know if we’re going to normalize smart glasses in everyday life, privacy has to come first and be integrated into everything we do,” the company said...

...To inform people that they are being photographed, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses include a tiny LED light embedded in the right frame to indicate when the device is recording. When a photo is snapped, it flashes momentarily. When a video is recording, it is continuously illuminated.

As I shot 200 photos and videos with the glasses in public, including on BART trains, on hiking trails and in parks, no one looked at the LED light or confronted me about it. And why would they? It would be rude to comment on a stranger’s glasses, let alone stare at them...

...Albert Aydin, a Meta spokesman, said the company took privacy seriously and designed safety measures, including a tamper-detection technology, to prevent users from covering up the LED light with tape...