German advocacy group files criminal complaint over Meta AI glasses
German advocacy group lodges criminal complaint over Meta AI glasses
Digital rights group HateAid has filed a criminal complaint in Germany against Meta and other companies selling AI-powered smart glasses, such as the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer, arguing they violate privacy laws. The complaint targets Meta, EssilorLuxottica units, and retailers Fielmann, Apollo-Optik, Mister Spex, and MediaMarkt, citing a law that bans covert recording devices. The Frankfurt digital crime unit ZIT confirmed receipt and will conduct a preliminary review.
There's no place to escape from smart glasses. You have to expect at any moment to be filmed and then exposed on the internet.
- mschild
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...
- rbehrends
The relevant legal provision is from §8 TDDDG [1]:
"(1) It is prohibited to possess, manufacture, make available on the market, import, or otherwise bring within the territory to which this Act applies, telecommunications equipment that, by its appearance, purports to be another object or is disguised as an object of everyday use and that, because of these circumstances or because of the way it functions, is particularly suited and intended to intercept, without that person’s knowledge, the non-publicly spoken words of another person or to record images of another person without that person’s knowledge."
IANAL, but this sounds like it's directly applicable.
Violations can be punished with up to two years in prison or a fine.
- penguin_booze
I suppose these devices might be a helping hand to folks who are visually impaired.
As if it's not enough to run a global surveillance platform, they now have released the world a army of live, lobotomised surveillance drones. My take is that the only legislation we need is this: give legal immunity to the people who want to grab the glasses off the smug faces of the said drones, and smash it into pieces.
- dgellow
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
- peter_stokes
"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