Lawmakers are once again turning up the legal heat on smart glasses. Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Ciresi (D-Montgomery) has introduced a bill that would require every pair of smart glasses “manufactured, sold, and used” in the state to have a “visual indicator” that tells others when they’re recording.
It would be neat if someone designed Anti-Meta Glasses. Instead of a camera, it emits a scattered 180 degree IR mesh to make whatever Meta wearing persons video completely useless.
The “visual indicator” will tell you when the human wearing them has actively pressed “record”.
If Meta wants to “accidentally capture ambient video data” there will be no indication.
That’s usually not how these indicators work (but yes, this would have to be made explicit in the law). Usually the way they are wired the camera can only turn on when the light is also on.
The light will be under the aluminum or electrical tape.
The light is totally visible, you just have to peel off your cornea so you can see in ultraviolet like Monet.
What?
They can cover the LED with tape.
Have the perv light on all the time it’s recording. Done.
Again, if they are “smart”, they can be hacked. That light can be disabled, and even covered.
there’s a booming industry already growing to mod them so no indicator shows. https://leafandcore.com/2025/10/25/meta-glasses-creep-mod-gaining-attention/
thousands.
fucking creeeps
And existing recording devices with recording indicators can be modified too…this isn’t about covering every single edge case, this is about covering the bulk and making the rest actionable.
I disagree, these devices represent a new problem that go pros and other existing devices (phones) don’t - they’re pseudo-anonymous if you don’t know what to look for specifically on the eyewear, and are modded by creeps to prevent even that indicator - https://leafandcore.com/2025/10/25/meta-glasses-creep-mod-gaining-attention/
these assholes want to creep film everywhere and say “oh no they’re just sunglasses” or “oh no it’s not recording now” then upskirting and downshirting innocent bystanders.
fucking gross, and not the same as other existing devices where you’d have to hold it somewhere to get the shot.
“oh but what about button spy cameras and-”
fuck that shit, it was old school shitty lenses and terrible sensors, not high resolution eye-spy-specs from a company already proven multiple times to be happy to invade people’s privacy.
So make that illegal. It’s a start.
Not if the power to the recording mechanism must run through the light. There is an electrically engineered way to make sure the light must be powered on before the recording mechanism if it is wired between the power supply and the electronics.
Nothing to hack. Just a wire/circuit and an LED.
That’s how the iSight camera in all MacBooks work. That camera cannot be powered on without first powering on the notification LED. It’s integrated into the circuit. Powering on the camera must first power on the LED, and there is no way around that. It’s physically impossible.
and there is no way around that. It’s physically impossible.
As fun as both of those things can be, both together or separately, I wasn’t talking about blocking the camera, but, rather, accessing it illicitly
Thanks for the 90s flashback, though ;)
They mean you can block the recording light
You block the LED. Sharpie also works.
Black nail polish is still a thing in 2026.
If this is law they need to make meta develop technology that doesn’t allow record If the light is blocked. They can make it happen.
The current iteration of the glasses already does this. It was bypassed days after release.
Ah fuck me they’re fast
You can still cover the LED. I don’t trust these things or the creeps that buy them. They should be illegal.
Not every WebCam circuitry is designed with your safety and privacy in mind.
If it makes you feel better, cover it up.
I get to choose my web cam and if I cover it. I have no control over what the owner of these glasses does with them - or whatever they capture. These are practically custom made for upskirt creeps and god knows what else.
I was just using WebCams as a contemporaneous technological example. Not to equate the two, as they are, as you have illustrated, extraordinarily different in their contextual applications.
These glasses creep me the absolute fuck out, and have for over a decade, ever since Google glasses first came out. I think they should just be outright outlawed, but that’s not the world we live in.
I agree with everything else you’ve said in this thread, but if someone is getting upskirt recordings of you with their glasses … Hopefully you’d notice.
Someone holding a pair of glasses in their hand, just casually letting them dangle below waist-height, does not seem that immediately suspicious to me
How’s that different from any other hidden mini camera, though?
Although black nail polish does still exist.
If you still don’t trust it, I would recommend a Band-Aid or a sticky note… WebCams are something I happen to use every day and still find very very useful. Black nail polish is far too permanent for me.
But you do you
JFC…do I need a diagram in crayon?
They meant nail polish on the LED not the camera.
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I wanna see you do that when all the wiring is integrated into a pair of glasses. And it can’t be obvious afterwards that they were tampered with.
Bro. Almost anything these days were either modded, or is about to. It will be either mechanical or software based. But it will happen. Or, even better, already happened.
You new, or what?
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Two tiny pieces of electrical tape will negate that light.
Works with check engine lights across the world.
As some hacker with a piece of malware, how do you propose to do that?
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??? not sure how you got there
No, the issue was “can some hacker take control of my WebCam without me knowing? “
Not if it’s wired with a notification light in the way, I have suggested.
If you wanna hack your own device, whatever dude
No, not sure how you got there. The law being proposed here is meant to protect unsuspecting people from being recorded without their knowledge by creeps wearing these glasses. The hacking, nail polish and tape suggestions are all to demonstrate that the law wouldn’t actually stop those creeps because they have methods to suppress the LED, even if it’s hardwired.
Uh… Nope.
Making your akshually rebuff ironic. Oof.
the thing with the macbook is, that the user does not want to be recorded secretly. with meta glasses, the wearer is the recorder.
Just cut the wire and run a new one past the light directly to the camera.
The user owns this device and can make physical alterations.
If this is a nearly microscopic, integrated circuit, you understand that’s a difficult thing to master, especially if you’re trying to attack merely with software, remotely
If this is, say, the integrated WebCam in your laptop, a piece of malware can’t exactly do what you’re proposing
And, unless the physical owner of the device is, themselves, trying to undermine their own security, I don’t see the logic in what you’re proposing. However, it is technically possible. But that’s not exactly the point of what I’m saying.
So, yes, as the owner of my laptop, I could undermine the security of that simple circuitry, but I have no motivation to do so. And any remote attacker would only have the resource of software to do so, and would be limited by what software could do— which would be limited by the, presumably, uncorrupted physical circuitry.
You can hack it by rewiring it.
How can you do that with malware?
I don’t think malware is the concern (although it is a concern).
The main concern spying on people in public. The light is not to inform you that it’s recording — it’s to inform others. But if it you can just rewire it or paint over it, then it doesn’t really help the technology protect other’s privacy.
Right, but rewiring the microcircuitry in your sunglasses isn’t some afternoon affair, and, no matter your painting skills, painting over the light will be noticeable to some degree. Not only are the technical skills for both extraordinarily rare (especially to do properly), for someone to actually try is equally rare. Perhaps moreso.
Whi, you and I can argue back-and-forth about theoretical possibilities, the practical reality is that it’s so profoundly unlikely to ever happen, that it isn’t a reasonable thing to be concerned about. At least not right now.
It could still be ‘hacked’ in the truest sense of the term. Just on a hardware level instead of pure software. How hard some people will work to be surreptitious creeps should never be underestimated.
You know, I’m sure we’re both very intelligent people who have thought about this problem for a long time.
Instead of arguing, I think we should both focus on energies on working towards a collective solution.
(it sounds like a fun game of “darts“ when we both try to infiltrate each other’s systems, but played over a few drinks at a bar, some other time)
Hah, fooled them again! I am among the dumbest people this side of the Tordesillas line.
That said, I’d be happy to work with you.
Tordesillas line
OK, you got me with this one. I consider myself reasonably well educated, but even I had to go look this one up and do a little reading. And even though I think I got the gist a bit, I don’t think I quite understand what you meant in the context of this conversation, lol.
I guess that, not being a European, the cultural impact of the statement is a bit lost on me— but if you were in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, and we were navigating some beef between the Tompkins Projects, Clinton Hill, and the south side of the Willy B, I’d fill you in.
That said, I’d be happy to work with you too!
Sure it can. Murder is illegal, but i can still buy a gun and shoot someone. If you hack your glasses to not comply with this law, you will get whatever punishment the law prescribes.
There have been a lot of unsolved murders over the years. Just sayin’.
a little nail polish.
Don’t care: light or not, I don’t want somebody pointing a camera at me at all times in a civilized society. If anything, this legislation could normalize creeps with cameras that are constantly pointed at you.
We haven’t even gotten to phase two of enshittification, and these things still haven’t exhibited value.
Unfortunately, we’re all getting used to having cameras pointed at us at all times. Ring cameras, flock cameras, tesla cameras, etc., etc. We already live in the Panopticon. There is no opt-out, and government personnel can access many if not all of these sources, and target specific people for chronic surveillance. Things will only get worse, unfortunately.
all the more reason to aggressively fight back against it wherever we can
Pops cap off black marker
The fucking DANGER these glasses represent is so disgusting. So many women are going to end up recorded without their permission, stalked, and harassed. That thing about being able to find the name of the person you’re looking at? Yeah just because they say they’re not going to let that happen means they’ve already put the tech in place. Why stop at showing just the name? Social media will be just a click away. No doubt in my mind some nasty chud will hack the glasses with AI to unclothe everyone he’s looking at.
Dystopian af
Just women? How about men’s change rooms? How about kid’s playgrounds? You want creeps pointing their glasses at your kids?
The problem I see with this is that this bill pretty much requires proprietary software to run on those glasses (which right now is the case anyways), which in turn means everything else gets shittier. Making laws like this is stupid, they should make a law that bans those glasses if people do not want to be secretly recorded.
That’s not good enough. You can easily get around such things.
it should make a tone every x seconds, like a click when taking a photo (which is required by law in some countries)
even my own idea here still doesn’t go far enough, but there need to be criminal penalties for disabling such a feature that are at least as severe as illegally concealing a firearm
frankly I don’t think these should even be legal to manufacture, sell, or possess, but I have zero hopes that that level of regulation will ever happen
Back in the day there were various bits of legislation to make apparent that then-novel camera phones were taking pictures. I remember phones with shutter sounds that could not be disabled by design.
Of course, they could be disabled by methods not in the design.
The ones everyone keeps talking about already do. It even won’t record if you try to cover the light.
they will totally make it easy to disable and just call it unsupported user modification which will also let them get out of warranty claims
Finally a decent law that actually helps people keep their privacy. Estonia should adopt this too.
Ok and why wouldn’t a creep just cover that light with tape or paint?
So weird to me the outrage over these glasses when the same people comfortably purchased our collective way into a corporate surveillance state.
i understand your point, but the fact that there is outrage is still a good thing
Not if it’s directed uselessly or funneled by corporate interest toward competitors, then they’re just being used, again.
i agree that passing bills like this is completely useless, but in this case im pretty sure that its the people that are angry
