*A growing coalition of civil liberties and advocacy groups is challenging Meta’s reported move to embed facial recognition technology into its smart glasses, calling on the company to scrap the initiative completely. Wired reports that more than 70 organizations have united behind a formal letter addressing the issue head-on.
“We, the undersigned 75 local, state, and national organizations that advocate for domestic violence survivors, worker rights, bodily autonomy, consumer privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties, write to urge Meta to immediately halt and publicly disavow its plans to deploy facial recognition features on its Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses, including the feature reportedly known internally as ‘Name Tag,'” the letter reads. A separate group of organizations had already brought similar concerns before Congress in March.
Beyond opposing the technology itself, the letter urges Meta to cease its resistance to privacy laws that would mandate user consent prior to any collection of biometric information. Several states have enacted laws restricting biometric data collection, and the planned feature may already be on a collision course with those statutes.
The organizations behind the letter are firm that no amount of product adjustments would make the technology acceptable.
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“Facial recognition technology built into inconspicuous consumer eyewear represents a serious threat to privacy and civil liberties for every member of our society, and particularly for historically marginalized and vulnerable groups including domestic violence survivors, targets of stalkers and sexual harassers, religious minorities, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and women and children, among others. These concerns cannot be resolved through product design changes, opt-out mechanisms, or incremental safeguards — few of which Meta seems to have meaningfully considered. Our concerns reflect the fundamental danger of the technology itself,” the letter states.
Referred to internally as “Name Tag,” the feature is rumored to arrive sometime this year. According to Engadget, it operates by matching faces against Meta platform users who are either currently active or registered on services such as Instagram, though people with no Meta presence would remain unidentifiable under the current reported design.
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