More than 70 organizations on civil liberties, domestic violence, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ community, labor, and immigrant advocacy demand that Meta abandon plans to develop facial recognition on Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses, warning that the feature – reportedly known internally as “Name Tag” – would give stalkers, abusers and federal agents the ability to silently identify strangers in public.
The coalition, which includes the ACLU, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Fight for the Future, Access Now, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, is demanding that Meta remove the feature before its launch, after internal documents emerged that showed the company hoped to use the current “dynamic political environment” as cover for the launch, betting that civil society groups would have their resources “focused on other issues.”
The Name Tag function, such as revealed in February by the New York Times, will work through the artificial intelligence assistant built into Meta's smart glasses, allowing users to retrieve information about people in their field of view.
According to reports, engineers have two versions of the feature: one that will only recognize people with whom the user is already connected on a Meta platform, and a broader version that will be able to recognize anyone with a public account on a Meta service like Instagram.
The coalition wants Meta to remove the feature entirely.
In a letter released Monday to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the coalition argues that facial recognition in consumer glasses “cannot be resolved through product design changes, opt-out mechanisms, or incremental safeguards,” since bystanders in public spaces would have no meaningful way to consent to their recognition.
Meta is also required to disclose any known cases of its wearables being used in cases of harassment or domestic violence; disclose any past or current discussions with federal law enforcement agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection, regarding the use of Meta's wearables or data from them; and commit to consulting with civil society and independent privacy experts before integrating biometric recognition into any consumer device.
“People should be able to go about their daily lives without fear that stalkers, scammers, abusers, federal agents, and activists across the political spectrum are silently and invisibly verifying their identities and potentially matching their names to a wealth of readily available data about their habits, hobbies, relationships, health, and behaviors,” write the groups, which also include Common Cause, Jane Doe Inc., UltraViolet, the National Organization for Women, the New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the Library Freedom Project, and Old Dykes Against Billionaire Tech Bros, among others.
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
