ACLU warns Meta against facial recognition in smart glasses

Meta reportedly plans to integrate facial recognition technology into its smart glasses, but not everyone is content to sit back and let that happen.

According to Wired, a cavalcade of more than 70 organizations including the ACLU and Fight for the Future signed a letter urging Meta to “immediately stop and publicly disavow” its plans to integrate facial recognition technology into its growing line of smart glasses. In March, a separate group of organizations wrote to Congress expressing the same concerns.

These groups agree that Meta cannot be trusted at all to safely integrate the technology into its glasses, and so they say the best course of action is for Meta to abandon its plans altogether.

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We, the undersigned, 75 local, state and national organizations that advocate for survivors of domestic violence, workers’ rights, bodily autonomy, consumer privacy, civil rights and civil liberties, write to urge Meta to immediately stop and publicly disavow its plans to roll out facial recognition features on its Ray-Ban and Oakley eyewear, including the feature that would be known internally as “Name Tag.”

The letter also calls on Meta to “stop opposing privacy legislation that would require Meta to obtain explicit user consent before collecting or processing biometric data.” As Mashable previously reported, facial recognition features could violate some state privacy laws, which prohibit companies from collecting biometric data without affirmative consent.

Mashable has contacted Meta for comment and will update this story as necessary.

The concern here, of course, is that Meta glasses with facial recognition would give predators and other ne’er-do-wells more power to inflict harm. Civil liberties organizations have also warned that widespread facial recognition could lead to a surveillance state.

The letter presents a fairly comprehensive argument to support its argument:

“Facial recognition technology embedded in discreet consumer glasses poses a serious threat to the privacy and civil liberties of every member of our society, and particularly to historically marginalized and vulnerable groups, including survivors of domestic violence, targets of stalkers and sexual harassers, religious minorities, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women and children, among others. of the technology itself.

Meta’s internal name for the facial recognition technology is said to be Name Tag, and it is rumored to launch as early as this year.

According to Engadget, this works in two ways: Name Tag can either recognize people who are actively logged into a Meta platform at the time, or recognize people who simply have an account on a service like Instagram. In other words, it can’t identify you if you don’t have a Meta account, at least not yet.

These potential harms would also coexist with ongoing issues, such as the invasiveness of smart glasses recordings.

If Meta wants to avoid the fate that befell Google Glass, it will need to address some of these issues, one way or another.

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