NEW DELHI: Trolling and online harassment on the basis of content created through smart glass cameras is becoming common in India. Experts warn that the numbers will only go up and the harassment will become mainstream. According to a report by Anuj Behal in MIT Technology Review, privacy problems are becoming especially acute in India, where covert recording and the circulation of images without consent is already pervasive.
Cases of cyberstalking, sextortion, deep fakes, and other forms of online abuse are growing in the country. And the chances of a crackdown on technologies such as smart glasses are slim, given that law enforcement authorities are themselves increasingly adopting AI-powered surveillance tools, including facial recognition systems and their own AI-enabled smart glasses.
An unequal burden
Smart glasses are among the fastest-growing devices in India’s wearables market, according to the International Data Corporation, a research firm. And Reliance Jio, one of the country’s largest telecommunications companies, says that later this year it’s set to launch a sub-$105 rival to Meta’s glasses, the latest model of which has a $420 price tag in India.
The core privacy issue is that these cameras don’t look like cameras, so targets may not notice they’re being recorded. Yet Meta rejects the idea that it’s responsible for protecting people from intrusions, says Janusz Świerczyński, an Oxford Saïd Business School researcher who studies privacy and emerging technology.
“More and more, the expectation is being placed on bystanders to look out for themselves,” he says. That means it’s up to them to spot a small LED in the glasses frames that activates when recording is in progress. Meta also relies on wearers to behave responsibly, says Świerczyński. Reliance Jio did not respond to our request for comment on privacy issues related to its upcoming glasses.
Creators have already demonstrated ways to circumvent the recording light on Meta’s glasses. Tutorials show users how to cover or otherwise obscure the LED while continuing to record. Back in March, Wired documented a market for “stealth mode” modifications that physically disable the light or remove it entirely.
All that makes covert recording easier, and the risks are not borne equally. Świerczyński says women and other marginalised groups face greater harm when inconspicuous devices capture and circulate footage without consent.
The bigger problem, however, is that in India smart glasses aren’t just being used to turn ordinary people into targets of viral “pranks.” They’re also being adopted as a tool of police surveillance.
Cases of cyberstalking, sextortion, deep fakes, and other forms of online abuse are growing in the country. And the chances of a crackdown on technologies such as smart glasses are slim, given that law enforcement authorities are themselves increasingly adopting AI-powered surveillance tools, including facial recognition systems and their own AI-enabled smart glasses.
In June, when thousands of young demonstrators gathered to protest against the education system, Delhi police used Meta smart glasses to record them. In fact, a petition filed by former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union president Aishe Ghosh before the Delhi High Court alleged that police had filmed protesters continuously for weeks, including while they were eating and resting. It also alleged that the police had threatened to send footage of student demonstrators to their parents and colleges.
In July, Solicitor General dismissed the case in court as “luxury litigation.” Some of the protesters, who spoke to MIT Technology Review on condition of anonymity, say they never saw the LED on the Meta AI glasses police wore during the demonstrations.
Filming without consent
Meta maintains that its safeguard works. The company told MIT Technology Review, “Every pair has a capture LED that blinks when you take a photo or video that you can save or share; it can’t be turned off, and if someone covers or damages the LED, the camera is disabled.” The company also says users are responsible for complying with the law and respecting people’s privacy.
That approach is risky, especially in India, where norms around filming and consent are still highly disputed and digital literacy is still uneven, says Sameer Parmar, a counselor at Meri Trustline, a safety partner working with Meta and YouTube to support people harmed by online content.
“The hardware is improving, but the country’s weak understanding of consent gives an invisible camera far more room to cause harm,” he says. Simply being in a public place is often treated as implicit consent to be photographed or filmed. He says the help line has been seeing an uptick in cases involving covert recording and non-consensual footage.
“Violations of this access have increased significantly and are expected to rise further in India,” he says. People are recorded in medical settings, during private encounters, and in public spaces. Those with less power to object are particularly vulnerable, he adds.
“It’s either trolling or it’s playing pranks on them and then recording them” he says. Abusers “do target people who are a little more unaware or susceptible to how this technology-facilitated harm works.”
The law in India has not caught up with this new kind of harm, says Apar Gupta, a lawyer and founder-director of the Internet Freedom Foundation. “India’s laws against voyeurism and the sharing of intimate images were designed largely around more recognisable forms of abuse,” he says, citing offenses such as secretly filming someone undressing, using a toilet, or engaged in a sexual act. “[The laws] offer limited protection when someone is secretly filmed in an ordinary public setting and the footage is then used to humiliate them,” he says.
Social media platforms’ rules do offer another route to removing harmful content filmed with smart glasses, but it’s not an immediate remedy. “Under India’s current rules, platforms can have up to 36 hours to act on certain complaints — a window that can be long enough for a video to be downloaded, copied, and circulated elsewhere,” he says.
The problem of filming without consent seems set to grow. According to the Financial Times, some internal prototypes of new Meta glasses include AI features that continuously photograph and listen to the wearer’s surroundings, enabling the glasses to later recall what they saw or heard. These functions wouldn’t activate the external recording indicator, making it impossible for bystanders to know when information about them is being collected.
Meta told us it intends to keep the LED for active capture, such as taking photos or recording video, but not for AI features that interpret the wearer’s surroundings. Its argument is that a constantly blinking light could eventually become so commonplace that people stop noticing it.
But that logic risks putting society in a perpetual game of catch-up, says Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law at Boston University. “Tech companies have an incredible ability to push these tools out faster than society can meaningfully acclimate to the threat,” he says. “By the time society catches up, there’s already a degree of normalisation.”
For Shubnam, who had different gender before she started appearing in public, the danger is not just that people may become accustomed to being recorded. It is that they will become accustomed to seeing versions of themselves that they never chose to put out into the world.
“Being comprehended along the lines of a narrative that I didn’t compose or consent to —that imposed recognition makes you feel like you’re powerless in how people know you,” they say.
