ACLU and 75 Organizations Sound Alarm on Meta’s Plan to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Ray-Ban and Oakley Eyeglasses

April 13, 2026 - 21:33

A coalition of over 75 civil rights and privacy organizations, led by the ACLU, has issued an urgent public warning against Meta’s reported plans to integrate facial recognition technology into its Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses. The coalition argues this move would create an unprecedented threat to personal privacy and civil liberties in public spaces.

In an open letter, the groups state that embedding such powerful surveillance capabilities into everyday wearable devices would effectively normalize constant, secret identification. They warn this could lead to a society where individuals can be identified and tracked by strangers, corporations, or government agencies without their knowledge or consent, chilling free expression and association.

The letter emphasizes that the glasses would disproportionately harm marginalized communities already subject to over-policing and invasive monitoring. It calls on Meta to immediately and permanently abandon the feature, stating that the potential for abuse and the erosion of anonymity in public life is too great a risk. The coalition insists that some technologies are simply too dangerous to deploy, regardless of potential safeguards, and that this initiative must be cancelled to protect fundamental rights.