HateAid Files Criminal Complaint in Germany Over Ray-Ban Meta Glasses — Naming Meta, Ray-Ban, and Four Retailers
German nonprofit HateAid reported Meta's management, EssilorLuxottica units including Ray-Ban, and retailers Fielmann, Apollo-Optik, Mister Spex and MediaMarkt to Frankfurt's ZIT digital crime prosecution unit on August 12 (116 points on HN). The claim is that selling Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer smart glasses is itself a criminal offense under German telecommunications, digital services, and data protection law, which bans devices designed to record people covertly; regulator BNetzA has confirmed smart glasses are legal only if the recording indicator is clearly visible. Managing director Josephine Ballon framed it as 'you have to expect at any moment to be filmed and then exposed on the internet' — a hardware-level test of AI wearables that no US privacy fight has yet reached.
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