The Current - Women are being secretly filmed with Meta glasses

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Kassy Zanjani in Vancouver found out she had been secretly recorded on a stranger's Meta smart glasses after seeing a video of herself on social media. It's a growing trend that's seeing men approaching women in public and recording their encounters for viral content. New York Times tech reporter Mike Isaac talks about his reporting that Meta is considering integrating facial recognition technology into the glasses. University of Ottawa law professor Teresa Scassa talks about concerns around privacy in public spaces and whether our privacy laws are doing enough to protect Canadians.

At University of Montreal, researchers are improving lives all over the world, turning previously incurable blood cancers into treatable ones, searching for signs of life on planets light years away, training AI to detect diseases earlier and more accurately. It's breakthroughs like these that make us one of the top two universities in Canada for research, because it's more than what we do. It's our raison d'être. University of Montreal and of the world. This is a CBC podcast.

Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. It's kind of just like a heart drop moment. I don't think there's any other way of explaining it. It's just like, oh my God, he posted the video. He recorded me, first of all, while we were speaking. I just wanted to cry. They look just like regular glasses or sunglasses, but they record audio and video and can even have some AI features.

And now red flags are being raised about META's smart, glasses. Women in a number of countries say they are being recorded without their knowledge or consent by men using these devices. Two women in the UK told the BBC that their phones were flooded with messages, some strangers after the videos of them taken with the glasses were posted online. I didn't actually realise straight away my number was in the video until someone pointed it out to me. I just got talking to him because it was just somebody on the beat. I just thought he was being friendly, had no idea that was being filmed and that I was being used. That's a really good word.

I was used for his benefit. In Vancouver, a number of social media accounts have cropped up where men are posting videos taken with meta's glasses of their interactions with women. Cassie Zanjani was recorded by one of the men behind these accounts. She's in Vancouver. Cassie, good morning. Hi, good morning.

Walk me through this encounter that was recorded in this video. Tell me what happened. How did you encounter this person and what was going on? I was out downtown after I'd spent the night out with some girlfriends. I went to a fast food restaurant to go eat after. And then that was when I was approached by a man and he was wearing glasses. So immediately, I thought that was kind of weird as we're in an indoor place. He had then approached me saying that he saw me from outside and that I was so effing gorgeous that he had to come say hi. Because of his glasses even, I mean, I was immediately a bit weirded out, but I thought I would just politely reject him and say, I have a boyfriend after we exchanged names. I didn't think

twice of this interaction until I saw this posted about myself on social media a week later. Just to be clear, do you have any idea that he was recording you with these glasses? You just thought he was just wearing glasses inside? No, I had no idea. And I know with the metaglasses, there is supposed to be a light that shows. However, it's really easy to hide or cover that up. And I definitely didn't see a light that was not visible whatsoever. How did you find out that you had been recorded and that the video that was taken of you without your knowledge was posted online? Yeah, so I actually had a friend of mine who sent it to me on social media being like, oh, this is you. And at that point, I already saw that it had over 30,000 views on Instagram specifically.

And when you watched it, what was that like? I'll say it didn't feel good seeing that because immediately my brain jumps to, you know, feeling like this video is made with ill intent against women to be able to shame them, to degrade them, as well as me and myself drinking that night. You know, this man, he actually has a lot of videos on his social media where he's targeting young, intoxicated women so that he can elicit some sort of reaction by making these inappropriate passes towards him. And then using that as content to further either ridicule them, degrade them, or have people flood in the comments about these women shaming them for maybe how they present

or how they appear. You've said that you felt humiliated and violated in this process. Yeah. Why did you use that word violated? I use the word violated because my privacy, especially not knowing that you're filmed for that entire reaction or interaction, and then afterwards to be posted online without your consent with no knowledge, you know, it is something where, you know, to be posted as content for this way, I do think that constitutes as, you know, an online harm or, you know, a form of harassment against women. And it is violating because when new technology like this comes out, women are always the first to, you know, be the subjects to that kind of exploitation that comes from it. You asked Instagram, which is owned by meta and TikTok as well to take down the videos. What happened? Yeah, so Instagram, because it's also owned by meta, they actually were able to respond fairly quickly to my response. I filled out a privacy violation form because, you know, I am the person in the video and I'm being secretly and covertly filmed. And that is against meta policies. You know, it's a misuse of recording technology and privacy and consent, as well as harassment.

I mean, I think you can count it for a lot. And so Instagram was able to remove this successfully. However, TikTok, they were not able to respond for a week or two. And then even then, they weren't able to remove the video, but I do believe that they limited. it in terms of views or, you know, it posting on people's feeds. How does this change how you feel about privacy? What does privacy mean to you now if something like this can happen? I mean, I think as a woman, I'm always mindful and, you know, we do have to be cautious in itself of our privacy and being out in public and what that could mean. But however, this takes it to a new level of, you know, my own privacy of where I'm going,

and if I'm just out in public, you know, there's fear I'm not able to enjoy public space. I had a person who had came up to me the other day, and they had given me a compliment. And, you know, my brain actually jumped to, are you filming me? And so now this is on the forefront of my mind. And, you know, it's something where it does change your perception as well of what privacy could mean to you. There's a big sigh there. I mean, it sounds exhausting to have to deal with it. Yeah.

I mean, I would say so because, you know, something like this is not new where, in terms of women's objectification, as I believe, you know, these kind of videos are made with, you know, some misogyny that's, you know, rooted in this. However, you know, it takes it to a new level because even when it comes to privacy, I think there's some debate or discourse online where, you know, maybe from some people maybe posting, you know, oh, well, you're just in a public pace and so you can't expect privacy. There's security cameras are filming you. However, the intent behind that is very different. You know, that is for security measures.

If you're being filmed by, you know, for commercial use and for businesses, that is a complete different use of technology versus someone who is wanting to film and secretly record you as entertainment for the world. I'm sorry that that happened to you, but I really, it's important that you would be willing to tell this story. Thank you very much for doing this. Yeah, thank you as well. Cassie Zanjani was recorded on Meta's Smart Glass.

without her knowledge or consent, we reached her in Vancouver. Mike Isaac covers Meta as a technology reporter for The New York Times. He's in San Francisco. Mike, good morning to you. Hi, good morning. How easy is it to use these glasses to record somebody without them knowing that you're recording them? I mean, pretty simple. Like, you know, as your first guest said, there's this light that's supposed to come on.

And in the first version of the glasses, you can easily just like cover it up. In the second version, they make it a little bit harder, but now it's supposed to like immediately shut off or not show anything when you cover up the light. But there are folks online selling these little stickers on TikTok that you can, I actually tried this. I bought some stickers. They mailed them to me and then I put them over the lens. And if you do it in the right way, you are able to cover up the light. So there's not a real, it's not immediately noticeable and certainly not noticeable if you're far enough away and someone's not paying attention to your glasses. Like they look like a regular pair of glasses, you know, anyone could just think you're any other person wearing glasses. How often you ever heard stories like Cassie's of somebody showing up talking to people and it turns out that they're recording them and that there's a video of that interaction that ends up online after?

It's been like a real trend. Like guys online see other guys doing it. it, this sort of, I would say like a YouTube or social culture of like getting reactions out of people, filming them, and seeing, you know, other people react online. And a lot of that stuff really does get big reactions online. And that's the whole point of these influencers trying to go further by, you know, getting likes and comments and whatever. And the sense is that you could get that reaction because you're not holding a phone up. It's just a pair of glasses. And the person might think, well, the person wears glasses. So I'm going to, I, there's nothing to be concerned about.

100%. Yeah, like there's a different, there's a different vibe if someone's got a phone in your face recording you compared to just talking to you while you're wearing glasses. This is just the beginning. You recently reported that META is planning to add facial recognition to its smart glasses. What did you learn about that? Yeah, so a few of my colleagues and I were doing some reporting. We talked to people inside the company who had different documents and they're convinced after these glasses took off that facial recognition, is a way that they can make them more attractive to consumers. So their whole idea is things like, okay, if the AI and the glasses can recognize someone near me at a party whose name I might have forgotten, they can, something in my ear can whisper, oh, that's Bob, you know, say hi to Bob or something. And like, sure, there's like, that's kind of novel, but at the same time, consent sort of

goes out the window for everyone else involved. And it is something that they had floated before, right, and then had to drop? That's right. They had actually done different types of facial recognition on their sites, you know, using, like, let's say Facebook, they could automatically identify people's faces and identities over time. But they had to scale that back because you might be surprised to know facial recognition is not exactly universally popular as far as tech companies goes. And there was certainly a backlash a few years ago. So I think them even considering it now is a big development. And they would understand that because your reporting show that they wanted to launch this

during what they called a dynamic political environment in the United States, such that people might be so distracted by, say, civic unrest that this might slide under the radar. A, it was very surprising that they sort of say this sort of stuff out loud. Quiet voice coming out loud. It was crazy. But at the same time, I do think this can. be kind of the cynical environment which companies sometimes operate and they they say okay what is the social landscape right now how are people fixated and what can we get accomplished while folks aren't

all staring at meta and the latest you know quote-un-quote bad thing that meta is doing and this this seems to be one of them i'm going to let you go but where do you think this technology goes i mean For some people, these are horror stories, right? The idea that somebody would know who you are just by looking at you with a pair of glasses on and perhaps know much more than who you are. Where is this going to go, do you think? I think, so I'm already starting to see a crop of startups that are kind of pushing back on this technology, whether it's ways to kill audio recording in different areas or blurring your face.

I think there's going to be a backlash and people can sort of take their agency back over time. So we'll just keep an eye on that out here. Mike, really good to talk to you about this. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Mike Isaac covers Meta as a technology reporter with the New York Times. At University of Montreal, researchers are improving lives all over the world, turning previously incurable blood cancers into treatable ones, searching for signs of life on planets light years away,

training AI to detect diseases earlier and more accurately. It's breakthroughs like these that make us one of the top two universities in Canada for research because it's more than what we do. It's our raison d'être. University of Montreal and of the world. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson and I host the Daily News podcast, Front Burner, and lately I'll see a story about, I don't know, political corruption or something and think, during a normal time, we'd be talking about this for weeks. But then it's almost immediately overwhelmed by something else. On Front Burner, we are trying to pull lots of story threads together so that you don't lose the plot. So you can learn how all these threads fit together. Follow Front Burner wherever you get your podcasts.

Teresa Scassa is the Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy, also a law professor at the University of Ottawa, where she researches AI, privacy, and data protection. Teresa, good morning to you. Good morning. What do you make of this? It's both horrifying and disappointing. I have to say. The horrifying part I get, the disappointing piece, where is your disappointment directed? Yeah, the disappointment is that, you know, as we advance with technologies that could be put to use for so many good and valuable purposes that these are the ones that rise to the surface.

Meta has said that their terms of policy state that the user of their technology is responsible for complying with applicable laws. What are the laws in this country around filming somebody in public with these glasses and that person not knowing that you're recording them? Yeah, it's interesting because we have privacy laws that get talked a lot about in the media. But they, for the most part, the category of data protection laws really apply to commercial activity and they don't apply to the activity of ordinary individuals. where somebody's privacy is violated by another person who's not acting in a commercial capacity, the recourse is in tort law, which means you have to go to court and sue for invasion of privacy. And, you know, that takes a whole other level of effort and resources in order to do that. And so it's not an easy pathway for individuals.

And in the meantime, there is a whole subgenre of these videos that exist. online, these pickup videos, the standing man videos. If you think that you're being recorded and you haven't said that somebody can record you, do people have the right to ask that person to delete the footage, to stop recording them? How does that work? I mean, you can certainly ask people to stop recording and to delete the footage. And as I said, you could have, and if they don't, and if they post it somewhere, you could have recourse for breach of privacy in tort law. But if they go ahead and do it or do it without your notice and post it online, then in addition to your tort recourse, as your first guest did, you can ask the platform to take down the video. What is privacy now? Not just in the era of these glasses, but we were talking on the program recently about smart doorbells.

You know, the doorbell in the front of your house that has a camera. and you can, sure, see who might be snatching the package off your porch, but you could also just watch who's walking down the street or walking down your hallway, for example. So what is privacy now? Privacy is an increasingly important value, but one that is threatened by so much technology. And I think what we're seeing now, and our privacy laws and principles developed in a context in which,

and here, you know, thinking about the idea of limited privacy in public spaces, in a context in which, you know, it was quite simple in public spaces. You couldn't expect if you walk down the street, you couldn't expect people to or require people to avert their eyes and not look at you. You're in public. Other people are in public. Everybody has a right to look at what is in public view. But over time, we, you know, technology has developed in ways that can capture what's

happening in public space and now can capture, you know, with much, more intimacy, interactions and conversations. Because one of the comments that Cassie talked about on the bottom of her videos was, you're in a public space. So you can't expect privacy. And that's whether it's somebody's glasses or whether it's the surveillance cameras that are around to keep you safe. That's certainly, I think, the premise on which a lot of these platforms operate, the U.S.-based platforms, is that there isn't privacy and public spaces. And that's the end of it. In Canada, I think we take a little bit more nuanced of an approach, and so it can be a more contextual inquiry.

And so then you have to think about, well, maybe you were in public space, but maybe you had a reasonable expectation that you were not going to be filmed in that public space or that that film was going to be uploaded to the internet. Just finally, what do we do about this? Because it's not just somebody being recorded. What we were hearing about is the possibility of facial recognition as well. I use this example of you're sitting on a bus or you're walking down the street. somebody sees you and then they know your name and then maybe they know more than that. What is the legislative answer to this to protect people? Yeah. And the facial recognition technology dimension to this is, it just adds a whole other layer.

It's crazy in some ways, right, to think about. It is. And of course, again, Canada's laws are going to be an approaches are different from the United States when it comes to, in some cases, facial recognition databases that are built on public. accessible images. Our laws are different from the U.S., and yet we end up being subject to, you know, what the platforms are doing. So one of the things is we have been waiting for reform of our private sector data protection laws, the ones that do apply to platform companies and their activities for a very long time now in Canada. We're once again waiting for a bill to be introduced into Parliament to reform that law, and it's urgent that we get that job done. These issues are far from going away.

They're getting more significant and more difficult over time. And do you think those laws, whatever they would be, would protect people? One of the things with these technology companies, I mean, the ethos has moved fast and break things. That's certainly true. But the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has been investigating and issuing reports on investigation findings and recommendations now with respect to platform activities, but has no real enforcement powers. and a new bill would contain those enforcement powers. And so it becomes very challenging to move the needle in Canada

if all you can do is make recommendations and then have a company say, well, that's interesting, but we're not going to do it. And so I think that having more capacity to enforce in the way that they do in the European Union, for example, would be a big benefit to Canadians in the space. Teresa, good to speak with you about this. Thank you very much.

Well, thank you. Teresa Scassa is a Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy, also a law professor at the University of Ottawa, where she researches AI, privacy, and data protection. In a statement to the CBC, a meta-spokesperson said, in part, our glasses have an LED light that activates whenever someone captures content, so it's clear the device is recording. Our terms of service clearly state that users are responsible for complying with all applicable laws. And as with any recording device, people shouldn't use them for engaging in harmful activity. like harassment infringing on privacy rights are capturing sensitive information. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.