TL;DR

The digital rights organisation HateAid has lodged a criminal complaint in Germany over Meta’s AI glasses, naming the company’s management, units of the Ray-Ban owner EssilorLuxottica, and four retailers. The complaint rests on a federal statute prohibiting the sale of communication devices built to record people without their knowledge. Frankfurt’s specialist digital crime prosecutors have confirmed receipt and will decide whether it merits a full investigation.

Who has been named

Alongside Meta, the complaint reaches the retail chain: MediaMarkt, Mister Spex, Apollo-Optik and Fielmann all sell the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer, the model the complaint singles out. MediaMarktSaturn said it was treating the matter seriously and noted that its suppliers are contractually required to sell lawful goods. Mister Spex said it had received no formal notification and takes privacy seriously. Nobody else responded.

HateAid’s managing director Josephine Ballon put the argument in terms that have nothing to do with data processing: “There’s no place to escape from smart glasses. You have to expect at any moment to be filmed and then exposed on the internet.” The group says it has been logging rising volumes of image-based abuse, most of it aimed at women, and that these devices disguise surveillance as ordinary eyewear.

The regulator is not there yet

Germany’s Federal Network Agency, which said in late 2023 that connected devices for covert recording were prohibited, told Reuters it is watching the market without any formal investigation open. Its position is narrower than the complaint: possession, import and sale are all lawful provided recording is unmistakably signalled, by a light or similar. Whether a small indicator on a spectacle frame satisfies that is exactly what a prosecutor would have to decide. A Hamburg state privacy authority began separate legal steps in July.

Looking forward

Britain has been circling the same question from a different direction. The ICO raised concerns about these devices in March, but it works through data protection law, which asks how footage is handled once captured. Germany’s route asks whether the product should be sold at all — a criminal question about design intent, not a compliance question about processing. That distinction determines the remedy. UK organisations weighing a ban on such devices in offices, clinics or schools will find the German framing the more directly useful one.