Over 70 Civil liberties, domestic violence, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+, labor rights and immigration groups are demanding that Meta abandon plans to implement facial recognition in Ray-Ban and Oakley clever glasses, warning that the feature – reportedly known within the company as “ID” – will give stalkers, abusers and federal agents the ability to silently identify strangers in public places.
The coalition, which includes the ACLU, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Fight for the Future, Access Now and the Conference of Leaders on Civil and Human Rights, demands that Meta disable this feature before launch, after internal documents came to light showing that the company hoped to exploit the current “dynamic political environment” as cover for the rollout, assuming that civil society groups would have their resources “focused on other issues.”
As The Fresh York Times revealed in February, the ID will work through an artificial intelligence assistant built into Meta’s clever glasses, allowing users to retrieve information about people in their field of view. Engineers were reportedly considering two versions of the feature: one that only identifies people a user is already connected to on the Meta platform, and a broader version that can recognize anyone with a public account on a Meta service like Instagram.
The coalition wants Meta to completely resign from this function. In a Monday letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, he argues that facial recognition in inconspicuous consumer glasses “cannot be addressed through changes to product design, opt-out mechanisms, or additional security features.” They say that members of the public in public places have no meaningful way to consent to being identified.
It also calls on Meta to disclose any known exploit of its wearable devices in cases of stalking, harassment or domestic violence; disclose any past or ongoing discussions with federal law enforcement authorities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, regarding the exploit of Meta mobile devices or data derived from them; and commit to consulting with civil society and independent privacy experts before integrating biometric identification into any consumer device.
“People should be able to go about their daily lives without fear that stalkers, scammers, abusers, federal agents, and activists across the political spectrum are silently and invisibly verifying their identities and potentially matching their names to a wealth of readily available data about their habits, interests, relationships, health, and behaviors,” write the groups, which also include Common Cause, Jane Doe Inc., UltraViolet, the National Organization for Women, and the Coalition Against Fresh York State. Domestic Violence, Library Freedom Project and Elderly Dykes Against Billionaire Tech Bros.
Meta did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
EssilorLuxottica, the Italian-French eyewear conglomerate that owns Ray-Ban and Oakley and makes clever glasses with Meta, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a May 2025 memo from Meta’s Reality Labs obtained by The Times, Meta reportedly wrote that it would launch “in a dynamic political environment in which many of the civil society groups we expect to attack us will be focusing their resources on other issues.”
The coalition calls the game “despicable behavior” and accuses the company of taking advantage of the Trump administration’s “growing authoritarianism” and “disregard for the rule of law.”
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) he sent his own letters in February to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state authorities, urging them to investigate and block the implementation of Name Tag. The group warned that real-time facial recognition would boost “already serious and apparently illegal” privacy risks associated with existing Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which can covertly record bystanders without warning beyond a petite lightweight that can be easily hidden. EPIC wrote that people can be identified at protests, places of worship, support groups and medical clinics, “destroying the concept of privacy and anonymity in public spaces.”