One of the largest Dutch eyewear chains said on Friday that it had suspended sales of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses in the Netherlands and Belgium, and a major Dutch online retailer, Wehkamp, took the same step, in the first moves of their kind as public anger over covert filming builds in the country.
The chain, Hans Anders, acted after the Dutch newspaper AD reported on people — especially women — being surreptitiously filmed in public. “This decision follows the ongoing public and political debate surrounding smart glasses and the questions being raised about the conditions under which this technology can be used,” a spokeswoman for Nexeye, the chain’s parent company, told Business Insider. “Hans Anders believes it is important to await the outcome of this debate and any subsequent decisions before determining whether and how these products may be offered again.”
Meta rejected the privacy complaints, pointing to safeguards on the glasses. “Our glasses continue to be very popular and we’re continuing to expand styles and features,” a spokesman said. “Every pair with a camera has a bright light on the front that blinks when you take a photo or video — it can’t be turned off and the camera is disabled if someone covers or tampers with it.” Company executives have also argued that smartphones have long been able to film discreetly and carry no recording light at all.
The Dutch Data Protection Authority, known as the AP, warned last month that videos made with smart glasses showing identifiable people generally cannot be shared or published without their permission — consent that would be nearly impossible to collect on a public street. The regulator said it is also investigating possible further measures against camera glasses and other camera-equipped wearables.
The consumer group Consumentenbond urged the government in September to ban the glasses outright, and said this week it would sue Meta unless the company changes them to comply with privacy law. In a video, the group showed a new kind of sticker that it said defeats a recent software update meant to block filming when the indicator light is covered: the sticker lets light in from the side while covering the LED head-on. Offlimits, a nonprofit that fights online abuse, on Friday urged Meta and the Ray-Ban owner EssilorLuxottica to pull the glasses from the market “as long as they can be used to film covertly.” EssilorLuxottica could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Dutch government, for its part, is not moving quickly. In questioning before the Dutch parliament, Claudia van Bruggen, the state secretary for justice, said only six reports and one complaint about the glasses had reached the AP. Ms. van Bruggen said the European Data Protection Board plans to publish a report on the glasses later this year and that “the Cabinet awaits the findings and any recommendations of the EDPB in the report with interest.”
Resistance is spreading beyond the Netherlands. In Britain, the pub chain Wetherspoon has restricted the use of Meta’s glasses over covert-recording concerns, and Meta and the eyewear maker Luxottica face a lawsuit in the United States alleging that videos captured by the glasses were viewed by human annotators without the knowledge of the people filmed. Nexeye, owned by the private equity firm KKR, operates 776 stores across five countries; it does not sell the glasses in Germany, Austria or Sweden, but for now, customers in its two biggest markets will have to look elsewhere too.