New app alerts users at risk of being filmed with smart glasses

Not ready for your closeup?A new app will be able to tell you if someone nearby is wearing smart glasses.Smart glasses often look just like regular glasses, so if someone nearby is wearing one of these “luxury surveillance” devices, it’s possible you’re being recorded without your knowledge.The new app, fittingly named Nearby Glasses, scans for nearby signals from Bluetooth-enabled devices, such as Meta and Snap wearables, and potentially other always-on recording devices.Nearby Glasses works by listening for Bluetooth signals with a publicly assigned identifier unique to the device’s manufacturer.If it detects a nearby device made by Meta or Snap, the app will alert the user.It also allows users to add their own Bluetooth identifiers in order to detect an even wider range of wearable tech.

To keep the app scanning in real time, users will need to enable foreground service, then they’ll press “start scanning,” and a debug log will show the app’s activity.The app’s developer, Yves Jeanrenaud, described smart glasses as an “intolerable intrusion, consent-neglecting, horrible piece of tech” on the app’s project page.Speaking to TechCrunch, he shared that he was motivated by “witnessing the sheer scale and inhumane nature of the abuse these smart glasses are involved in.”Jeanrenaud also referred to Meta’s decision to make face recognition a default feature for their smart classes, which he “considers to be a huge floodgate pushed open for all kinds of privacy-invasive behavior.”He first told 404 Media that he was inspired to make the app after reading their reporting about wearable surveillance devices, including how the Meta smart glasses were worn by a Customers and Border Protection (CBP) agent during an immigration raid in Los Angeles, or how users were wearing them to film and harass sex workers.However, Jeanrenaud acknowledged that the app could be prone to false positives and could potentially detect something like a virtual r...