Brian Hall is featured in the Fortune article, “Meta promised it wouldn’t spy on you with its AI smart glasses. A lawsuit says humans are watching you, actually,” which examines a new federal class action lawsuit against Meta Platforms Inc. and Luxxotica of America (parent company of Ray-Ban) over claims that their Ray-Ban smart glasses route user footage to human workers overseas.
“It’s kind of exactly what we all imagined would happen,” Brian tells Fortune about the class action. He cites parallels to a similar case with Google, recalling “...10 or 12 years ago when Google had their glasses, and that was a concern about people going into restrooms with them on. We’re kind of right back there now.”
The case is likely to hinge upon language in Meta’s terms of service. “If we went and did a close reading of their privacy policy, there’s not going to be anything explicitly that says they don’t do that,” Brian notes in response to claims the company failed to disclose details of their processes with video footage from smart glasses.
He continues on to note that one of his main concerns with the lawsuit is the bystanders filmed by the glasses, not the product owners themselves. Privacy laws “are not designed to protect those people,” he says. “They’re designed to protect the people who are wearing the glasses and their ability to manage their own data.”
Brian concludes by telling Fortune, “I don’t know that the existing laws are really sufficient to protect us from the risks of the kind of things that Meta and other social media companies are doing right now.”
