“I can do something about it”
Since February, engineers have been releasing and updating apps that help people detect glasses like Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta, or Snap Spectacles.
“It is completely unsurprising that people are building apps to fight back against Meta glasses and other surreptitious public recording,” Quintin told Ars. Many people “have a deep revulsion to being recorded without their consent, which is understandable,” and that remains “the biggest problem with these glasses,” Quintin said.
Smart-glasses detector apps aren’t perfect. At best, they can alert users when nearby glasses are turned on by detecting the Bluetooth signal used to pair the glasses with a phone. Most importantly, the apps cannot determine whether the glasses are actively recording, and users are cautioned to never assume that someone wearing smart glasses is recording them. App makers also advise against confrontation and accept no liability for false positives or misunderstandings. Additionally, detection may be unreliable if a wall or other obstacle, like a human body, interferes with a signal.
Users don’t seem to consider these flaws deal-breakers. They simply want some way to scan a room, and some are eager to provide feedback to improve the apps, even expressing an emotional investment in seeing the technology develop.
One of the first apps, Nearby Glasses, is available for $2.99 on both iOS and Android. It has been downloaded more than 100,000 times from the Play Store and remains the most popular such app, despite the developer, Yves Jeanrenaud, warning on GitHub that he’s “no pro developer” and that “detecting Bluetooth LE devices might sometimes just not work as expected,” and “false positives are likely.”
Released in response to online content showing that smart glasses are “an intolerable intrusion, consent neglecting, horrible piece of tech,” Jeanrenaud said, he kept his goals humble. On GitHub, he wrote that “I hope this app is useful for someone,” but “I do not want to promote techsolutionism, nor do I want people to feel falsely secure. It’s still an imperfect approach,” and it probably “always will be.”