- French prosecutors are investigating alleged sexual harassment involving smart glasses used to secretly film women, as privacy regulators examine wider risks from wearable cameras.
Paris, France, 18 September, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – French prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into alleged smart glasses harassment after complaints that women were filmed without their knowledge in public and videos were subsequently posted online. The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed the investigation as France’s privacy regulator separately examines concerns about camera-equipped glasses in workplaces.
Smart Glasses Harassment Investigation Opens in Paris
The Paris prosecutor’s office said it had opened at least one criminal investigation following sexual harassment complaints involving smart glasses.
The cases are linked to a social-media practice in which women are approached in public, recorded without knowing a camera is operating and later shown in videos uploaded online.
French authorities are also studying how the technology can be misused. The prosecutor’s cybercrime unit tested smart glasses approximately two weeks ago to better understand their potential use in criminal offences.
Women Report Being Secretly Filmed
French child and internet-safety organisation e-Enfance/3018 said on 8 September that it had received around 20 reports since the beginning of 2026 involving women filmed without their knowledge using camera-equipped glasses. Most reports explicitly involved Meta smart glasses.
The organisation said videos were mainly published on TikTok as pranks or street interviews. Victims could then face insults, misogynistic comments, threats and cyberbullying.
In one reported case, a young woman filmed during Paris’s Fête de la Musique later received hateful comments and death threats after the video went viral.
France Raises Privacy Concerns
France’s data protection regulator, the CNIL, has also received complaints concerning smart glasses in workplaces. Reuters reported that the regulator has received fewer than 10 such complaints and growing enquiries from businesses about whether the devices can be prohibited at work.
The concerns pre-date the criminal investigation. In May, CNIL warned that smart glasses presented significant privacy challenges after surveying 2,128 French adults. Sixty-seven per cent said the technology represented a privacy risk.
CNIL said the technology creates concerns surrounding people’s image rights, consent, collected data and potential AI-enabled misuse.
Meta Responds to Recording Concerns
Meta says its smart glasses include an LED indicator designed to alert people when photographs or videos are being captured.
A Meta spokesperson told Reuters that the company had built privacy protections into the glasses “from the ground up” and would continue strengthening safeguards as the technology develops.
However, privacy advocates argue that an indicator light does not establish that the person being filmed has consented to recording or online publication.
French Scrutiny of Smart Glasses Continues
The criminal investigation and regulatory scrutiny could help clarify how existing harassment, privacy and data-protection laws apply to increasingly discreet wearable cameras.
CNIL will continue examining the issue at its Informatique & Libertés meeting on 29 September 2026, where regulators, researchers and industry representatives are scheduled to discuss whether smart glasses represent a new regulatory challenge.
