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Smart glasses and violence against women and girls

On Wednesday 4 November 2026, a debate will be held on smart glasses and violence against women and girls in Westminster Hall from 9:30am - 11:00am.

Smart glasses are glasses with a range of additional, technology-enabled functions. Concerns have been raised about smart glasses being used in ways that affect the safety of women and girls.

What are smart glasses?

‘Smart’ or AI-enabled glasses are glasses that allow wearers to record video and audio. In some cases, smart glasses come with built-in AI features such as image identification, or the ability to project information on to the lenses for the wearer to read. Smart glasses now are produced by a range of companies including Meta, Google, and Lenovo.

When do smart glasses record data?

Meta, one of the largest suppliers of smart glasses, states that its glasses only record data when deliberately activated by a user. The glasses come fitted with a small LED light, which blinks when the glasses are recording to indicate that the wearer is capturing footage.

However, some reports suggest that such measures have been ineffective in providing transparency. In February and March 2026, it was reported that Meta data annotators (people who professionally process and label footage from smart glasses so that it can be used to train AI) had been exposed to footage including people going to the toilet and performing sexual acts, all accidentally recorded by their smart glasses. This incident has been the subject of legal action in the United States.

Following the publication of these reports, the Information Commissioner’s Office wrote to Meta in March 2026 expressing concerns, but it is unclear whether Meta has taken any further action. It was reported in April 2026 that Meta had subsequently terminated its contract with the Kenyan data annotation company from where the reports originated, resulting in the dismissal of over a thousand workers.

Criticisms of smart glasses in relation to violence against women and girls

In the UK, there have been reports of men using smart glasses to film women without their knowledge, posting videos online, and then demanding money for the videos to be taken down. There have also been reports of men using smart glasses to film women during sex acts without knowledge or consent.

The Good Law Project has described smart glasses as “a clear risk to women’s safety” and Doughty Street Chambers has said that “English law was not written with this technology in mind”.

A petition calling for an “an immediate ban on the sale and promotion of smart glasses” has reached over 10,000 signatures and so will receive a government response in due course. The Rape Crisis charity also supports a ban. The Metro reported a representative saying that “The seemingly total lack of safeguards demonstrates contempt for the safety of women and girls.”

What does the law say?

There are several criminal law offences which may be applicable in cases where someone uses smart glasses to collect information about someone else without their consent. Human rights, privacy, online safety and data protection law may also be relevant. However, there are no specific regulations governing smart glasses in the UK.

Criminal law

As a general rule, it is not illegal to film people in public. The Ask the Police website notes it is “not illegal to take photographs or video footage in public places unless it is for criminal or terrorist purposes”. However, where the filming or subsequent use of footage involves (for example) non-consensual intimate images, the creation of ‘deepfake’ images, harassment or stalking, or domestic abuse, there are several criminal offences that could apply. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 sets out the following offences relating to intimate images:

• sharing or threatening to share an intimate photograph or film of another person without their consent (section 66B of the 2003 act)
• creating a ‘deepfake’ image of another person without their consent, or requesting the creation of such an image (section 66E and section 66F of the 2003 act)
• voyeurism, involving the observation or recording of a person doing a “private act” (section 67 of the 2003 act)
• “upskirting” and breastfeeding voyeurism (section 67A of the 2003 act)

Sections 98 to 103 and schedule 13 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 will make significant changes to the intimate image provisions of the 2003 act, as set out in the government’s Crime and Policing Act 2026: intimate image abuse factsheet. However, these provisions are not yet fully in force. For background, please see sections 1.2 and 1.5 of the Commons Library briefing Crime and Policing Bill 2024-26: Lords amendments.

Other relevant offences could include:

• taking or making indecent images of children (section 1 of the Protection of Children Act 1978)
• harassment or stalking (sections 2, 2A, 4 and 4A of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997)
• public order offences involving harassment, alarm or distress (sections 4A, 4B and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986)
• controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship (section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015)

An overview of how the offences referred to above (and others) might apply in relation to smart glasses is set out in Through the looking glass: Ray-Ban Meta, privacy and the law in the UK (May 2026), published by Doughty Street Chambers. The Crown Prosecution Service legal guidance Public Order Offences incorporating the Charging Standard: Charges relating to public sexual intimidation, abuse or harassment also provides relevant information on the application of some of these offences.

In response to a parliamentary question in September 2026, the Home Office minister, Sarah Jones, said that “Information on the number of arrests for offences related to covert filming is not held centrally”.

Human rights law

Using smart glasses may engage a number of rights protected under the European Convention on Human Rights (which is given effect in the UK by the Human Rights Act 1998), including the right to privacy, freedom of association, freedom of expression, prohibition of discrimination and prohibition of inhumane or degrading treatment.

Smart glasses can capture images which could reveal information and put individuals at risk. Exposing someone’s location at a specific date and time, who they are with, and other identifying information may increase the risk of stalking, coercive control, surveillance or other forms of harm. Refuge notes that perpetrators can use location tracking and technology to monitor and control survivors.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association has warned that increasing ‘digital surveillance’ could have a “chilling effect” on human rights.

However, obligations under the Human Rights Act 1998 generally only apply to public authorities (or those organisations carrying out public functions in some circumstances) and do not provide a route of action against individuals. Someone who wished to bring a claim against another individual for using smart glasses to record data without their consent would therefore not be able to do this under human rights law in the UK.

In relation to the right to privacy, it may be possible for an individual to bring a claim against another individual under tort law (which deals with civil liability). The tort of misuse of private information protects both unwanted access to private information and unwanted intrusion into one's personal space. To bring a claim, it would be necessary to establish that the claimant had a reasonable expectation of privacy, and that that expectation outweighs any interests of the defendant. 

Further information on human rights is available from the Commons Library.

Regulation of smart glasses

Smart glasses are not subject to specific regulations in the UK.

Recording footage

As noted above, it is lawful to film people in public places, providing the footage taken is not indecent and the filming is not done in a manner that constitutes harassment. The Metropolitan Police provides advice on taking photographs and recording film in public. However, consent is needed to film in private locations, which can include shopping centres, private gardens and restaurants. Public house operator Wetherspoons has taken the voluntary step of banning the use of smart glasses for filming in its 800 venues, citing privacy concerns.

Sharing footage online and ‘live streaming’

If footage is uploaded online, either live or after recording, it may be subject to the restrictions of the Online Safety Act 2023 (although the act applies to platform owners rather than individual users who upload footage).

Ofcom has published a statement and guidance on the actions that technology companies should take to improve the online safety of women and girls and to meet their obligations under the 2023 act. A Commons Library briefing provides more information on the scope of the act and Ofcom’s role.

Data protection law and the Information Commissioner’s Office

Information recorded by smart or AI glasses could include personal data (sometimes referred to as personal information). However, although the UK’s data protection legislation places duties on organisations including businesses, charities and government departments, it does not apply to individuals using data in a personal, non-professional capacity.

On 4 November 2025, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) wrote to the Chair of the then Science Innovation and Technology Committee (PDF), Dame Chi Onwurah, stating that incidents of deepfakes and ‘doxxing’ (the intentional online exposure of an individual’s information without their consent) are generally outside its remit, which precludes action being taken. On 17 September 2026, the ICO published a further statement (Enabling technology for good: smart glasses, privacy and a broader challenge for public trust) which implied that device-specific regulation is not the most appropriate way forward.

On 13 October 2026, the European Data Protection Board (an EU oversight body) published a statement on the data protection challenges of smart glasses.

Government statements on violence against women and girls and smart glasses

The government has made separate commitments on, and statements about, violence against women and girls and smart glasses.

A cross-government violence against women and girls strategy

On 18 December 2025, the Home Office published Freedom from violence and abuse: a cross-government strategy to build a safer society for women and girls and an accompanying action plan.

The strategy sets out a 10-year plan to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) through a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach (based on a commitment in the Labour Party’s 2024 manifesto). It is structured around three primary objectives:

• “prevention and early intervention”, with a particular focus on online VAWG and misogyny and action in schools, colleges and universities
• “relentless pursuit of perpetrators”, including establishing the National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection
• “support for those affected by violence and abuse”, including through funding for victim support services

The strategy identifies “technology-enabled abuse” and the “rapid rise of digital threats” as emerging threats. However, it does not make any specific reference to smart glasses.

The government’s position on smart glasses

Recent government statements do not suggest that it intends to address the risks associated with smart glasses through specific new legislation or regulatory measures.

On 9 September 2026, the Minister for Women and Equalities was asked an oral question about the potential impact of camera-enabled smart glasses on women’s privacy. In response, she said that criminal offences such as voyeurism already cover the most harmful uses of these technologies, and that hosting platforms must take their duties under online safety or data protection legislation seriously and remove inappropriate content.

On 30 June 2026, the Minister of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Ian Murray, responded to a question about what the government was doing to safeguard privacy and prevent virtual harassment and abuse in relation to smart glasses. The minister referenced existing offences for harassment and data protection and said that the government would continue to monitor the issue.

On 22 May 2026, the Minister for AI, Kanishka Narayan, responded to a question from Euan Stainbank (Labour) on the regulation of wearable technology. The minister said that wearable technologies were not regulated as a category because of their wide range of uses and functions:

Wearable technologies are not regulated as a broad category, as products may have a wide range of uses and functions. Existing frameworks apply where appropriate.

The National Centre for Violence against Women and Girls

On 4 February 2025, the government announced a new national centre to address VAWG led by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing. It said the national centre for violence against women and girls and public protection (NCVPP) would be backed by over £13 million.

On tech-facilitated VAWG more generally, in October 2026, the NCVPP published Violence Against Women & Girls and Public Protection Strategic Threat Risk Assessment (PDF), which found that most victims of online, image-based abuse offences were female:

At least 20% of all flagged online crimes in scope of VAWG and Public Protection were image-based abuse offences, with 73% victims female.

The report also found that all VAWG crimes related to digital factors were increasing, including online misogyny, image-based abuse, tech facilitated controlling or coercive behaviour and stalking, and online child sexual abuse (pages 22 and 23).

Liberal Democrats conference motion

In response to “the worrying rise in covert filming of women and girls”, a motion passed at the Liberal Democrats party conference in 2026 called for a range of measures to improve women’s safety, including:

• Extend police charging powers for lower-level VAWG offences, including online stalking, technology-facilitated domestic abuse and harassment, to speed up charging decisions and reduce victim disengagement.

• Tighten voyeurism laws to make clear that sexualised, covert filming (including using smartglasses) and posting footage online, sometimes for profit, is a criminal offence, and force platforms to take this content down immediately.

• Introduce a statutory duty on manufacturers to equip smartglasses with a visible indicator when recording and make it a criminal offence to disable, obscure, remove, or otherwise tamper with that indicator, or to manufacture, supply, or advertise any product or service designed to do so.

Relevant parliamentary activity

The issue of smart glasses was discussed in a parliamentary debate on the Digital Exploitation of Women and Girls on 27 January 2026. MPs said that the potential harms of smart glasses were foreseeable and should have been addressed before such a product was permitted access to the UK market. Jas Athwal (Labour) made the case for safety by design:

This is not accidental misuse; it is foreseeable harm. Before these technologies are embedded in the fabric of everyday life, we have a duty to regulate and legislate so that women and girls do not become the tragic cost of a tech revolution that prizes innovation over safety. We must be proactive, not reactive, because the ways in which women and girls are degraded and denied bodily autonomy online are constantly evolving.

In response, the then minister, Jess Phillips, largely agreed with the comments made by other MPs. She noted that the violence against women and girls strategy committed to working on safety by design, and that ‘nudification’ apps which generate images of people without clothes will be banned under the Crime and Policing Bill (now the Crime and Policing Act 2026; section 99 relates to purported intimate image generators).

The Joint Committee on Human Rights examined human rights and the regulation of AI, including the right to privacy, and published a report on 14 September 2026. The committee concluded that neither the current legal framework nor the UK’s existing regulators were adequate to address privacy concerns posed by AI systems; and recommended that a new Independent AI Oversight Body should be established (paragraphs 130, 160, 224, 226, 227).

The Women and Equalities Committee conducted an inquiry on Tackling non-consensual intimate image abuse (NCII), which reported on 5 May 2026. The committee found that Ofcom’s current enforcement powers were “far too slow” and not designed to help individual survivors (para 48). It recommended introducing an inexpensive statutory civil regime for survivors to access redress (paragraph 71), and an Online Safety Commission, with a focus on support for individuals (paragraph 76). The government rejected these recommendations.

Further reading

A range of further reading relating to smart glasses and VAWG can be found below:

Select Committee inquiries and oral evidence

• Home Affairs Committee, oral evidence: Violence Against Women and Girls strategy update, 27 October 2026 with Domestic Abuse Commissioner Dame Nicole Jacobs and Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner Eleanor Lyons
• Women and Equalities Committee, Misogyny: the manosphere and online content, latest oral evidence 11 March 2026
• Public Accounts Committee, Tackling Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG), report published 16 May 2025
• Home Affairs Committee, Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls: Funding, report published 11 July 2025
• Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, Ending violence against women and girls in Northern Ireland, latest oral evidence 18 March 2026

House of Commons Library briefings

• Commons Library, Domestic abuse support organisations, 27 August 2026
• Commons Library, Violence against women and girls in 2025, 27 May 2025

Wider commentary

• University of Oxford, Expert Comment: Meta glasses’ privacy protections neglect those being watched, 16 July 2026
• Commentary by Bratby Law, ICO enquiry into Meta AI smart glasses: what it tells AI product teams about outsourced human review, 27 April 2026
• BBC In-depth, They were labelled 'pervert glasses'. Will a camera-free version transform their image?, 24 September 2026
• CNN, ‘Turn the cameras off:’ London’s growing privacy pushback against smart glasses, 2 September 2026