Metro, Tuesday 1 September 2026
Convicted sex offenders should be banned from buying smart glasses to stop them secretly filming women, the Liberal Democrats have urged. The party warned that people are using the digital eyewear, which include Meta Ray-Bans, so they can film without others knowing, then shared and uploaded the footage online to thousands or even millions of people. Anna Sabine MP, Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Culture, Media and Sport, told Metro: "Nobody should wake up to discover that a video of them has been filmed without their knowledge and shared with thousands or even millions of people online." The government is being urged to commit to halving violence against women and girls while allowing smart glasses to become an unknowing victims to Spex Offenders. Smart glasses are designed to allow the wearer to access information and apps similar to a smartphone, but reports have surfaced that the new technology is being used to harm and humiliate people. Meta has announced an update it says will cut off filming automatically if the light is switched off. Rape Crisis said it wants smart glasses removed from the market wholesale, due to a lack of safeguards.
The recording light on a pair of smart glasses is presented as the safeguard: a visible signal that filming is underway, there for anyone nearby to notice. What the story makes clear is that the light is switched by the wearer, not fixed by the device. A safeguard that the person being asked to comply with can simply disable is not a safeguard functioning as written. It is a rule that exists on the specification sheet while its enforcement depends on the goodwill of the exact person it is meant to constrain.
The manuscript's opening chapter describes this pattern in a different setting, but the mechanics are the same: "The rule has been internalised not as a standard, but as a variable." A recording indicator that can be turned off is a rule expressed as a variable in the most literal sense available, a switch, under the control of the one person whose behaviour it is supposed to govern. Meta's promised update, cutting off filming automatically once the light is off, concedes the point after the fact: the previous version already relied on trust it did not actually enforce.
The Liberal Democrats' proposed ban targets a narrower and more concrete failure: no existing law stops a convicted sex offender from buying the device in the first place. Anna Sabine's warning is not about a rule being applied unevenly. It is about a rule that has not yet been written, in a market that moved faster than the offence categories built to cover it. "Institutions adapt to this space. They operate within it." A retailer selling smart glasses is not breaking any law. Neither, at the point of purchase, is the offender buying them. The law arrives, if it arrives, only after the gap it should have closed has already been used.
This entry treats a recording light that the wearer can switch off as an example of the manuscript's account of rules that stop coordinating behaviour through shared understanding and instead coordinate it through exposure, since compliance here depends entirely on whether the wearer chooses it.