US Police Fear Meta Glasses Are Watching Them Back: Report

In brief

• An NYPD counterterrorism memo told officers to inspect all eyewear permitted into inmate cells.
• Maine's fusion center warned that facial recognition in smart glasses could be used to dox officers.
• ICE has barred its own staff from wearing the glasses in federal workspaces.

Police forces across the U.S. are warning each other that Meta's camera-equipped glasses are being used to record inside jails and police facilities, according to a dozen previously unreported memos obtained under freedom of information and reported by the Guardian.

The New York Police Department's counterterrorism bureau, which works with the FBI, circulated the first of them in January, describing Ray-Ban Meta glasses as a "security and counterintelligence" threat and telling officers to inspect all eyewear allowed into inmate cells. Covert recording inside a facility could expose "cell layouts, camera placements, or officer patrol/site protection routines," it warned.

It cited two videos. One, posted to TikTok in July 2025, showed the inside of a South Carolina detention center then under federal investigation over unsafe conditions, taking in cells, washing and eating facilities and detainees apparently unaware they were being filmed. "Everyone here is trying to figure out what's going on with my glasses, why my light is blinking," the wearer said. "People don't know about Meta glasses."