Smart Glasses Are Capturing Footage in Public. Here's How to Spot Them

New  smart glasses  are debuting this week at  Augmented World Expo . There's a lot of powerful technology packed into upcoming devices like Snap Specs and XReal Aura , which aren't much thicker than a normal pair of glasses. But is society ready for the repercussions of everyone walking around with cameras on their faces?   Last month, a woman in London was approached by a man wearing smart glasses, who recorded their interaction without her knowledge. The video was uploaded to social media without her consent  -- it got 40,000 views, and the man refused to take it down unless she paid him . This is just one of many events that highlight the privacy concerns of smart glasses.  I told a friend about  Meta Ray-Bans , which look like a chunkier pair of normal black Ray-Ban Wayfarers. The average person probably wouldn't suspect that their frames contain a hidden camera. My friend found the concept repulsive. "Ew," she said. "Why do those exist?" I've never owned a pair of smart glasses , but I saw them in the wild twice last year. Once was when I was riding the New York subway and noticed a person sitting across from me wearing the frames. The other time was when I struck up a conversation with a guy at a bar. It took a minute in the dimly lit room, but then I recognized the telltale signs of his smart glasses. I was unsettled. For a moment, I felt as if I were encountering an urban creature, like a rat or raccoon, and I didn't know how to behave. "Act natural," I told myself. He wasn't recording me (I'm pretty certain), but I knew that he could be. Smart glasses and privacy problems Much of the general public still doesn't know anything about smart glasses, and that's a major problem. Some smart glasses wearers are exploiting the ignorance by  harassing strangers and filming their reactions . Many of their victims are homeless people, service workers and