Utrecht weighs camera-glasses ban, testing privacy rules and assistive uses

EssilorLuxottica’s company-reported worldwide sales exceeded 7 million AI glasses in 2025, including Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta. The total does not measure Dutch adoption or covert recording. Source: EssilorLuxottica financial results.

What the glasses record—and what their safeguards promise

The business pairs Meta Platforms’ technology with EssilorLuxottica, the eyewear manufacturer behind Ray-Ban and Oakley. In its 2025 financial results, EssilorLuxottica dates the Ray-Ban Meta launch to September 2023 and Oakley Meta to June 2025. It reported more than 7 million AI glasses sold worldwide in 2025, including those product lines. That figure establishes commercial scale, not Dutch adoption or the prevalence of covert recording.

Smart glasses such as Meta’s combine a camera with an AI assistant and can take photographs and video. Meta’s camera glasses have been available in the Netherlands since 2025, according to the report on the inquiry. The local account says bystanders may not recognize the frames as cameras and the light indicating camera activity can be covered.

Meta gives a more qualified account of that technical risk. In its July 2026 privacy explanation, the company says its glasses automatically disable the camera when they detect that the capture light has been blocked, a safeguard it dates to its second generation. It also acknowledges attempts to modify or destroy the light and says it is updating the glasses to disable cameras when that tampering is detected. Those are the manufacturer's claims about its safeguards, rather than evidence that covert recording has been eliminated.

Local control has limits—and a precedent

In the reported municipal response, Utrecht’s executive distinguishes between public space, where it identifies the Dutch Data Protection Authority as the privacy supervisor, and municipal property under its own management, where it says the municipality must ensure visitors comply with privacy rules. In written answers quoted in the local account, the executive says unsolicited filming may breach the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. That is its stated basis for investigating restrictions; it does not establish that a particular ban would be legally valid.

Restrictions on camera glasses precede this municipal investigation. In 2025, security staff at Utrecht music venue TivoliVredenburg refused entry to a visitor who would not remove his camera glasses, according to the local account. The report on the inquiry also describes other organizations introducing bans through internal policies. Digital-rights organization Bits of Freedom told AD that, as far as it knew, Utrecht was the first Dutch municipality taking action—a claim relayed in that report. Its qualified claim concerns municipal intervention, rather than the first restriction by any venue.

National policy remains unsettled. The Tweede Kamer, the Dutch parliament’s lower house, has called for a ban, but the Cabinet has held off on new legislation while awaiting litigation against Meta and forthcoming European guidance, according to the report on the inquiry. Utrecht’s investigation proceeds while those broader decisions remain pending.

What Utrecht must decide next

The review will also include a Uthiek Assessment, the city’s ethical evaluation considering humanity, inclusion and power relations. Officials intend to weigh benefits for people with visual impairments, for whom smart glasses can be an aid. Those uses complicate a blanket restriction on wearing the device, even where the objective is to prevent unwanted recording.

The first-quarter 2027 findings are expected to clarify what Utrecht can lawfully restrict, whether staff could enforce it and whether other recording wearables should be included. The announced timetable is for the investigation’s conclusions; it is not a date when a ban takes effect.

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