Delhi man sends legal notice to Insta creator, Meta over ‘spy’ glasses video reel

The legal notice dated August 24 was sent by Apar Gupta, a lawyer and founder of the digital rights advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF)

A Delhi resident has sent a legal notice to Meta and an Instagram creator on Monday after being covertly filmed on Ray-Ban Meta glasses during an unpleasant cafe encounter last month - footage of which later turned into a viral reel mocking him.

The legal notice argues that Meta also shares liability, both as the platform that verified and monetised the video clip and as the maker of a device “deliberately designed to be indistinguishable from ordinary fashion eyewear.” (HT Photo)

The legal notice dated August 24, sent by Apar Gupta, a lawyer and founder of the digital rights advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), accuses the creator of his client’s invasion of privacy, defamation, and harassment.

It argues that Meta also shares liability, both as the platform that verified and monetised the video clip and as the maker of a device “deliberately designed to be indistinguishable from ordinary fashion eyewear.” It demands a takedown, a public apology, disclosure of everyone who filmed the incident, and preservation of the video’s metadata.

What happened

According to the notice, the complainant was sitting alone at a Khan Market cafe on July 24 when a stranger allegedly approached and began pestering him with odd, unsolicited questions, and following him around until he switched seats to escape.

Unknown to him, the entire interaction was being recorded on Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, allegedly by the man and at least one associate, who filmed from other angles as well.

Two days later, the footage appeared as a reel on a verified Instagram account with over 200,000 followers. Over the next few weeks, it crossed 400,000 views and drew hundreds of comments mocking him.

The complainant reported the post, but Instagram had no category for non-consensual recording, so he filed it under “bullying.”

In response, the notice said Meta responded that the reported material didn’t violate its “community standards”. The account briefly vanished on August 9, then resurfaced with the video still live, according to the notice.

The video has since then been removed, though it could not be determined whether it was removed by Meta or the Instagram creator.

Meta’s response

When contacted, Meta did not directly address the Delhi resident’s case. A company spokesperson shared with HT background on the glasses’ privacy safeguards, pointing to the capture LED, which can’t be switched off and disables recording if tampered with, a protection Meta says it recently strengthened.

In a recent weekly Ask Me Anything session on Instagram, Meta’s head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said the company could not stop people filming others but tried to ensure the light on the glasses stays on when someone is being recorded, and that it takes down harassing “pickup line”-style content from its platform.

“AI glasses have cameras in them, and right here you can see that there’s a little light that lights up if someone is actually filming. So we can’t stop people from filming other people, but we can try to make sure that that light is on if they are filming. We now actually have the glasses basically stop working if you drill that light out, because we saw that people were trying to drill that light out. Plus, if you’re posting content that is taking advantage of people and harassing them, like a lot of these pickup line kind of videos that we’ve heard of and seen, then we’re going to take the content down. We don’t want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people and harassing them and then posting them on our platform. So we’re trying to fight that every way we can,” said Mosseri in his response shared by Meta.

Meta said it has blocked related hashtags like “rizz” and “cold approach,” and disabled several large accounts running similar content.

The glasses have drawn scrutiny in India before. A Delhi Police officer was spotted wearing a pair while monitoring student protesters at Jantar Mantar in July, feeding a pending Supreme Court case on protest surveillance. Globally, Meta and Luxottica face a US class-action lawsuit filed in March alleging intimate footage from the glasses was reviewed by overseas contractors despite privacy promises.

Legal question more sutble

Dhruv Garg, partner at policy advisory Indian Governance and Policy Project, said the legal question was more subtle than whether recording in public is simply ‘allowed’ or ‘prohibited’.

“Indian law does not create a general consent requirement for every public recording, while *Puttaswamy* equally rejects the idea that privacy disappears in public. What wearables change is the architecture of the interaction itself.

“There is also a data protection dimension that will become increasingly important. The substantive provisions of the DPDP Act are not yet in force, but if they were, deliberately recording a recognisable person for commercial content could amount to processing identifiable personal data without an obvious lawful basis. Simply being visible in a public place does not necessarily mean that person has made their personal data ‘publicly available’ under the Act. However, the debate will revolve around whether the platform in this case could even ascertain the identity in the first place for the said person.

For most of our social history, recording had friction. A camera was visible, a phone was raised, and people could alter their behaviour, object or walk away. Smart glasses can remove that social signal. So a small recording light should not be assessed only as a technical feature. It is a human factors question, and its effectiveness depends on whether it is actually noticed, understood and resistant to circumvention in real-world conditions.

That is where law, product design and social norms need to meet. Manufacturers should test privacy safeguards behaviourally, not merely functionally. Platforms need remedies that distinguish public interest documentation from targeted humiliation and monetised harassment. The law should focus increasingly on context, persistence and dissemination, rather than treating ‘public place’ as a complete answer. The objective is not to make wearable cameras unlawful. It is to preserve meaningful human agency as recording becomes ambient.”