UK Courts Ban Meta Smart Glasses Over Recording and Privacy Concerns
Courts and tribunals across England and Wales will confiscate Meta smart glasses from anyone entering judicial buildings, adding to a growing list of institutions restricting the devices over privacy and recording concerns. Confiscated glasses will be returned to their owners upon exit.
The prohibition builds on existing rules against taking photos or video inside courts and tribunals. Smartphones are allowed inside court buildings as long as they are not used to record proceedings. Meta smart glasses receive no such conditional exception. The courts' stance treats the wearable form factor as categorically incompatible with courtroom security protocols.
The ban arrives amid a broader backlash against Meta's smart glasses, which critics have described as "spyware." Several UK hospitality and entertainment venues, including the pub chain Wetherspoons, have already prohibited the devices over privacy fears. Meta sold 7 million pairs of its smart glasses last year, priced between £269 and £469.
The legal framework behind the decision is well established. Section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925 restricts photography in court, while Section 9 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 addresses unauthorised recording of court proceedings. Both laws predate wearable technology by decades. Their application to smart glasses follows a straightforward logic: a device that can capture images or video without an obvious outward signal of recording is inherently difficult to police on a conditional basis.
That enforcement challenge was illustrated earlier this year when a claimant, Laimonas Jakstys, was accused by a judge of wearing smart glasses in the High Court and receiving "coaching" through them while giving evidence in a case over the directorship of a property company. The allegation that external guidance was being relayed to a witness in real time during live testimony points to the procedural integrity risks that prompted the categorical ban.
England and Wales are not alone in this approach. New York's state court system announced a ban on smart glasses in court buildings in the month before August 2026. Maryland implemented its own restriction effective April 7, 2026, barring all smart glasses with recording capability from court facilities without prior approval. The Maryland rule requires that such devices be powered off, kept out of sight, or banned outright depending on the courtroom context.
For context, UK court and tribunal buildings already maintain extensive security screening. Visitors are prohibited from bringing weapons, glass, or liquids other than non-alcoholic drinks or hand sanitiser. E-bikes and e-scooters are also barred. Most electronic items, including mobile phones, smart watches, tablets, and memory sticks, must be handed in at security, though laptops and their accessories may be permitted subject to security checks.
The divergence in how smartphones and smart glasses are treated reveals the specific anxiety the courts are addressing. A smartphone held in a courtroom is visible, and its orientation is legible to security staff — you can tell whether someone is pointing a camera at a witness. A pair of glasses with an embedded camera is worn on the face, making the distinction between active recording and passive use nearly impossible to enforce in real time. The conditional regime that works for phones collapses when the recording device is indistinguishable from an ordinary accessory.
What remains unresolved is how courts will identify smart glasses that closely resemble conventional eyewear. Meta's partnership with Ray-Ban has produced frames that are visually indistinguishable from standard glasses at a glance, which raises the prospect of enforcement relying on self-declaration or spot checks. The Courts and Tribunals Service has not publicly detailed its identification protocol.
The broader context here is a regulatory catch-up cycle. Wearable recording technology has outpaced institutional rule-making across multiple sectors, and courts, with their heightened stakes around witness integrity, juror impartiality, and the privacy of participants, represent a particularly acute case. The ban is not a novel legal principle but a recognition that existing prohibitions on recording require a new enforcement mechanism when the recording device disappears into the frame of a pair of glasses.
Meta has not publicly responded to the court bans in England and Wales or comparable restrictions in US jurisdictions, and the verified record does not indicate whether the company has sought to engage with court authorities on technical mitigations, such as a visible recording indicator or a geofencing feature that disables camera functions in restricted areas. The absence of such detail leaves open the question of whether a technical accommodation could eventually satisfy court security requirements, or whether the form factor itself will remain disqualifying.
What is clear is that the tension between consumer wearable technology and institutional privacy norms is widening rather than narrowing. With 7 million pairs already sold and adoption accelerating, the courts' approach is likely to be tested by volume alone, as more visitors arrive at security checkpoints wearing devices that staff must identify, assess, and confiscate. The policy is straightforward. Its execution may not be.
