Introduction: the conversation that wasn't private
You're having lunch with a colleague on a café terrace. At the next table, a man is wearing ordinary sunglasses — thick frame, lightly tinted lenses. He doesn't take out his phone, doesn't point anything at you, does nothing suspicious. A small white LED blinks for a second near the right hinge — you don't see it, you're looking at your plate.
Fifteen minutes later, a video of your conversation exists. Not necessarily published, not necessarily malicious: simply recorded, time-stamped, geolocated, synced to an American cloud, and potentially analysed by an artificial intelligence model to extract a transcript and faces.
This scenario is no longer speculative. In May 2026, the CNIL announced an action plan dedicated to the rise of smart glasses, precisely because these devices shift a boundary that French law had taken for granted for thirty years: the one between the person filming — visible and identifiable — and the person being filmed, who could at least notice it. That visibility is gone. This guide takes stock of what you can still demand, refuse and have erased.
What exactly are we talking about
The three families of devices
The term "smart glasses" covers very different objects in terms of risk:
| Device type | What it captures | Visible signal |
|---|---|---|
| Audio glasses (speakers, microphone) | The wearer's voice, ambient sound | None |
| Consumer camera glasses | Photos, short videos, sound | Small LED, often discreet |
| Glasses with a continuous AI assistant | Video stream analysed in real time, transcription | Variable, sometimes non-existent |
| AI badges and pendants | Permanent audio, automatic daily summary | Practically none |
Models sold in Europe are in principle fitted with a recording indicator light, a direct consequence of pressure from data protection authorities. But that indicator is small, invisible in bright sunlight, invisible beyond two metres, invisible from behind — and third-party accessories make it possible to dim it. A signal that 90% of people don't notice is not consent.
What really changes compared with a smartphone
A common objection: "Everyone already has a phone with a camera." The difference is structural, and it comes down to three points.
- The gesture disappears. Filming with a phone is a visible social act: you raise your arm, you angle the screen. Glasses remove that signal, and therefore remove your ability to react.
- The duration changes. A phone films in bursts. A wearable camera can run all day, producing a continuous record of everyone crossed along the way.
- The processing changes. The stream doesn't stay in a photo gallery: it feeds automatic analysis services. Raw video is a memory; video that is transcribed, indexed and tied to a GPS position is a database.
What French law says, without oversimplification
Image rights still exist — and they're robust
In France, protection rests first on Article 9 of the Civil Code: "Everyone has the right to respect for their private life." Case law has derived from it a standalone right to one's image. The principle: publishing a recognisable image of you requires your agreement, save for exceptions (public figures in the exercise of their duties, news reporting, crowds in which no one is individualised).
Two moments must be clearly distinguished:
- The capture. Filming a person in a public place without publishing the footage is, in principle, less directly sanctioned — unless it infringes their intimacy.
- The publication. That's where the law bites. Publishing your identifiable face without agreement gives rise to a right to compensation before the civil courts.
The Criminal Code goes further for private places. Article 226-1 punishes with one year's imprisonment and a €45,000 fine anyone who infringes another person's privacy by capturing, recording or transmitting, without their consent, the image of a person in a private place — or by capturing their words spoken in a private or confidential capacity. Note that last point: confidential words are protected even in a public place. A hushed conversation on a terrace falls into this category.
The household exemption: the loophole everyone invokes
The GDPR does not apply to processing carried out "by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity" (Article 2). That's the manufacturers' standard argument: the wearer is filming their holidays, so there's nothing to declare.
The Court of Justice of the European Union has already rejected this broad reading. In the Ryneš judgment (C-212/13, December 2014), it held that a private individual's camera filming, even partially, a public space does not fall under the household exemption: the owner becomes a data controller. The transposition to smart glasses is obvious — a wearable camera recording the street inherently captures non-consenting third parties.
A practical and little-known consequence: a glasses wearer who films beyond the strictly private circle takes on GDPR obligations — informing individuals, a legal basis, a retention period, responses to access and erasure requests. Few wearers know this. It doesn't exempt them.
The workplace and premises open to the public
Within a company, the employer remains responsible for the data processing carried out on its premises. An employee wearing camera glasses in a meeting creates undeclared processing, without informing the social and economic committee and without an entry in the register. The CNIL regularly points out that permanent surveillance of employees is disproportionate. A shopkeeper, a medical practice or a gym can perfectly well ban the use of recording devices in their internal rules or their conditions of entry: this is a classic property right, coupled with a duty to protect other customers.
What remains flatly prohibited
- On-the-fly facial recognition. Automatically identifying passers-by amounts to processing biometric data, prohibited in principle (Article 9 of the GDPR) absent explicit consent or a specific legal framework. The European regulation on artificial intelligence (the AI Act, applying in stages since 2025) classifies real-time remote biometric identification in public spaces among prohibited practices or those subject to a very restrictive regime.
- Recording in places of intimacy. Fitting rooms, toilets, changing rooms, bedrooms: Article 226-1 applies in full, and Article 226-3-1 specifically targets non-consensual sexual imagery.
- Publishing a recording of a private conversation, punishable by the same penalties as the capture itself (Article 226-2).
Your practical rights, and how to exercise them
Facing a wearer, in the moment
An oral request is your first tool, and it's legitimate. A simple, non-aggressive wording: "Are your glasses recording? I'd rather not be filmed — please stop, or turn away."
If the exchange turns sour:
- In an establishment (café, shop, waiting room), speak to the staff: they are the ones with the power to stop the use on their premises.
- Note the time and the place. Without a time stamp, a later erasure request cannot be processed.
- Never grab the device: you would be crossing over into unlawful physical interference.
The erasure request
If you know who is filming and on which service the video is stored, two levers combine:
- With the wearer, under Article 17 of the GDPR (right to erasure). A dated written request, with a precise description of the time slot, the place and your appearance. The controller has one month to reply.
- With the hosting or publishing platform, if the video has been posted. All the major networks have "privacy violation" forms separate from standard reporting — they get results faster.
If you're met with silence or a refusal, filing an online complaint with the CNIL is free and requires no lawyer. The authority's 2025 activity report shows a record number of complaints and sanctions: the channel works, even if it is slow.
The criminal route, for serious cases
For a recording made in a private place, a humiliating publication or the capture of confidential words, a complaint can be filed at a police station, a gendarmerie, or by letter to the public prosecutor of the competent judicial court. Keep all evidence: time-stamped screenshots, URLs, written witness statements.
Reducing your exposure: the habits that actually work
There is no miracle technique for becoming invisible, and you should be wary of solutions sold as such. What follows is about risk reduction, not disappearance.
Recognising a recording device
Learn the signs: an unusually thick frame at the hinges, a small lens in the corner of a lens, a white or green LED, a discreet housing along the temples. Audio-only models have no lens but do have speaker perforations near the temples. Once you get used to it, spotting them takes three seconds.
Managing your own visibility
- A cap or hat with a firm brim. A rigid brim breaks the shooting angle of a camera worn at eye level and hides the upper part of the face in slightly low-angle shots. A cap with a stiff peak remains the most effective and the most ordinary accessory.
- Avoid distinctive patterns and one-off pieces. Identifiable clothing makes cross-referencing trivial. Sartorial blandness is an underrated protection.
- Lower your voice. Audio capture is more intrusive than images and far easier to index through automatic transcription. Sensitive conversations should be held while walking, not sitting on a terrace.
- Change seats. In a café, a table with your back to the wall, away from the flow of traffic, mechanically reduces the number of camera fields passing through you.
At home: don't become the problem
The rise of wearable cameras goes hand in hand with that of video doorbells and outdoor cameras. The CNIL rule is clear: your camera must film only your own property, never the public road or your neighbour's garden. In practice, that means angling the lens downwards, using the privacy masks offered in the settings, and informing people with a visible sign. A surveillance camera with no cloud subscription, storing footage on a local memory card, considerably limits the leak surface: nothing goes to a third party, nothing ends up in a massive security incident.
Protecting the device that goes everywhere with you
The phone remains the convergence point for all these traces. Two accessories deliver a real and immediate benefit:
- A privacy screen filter, which blacks out the display when viewed from the side — useful on public transport, where the wearable camera of the passenger next to you captures your screen effortlessly.
- A stick-on webcam cover for your laptop, for the same reason, in an era of video calls in shared spaces.
For paper documents — letters, prescriptions, statements — destruction remains the only reliable method; a cross-cut document shredder deals in seconds with what a stolen photo would exploit in minutes.
And what if you're the one wearing the glasses?
This article wouldn't be honest if it ignored the other side. These devices have legitimate uses: accessibility for visually impaired people, professional documentation, assisted memory. A few rules are enough to stay on the right side of the law.
Filming is a decision, not a default setting. The only genuinely defensible use is one where the recording is occasional, announced and brief.
- Announce it. One sentence is enough: "I'm wearing camera glasses, they're switched off / I'm going to film for thirty seconds, is that OK with you?"
- Disable by default. Turn off automatic capture, the always-on voice assistant and cloud syncing. Keep everything local.
- No-go zones. Never in places of intimacy, never in a government office, a medical practice, a school, a bank or a place of worship.
- Professional meetings. Take the device off, or state its presence explicitly and note it in the minutes. If in doubt, your data protection officer decides.
- Erasure on request. If someone asks you to delete a clip, do it without negotiating. It's a right, not a favour.
To go further into the dynamics of exposure and discretion in everyday life, an accessible book on personal data protection is a good investment of your time — the practical guides published in French in recent years are far more concrete than institutional brochures.
What will change in the coming months
Three areas are worth watching:
- The CNIL's action plan on smart glasses, announced in May 2026, should lead to enforceable recommendations: recording signage, default settings, information for third parties.
- The European AI regulation, whose obligations on high-risk systems and prohibited practices are rolling out progressively, governs on-board biometric analysis.
- Civil case law, which will start producing specific French decisions as soon as the first disputes reach the judicial courts.
Key takeaways
- Image rights and Article 226-1 of the Criminal Code apply fully to wearable cameras: nothing in the law exempts glasses.
- The GDPR's household exemption does not cover the recording of third parties in public spaces (Ryneš case law).
- You can ask for recording to stop, for footage to be erased, and refer the matter to the CNIL free of charge if you're ignored.
- On-the-fly facial recognition remains prohibited in France and in Europe.
- The habits that genuinely protect you are simple: spot the devices, lower your voice, avoid identifiable outfits, and don't film by default yourself.
The point is not to reject a technology. It's to reject the idea that merely existing in public becomes, without anyone ever having agreed to it, permanent consent to being recorded.
