Apollo Optik and Fielmann

The winners of the Big Brother Award 2026 in the Technology category are

Fielmann and Apollo Optik.

These two market-leading German opticians both distribute several kinds of Smart Glasses. Certainly the best-known of these are the models offered by Meta.

Such glasses can access the Internet, are furnished with cameras, microphones and speakers. Equipped like this, anyone can become a spy.

Meta itself describes the devices so:

“AI glasses may look like regular eyewear, but they're designed to help you capture your adventures effortlessly. […]

When you use AI glasses for travel photography, the experience is simple and intuitive. The camera and microphones automatically capture what’s happening around you“¹

So there is an alleged advantage over taking a photo with conventional cameras or mobile phones. Video and audio recording with the glasses is very simple and inconspicuous.

Smart glasses are structurally designed to violate the rights of others. At the swimming pool, on a date or in the sauna? Smart glasses are watching you.

Have a look at internal company documents or classified material and record them directly? Goodbye to the protection of commercial secrets.

These spy devices are on offer at your trusted optician right beside normal eyeglasses.

Especially so-called pick-up artists have found a new toy in the glasses. They speak to women and, without any consent, secretly film them with smart glasses from the point-of-view perspective. To underscore their misogyny, they post the videos on social media.

The BBC reported in January about a woman who was spoken to by a stranger, who asked her for her telephone number. Later a video of the encounter appeared on social media and went viral, accompanied by hundreds of sexist comments.² In other cases men released secretly recorded videos of women in fitness studios or in bikinis at the Alster waterfront in Hamburg.³ One victim unsuspectingly gave the perpetrator her telephone number – which she later found posted online along with the video of her. After that, she was bombarded with calls and text messages from strangers.^{4, 5}

Smart glasses are the perfect tool for exploiting women as sexualised “content” for clicks and likes. A scientific investigation in Australia analysed videos of this type in detail. The result: When filming with smart glasses rather than with a smartphone camera, the perpetrators were especially abusive.⁶

What does Meta do with the video and sound recordings? We do not know for certain.

Swedish newspapers reported that staff at a service provider for Meta in Kenya had encountered footage from AI glasses. Employees who work there under contract from Meta to process content for AI training, are subject to exploitative working conditions. They reported having seen images of toilet visits, naked persons and private correspondence.⁷

The trade journal WIRED found a biometric face recognition function with the internal name “NameTag” in the Meta AI app. The idea behind it: The camera in the glasses records a face. From this information the system produces a biometric signature which, using the smartphone, is compared to previously stored signatures. If the system recognises the person, the glasses can tell the wearer who they have in front of them. Unrecognised faces were apparently to be extracted, indexed and stored for future processing.⁸ The day after the WIRED publication, Meta removed the components involved and declared that it all was just an experiment and a decision to implement the function had not been reached.⁹

One must realise that Meta does not “only” use everyday footage for their own purposes. Meta also has a wealth of further information at their disposal: Beginning with contact data, movement data, with whom one corresponds, at what kind of videos one lingers on in insta-feed and which websites one surfs. Up to now, the offline world has been missing in Meta’s painstakingly meticulous recording of communicative transactions. Now the recording and analysis of all human activity in video and audio is being normalised piece by piece. A shifting of boundaries is taking place, and its impact goes far beyond everyday efficiency and leisure time videos. And once data is available, it will, as we know, not be long before security agencies get hold of it.¹⁰ Fielmann and Apollo Optik seem to regard this as normal already. Thanks to them, smart glasses are no longer seen as products for Geeks, since they are available at one’s trusted optician and can be tried out in every pedestrian zone in Germany.¹¹

Telecommunications systems that are constructed in order to secretly record other persons and which are disguised to look like some other object, are forbidden in Germany. This ban is very extensive. Their manufacture and distribution on the market is indeed a crime. Our legal system applies very serious testing obligations for dealers such as Fielmann and Apollo Optik, to verify whether the products that they offer are indeed even legal.

Is it the case that smart glasses are telecommunications systems, which by their appearance, seem to be something else?

Meta again: “AI glasses may look like regular eyewear, but they're designed to help you capture your adventures effortlessly.”¹²

Are they especially suitable for candidly recording people?

Meta says: “Capture hands-free photos and videos with AI.”¹³

Effortlessly, hands-free, and unnoticed. Being recognisable as such is the central prerequisite for selling glasses with cameras. Which means that these devices must expressly not appear to be normal glasses.

A tiny LED that glows during video recording is meant to provide protection from unnoticed filming. That is of course a farce. Because, when the sun shines or when the distance is too great, recognition is impossible. And naturally, numerous instructions on how to manipulate the LED can be found on the Internet. Besides, the LED does not light up for all recordings: Newer AI models from Meta are designed to live-capture and analyse the surroundings using AI. But the camera light is only active when the user wants to store a recording. Otherwise, the surroundings are filmed without any signal.¹⁴

The data protection authorities in Hamburg thoroughly tested the glasses. Agency head Thomas Fuchs declared that the LED light was not sufficiently recognisable.¹⁵

HateAid has now, rightly, submitted a criminal complaint.¹⁶ It is aimed not only at the manufacturer Meta, but also at the management of companies that sell the devices in Germany. Fielmann and Apollo Optik, as the two leading opticians in Germany, have the market presence to bring these devices out of the high-tech corner and offer them to a broad German audience.

Apart from legal prosecution, the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) is responsible for enforcing the trade ban. When asked by Digitalcourage, the agency declared that the models tested up to now do not meet the requirements for a ban.

Can you remember “My Friend Cayla”? Cayla was a talking doll. But it could not only speak, but also listen. And it transmitted everything that was heard in the children’s room back home. In 2016 the Federal Network Agency banned Cayla and instructed parents to destroy the doll if they had already purchased one.

“Objects that hide transmission-enabled cameras or microphones and so are able to secretly transfer data, endanger people’s privacy”, said the then head of the Federal Network Agency, Jochen Homann. Federal Agency, where are you now?

In the meantime Cayla has found a place in the German espionage museum. That is where smart glasses belong as well.

Fielmann and Apollo Optik normalise covert filming and eavesdropping – and earn money with the stalker-ware. So, congratulations on your BigBrotherAward 2026.