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By Mihar Dias February 2026
Once upon a time, the most dangerous thing you could smuggle into a courtroom was a chewing gum, a mobile phone, or—if you were feeling particularly rebellious—a copy of The Straits Times. Today, it turns out you can smuggle in an entire film crew… perched neatly on your nose.
The recent courtroom moment involving Meta’s smart glasses feels less like a legal footnote and more like a scene from a dystopian thriller. There sat Mark Zuckerberg testifying in a case about whether his platforms are addictive to children—while, ironically, his own company’s wearable technology had to be explicitly banned by the judge for fear that someone might secretly record proceedings.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/02/18/judge-during-zuckerberg-testimony-dont-record-using-meta-glasses-in-court/ In a single warning—“Delete that, or you will be held in contempt”—the judge captured a new reality: we have entered an era where surveillance is no longer something you install on ceilings. It is something you wear. https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/02/18/judge-during-zuckerberg-testimony-dont-record-using-meta-glasses-in-court/ And that should worry us far beyond the courtroom.
For centuries, courts have relied on a fragile social contract. Justice requires transparency, yes—but also controlled transparency. That is why proceedings are recorded officially, why photography is regulated, and why evidence must be authenticated. The system works because information flows through trusted channels.
Wearable recording devices blow a neat little hole through that system.
They turn every witness into a potential broadcaster. Every lawyer into a possible content creator. Every juror into an accidental influencer.
Imagine the consequences.
A witness could be secretly filmed, then harassed online before the trial ends. A snippet of testimony could go viral, stripped of context. Jurors might find themselves unwilling celebrities in the world’s most unwanted reality show: Trial by Algorithm.
And once that happens, the courtroom stops being a sanctuary of deliberation and becomes just another stage in the global theatre of outrage.
But courts are merely the canary in the coal mine.
The larger implication is this: when recording becomes invisible, consent becomes meaningless.
Until recently, the act of filming someone carried a visible signal—you raised a phone, you pointed a camera, you made your intentions clear. People could object, move away, or at least know they were being recorded.
Smart glasses erase that boundary.
You no longer know when you are on camera. You cannot tell whether your casual conversation, your heated argument, or your private moment is being documented.
Society, in effect, becomes a permanent reality show where nobody knows when the red light is on.
This is not merely a privacy issue. It is a trust issue.
Human interactions depend on the assumption that most conversations are ephemeral—that words spoken in passing are not permanently archived. If every interaction can be secretly recorded, people will speak less freely, joke less spontaneously, and express themselves less honestly.
In short, we risk creating a world where everyone behaves like a politician during an election campaign—permanently guarded, carefully scripted, and deeply artificial.
Ironically, the companies building these devices often frame them as tools for “connection.” But connection without trust is merely exposure.
The courtroom incident offers a glimpse of what is to come: institutions scrambling to catch up with technologies that dissolve long-standing social norms overnight.
Today it is judges warning lawyers not to record.
Tomorrow it may be schools banning students from wearing “smart” eyewear during exams. Offices prohibiting employees from entering meetings with certain devices. Restaurants posting signs that say: “No recording glasses allowed.”
We may soon find ourselves living in a world where the first question upon meeting someone is not “What do you do?” but “Are those recording?”
That, perhaps, is the deepest irony of all.
In our quest to capture everything, we may end up losing something priceless—the freedom to exist unobserved.
Because justice, like friendship, like love, like democracy itself, ultimately depends on one fragile condition:
That not everything needs to be recorded.
Mihar Dias (mihardias@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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