The man who rammed partygoers with a van on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year’s Day was wearing Meta smart glasses while planning and carrying out the attack, the FBI said Sunday.
While there is no indication the glasses were essential to the assault, which killed 14 people and injured dozens more, their use as an aid to carrying out a terrorist attack is a worrying turn for the product, launched by Meta in 2023.
The Meta smart glasses are the company’s foray into an area where Google and Snap had tried and failed: functional glasses that also offer many of the features of a smartphone, including a camera, speaker, and AI assistant that can do things like translate text and search the web for answers to your questions. The models cost between $299 and $379 on Meta’s website.
The frames of the glasses are licensed by Ray-Ban and the technology is provided by Meta. Ray-Ban did not respond to a request for comment and Meta declined to share its sales figures, but last year market research firm IDC estimated that Meta had sold more than 730,000 pairs – a rare success in the difficult wearable technology market.
During Meta’s July earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the glasses had been “a bigger hit sooner than expected” and that demand was “still outstripping our capacity to make them.”
The glasses, which allow their owners to record everything in their field of vision, have also been heavily criticized for how they could be used to invade people’s privacy. The glasses have a small light to let people nearby know that they are recording. But last year, to prove it was possible, two Harvard students transformed a pair of glasses into what was actually a real-time facial recognition tool. Using artificial intelligence, their tool scanned faces in the wearer’s field of vision, searched for matches online, and displayed biographical information about the person almost instantly.
IDC also found that the smart clothing market is dominated by smartwatches and earphones, but sales of smart glasses are expected to increase slowly over the next few years.
At a news conference Sunday, Lyonel Myrthil, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, said Shamsud-Din Jabbar wore the glasses while staying at a rental house in New Orleans in October, when he was inspecting the French Quarter. and videotaped the area. The FBI released video footage from Bourbon Street that Jabbar recorded with his glasses.
“Meta glasses look like regular glasses, but they allow a user to record videos and photos hands-free. They also allow the user to potentially broadcast their video live, Myrthil said.
“Jabbar was wearing a pair of Meta glasses when he carried out the attack on Bourbon Street, but he did not activate the glasses to live stream his actions that day. The glasses were on Jabbar’s person who was following him being neutralized by the NOPD, and we believe he was wearing them throughout the evening,” he said.
The 42-year-old attacker died in a shootout with police after driving his truck into a crowd.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told NBC News on Sunday that the company “is in contact with law enforcement regarding this matter” but declined to comment further. Meta generally complies with court orders to release user information to law enforcement.
Sam Hunter, manager of strategic initiatives at the National Center for Counterterrorism, Innovation, Education and Technology at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, said Jabbar’s alleged use of the glasses speaks to a slight but significant escalation in established terrorist tactics aimed at demarcating a target area. before attacking.
“It becomes so discreet that it doesn’t look weird just riding your bike with a normal pair of glasses,” Hunter said. “Their cost is not prohibitive. »
Images shot by the Meta glasses also show areas from a slightly more intuitive angle than a smartphone or helmet-mounted camera would, he said.
“From a reconnaissance standpoint, you really get a sense of line of sight and all the things you’ll need to pay attention to if you’re trying to plan an attack,” Hunter said. “It’s starting to be more and more present in the images, of what it actually looks like and what it feels like when you’re in that environment.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you see versions of them or people using them to plan attacks in the future, again because they’re very stealthy in terms of capturing these images,” he said. -he declared.
nbcnews