Surveillance Dance
We’re walking hand in hand, down a winding road. It leads to our new home. A sweet one-bedroom on the Thames.
“We’re very lucky,” I slur, leaning heavier into his shoulder, cowering from the early autumn chill.
“So lucky,” he tilts his head on top of mine. We walk awkwardly like that for a few paces before a car rounds the corner violently. We were walking on the wrong side (right side) of the street. He swerves to avoid us, and I trip over my shoes, stumbling onto the sidewalk. I go ass over tits–a British colloquialism I’m adopting–my knees scrape against the pavement.
“Oh no!” He cries, his hands already scooping me up.
I let out a pitiful whimper. My knees are skinned, pebbles accenting the prickles of blood. I survey the damage. My left loafer has separated from its sole.
He crouches to dust me off. I rest my hands against his shoulders, balancing myself. I wince as his hands pass over my injuries. I look around the street. Quiet residential apartments to our right, one being our own, and the park where I run in the morning to our left. Just in front of us is a small grocery, long since closed for the night. Just above its darkened door, a pinprick of a red beacon. There’s a CCTV camera.
“Can you walk?” He asks.
I shake my head no, pouting my lip. I am being overdramatic, but we’re twenty paces from our front door.
“Alright,” he wraps his arms around the bend of my knees, grunts as he throws me over his shoulder. He carries me to our apartment. He fishes our key from his front pocket. I wave goodbye to our voyeurs. Will anyone watch the footage? Witness my clumsy mistake?
It doesn’t matter, does it really?
It’s the next morning, and the sun leaks through the slats of our wooden window shades. I should be in a Pilates class, sweating out the fun I’d had last night. Instead, I’m in bed, licking my wounds. He is out for the day, won’t be back till late at night. I scroll through TikTok. My screen time is abysmal these days. I’ll get better soon. I’ll get up soon.
Matt Bass navigates the streets of New York while filming the backs of strangers as they walk through SoHo. He critiques their form based on his pace qualifications. He wears opaque shades and a backwards cap. He resembles the frat boys I had regrettable, arrhythmic sex with in college.
“Truly bad formation here, oop–and we’re slowing down.” He notes of an elderly couple and their adult daughter walking through the Village.
“Very impressive breadth here, we’ve got a swinging bottle, we’ve got formation shifts.” He says of three friends, meandering on a tree-lined street.
“These three guys they’re drifting and dragging. They’re walking really slow and wide.” Co-workers, walking back to the office after lunch.
I laugh at the videos, feeling a pang of homesickness for my chaotic, crowded city. Never mind the invasion or privacy and criticism this man is raging against perfect strangers. I decide to get out of bed. I brush my hair and teeth. I wash my face. I make breakfast. I’m in a red lace nightgown he bought for me on Valentine’s Day last year. I’d asked him to buy it; it wasn’t perverse. If someone were to glance in our ground-floor window, I’d be the picture of Saturday morning satisfaction. I eat my toast in bed, butter coating my lips. I brush crumbs off my duvet, my other hand continually swiping.
Aniessa Navarro faces the camera, a stricken look on her face. “I’ve been going to European Wax Center for maybe nine years at this point. I went to a location in Manhattan, but the aesthetician was wearing Meta glasses. I didn’t notice it at first, and maybe five minutes in or so, I’m like, ‘Are you wearing Meta glasses?’”
She is. Aniessa continues, “I could not stop thinking, ‘Could she be filming me right now?’”
I let myself fall down the rabbit hole, tapping on the suggested search. I curl myself into a tight ball, pulling the sheets higher over my head.
A little context. Meta Glasses originally debuted as “Ray-Ban Stories” in September 2021 at Facebook’s seventh annual Connect conference. They could take phone calls, photos, videos up to 30 seconds, post to social media (specifically Meta apps), and play music. Two years later, Mark Zuckerberg would launch the next generation of smart eyewear, now named Meta Smart Glasses. Zuckerberg would announce them as “the first smart glasses that are built with Meta AI in them.” In addition to image capture and messaging, you could now consult your glasses’ reserve of information. Zuck’s example, “Let’s say you’re grilling with your family, and you want to know how long you need to cook that chicken for. Or, you’re playing pickleball and you want to know if that line call was out.”
A woman groans in the audience. “Well, she might not agree with me, but still–” Zuck laughs. The glasses could be purchased, starting at $299.
This past week, Zuckerberg took the stage, preluded by a video showing his POV as he navigated the Meta campus, messaging and capturing video via his glasses all the while. Thus, introduced the “Meta Ray-Ban Display” to weak applause.
Now, in addition to an increase in image resolution and an expansion of its AI capabilities, the glasses will come with the Meta Neural band. A wristband that controls the glasses by registering small muscle movements in your hand.
In a live demonstration, Zuckerberg messages his Chief Technology Officer, Andrew Bosworth, also known affectionately as “Boz.”
He begins, “So, I could go ahead and dictate with my voice or send a voice note, but I’ve got this neural band, and a lot of the time you’re around other people, so it’s good to be able to type without anyone seeing.”
As he says this, his thumb and forefinger are fidgeting wildly, as he stares, open-mouthed, into the crowd. He successfully sends a message. He goes on to showcase the glasses' multi-tasking abilities, while messaging Boz, he requests his glasses to “Play California Dreamin'.”
The song plays over the auditorium’s loudspeakers. “And if I want to control the volume control–”
He swipes a hand through the air, and the song blares. I can’t help but wonder what The Mamas and the Papas would think of this.
When he tries to make a video call, though, nothing happens.
Mark stammers. “Uh oh. Let’s see what happened there.” The glasses ring, but nothing appears on the display. He smacks his tongue against his teeth. “That’s too bad. I don’t know what happened.” He laughs, a fire simmering behind his eyes.
The same day the product is announced, innumerable tech influencers publish their glowing reviews of the item. They retail for $799.
I do not know this, though, until later. It is hot under the blanket, but I keep scrolling, my face illuminated only by the blue light of my phone screen.
Louisa Melcher is a parody comedian. She is impossibly good at what she does.
Last week, she posted a video where her back is to the camera, the low angle making this seem as though it's an encounter being recorded illicitly. She shouts at an older man on a subway platform. Who stands before her
“I can literally see you recording me. Those are Meta glasses.”
The man staggers back, “These aren’t even Meta glasses, these are 12-dollar readers.”
She looks towards the viewer, pointing to the man, “He’s filming me on his meta glasses.”
He offers for her to try them on. She places them on her face. Her hands pull at her own hair.
“They’re zoomed in! Why are they zoomed in if you’re not recording me?”
“Cause they’re for seeing?” He answers, pitingly.
She ends the video by walking off camera, her head down, muttering to herself, “I need to touch grass.”
There are hundreds of comments that do not understand that the video is a sketch. One comment reads,
“Guess what, let’s say for the argument, they are meta glasses. So what? It’s public, there is NO expectation of privacy in public.”*
*Note: For this piece, I’ve corrected the original commenter’s poor punctuation and misspellings.
Another video claims you can hide the recording light with a piece of electric tape. Later in my feed, a technology influencer debunks that claim; there is a fail-safe programmed into the glasses. Another user assumes that anyone they see wearing Meta Glasses is a “perverted, freak, sex-weirdo.” She threatens, “and I will make fun of you.”
I rip the covers off, leaning over my mattress to grab my laptop from my tote bag. I begin my research.
The UK is the most surveilled nation in the world, second only to China. For every 1 person in London, there are 13 CCTV cameras. The Investigatory Powers Act, passed in 2016, allows the UK government to acquire and retain bulk personal datasets from private companies and obtain communications via equipment interference. There are a few safeguards; law enforcement must obtain a warrant to access data, and there is an Investigatory Powers Commissioner who provides oversight. Amendments were made to the act in 2024 to provide law enforcement with additional powers in response to the rapidly growing digital landscape.
A neighbor across the road from me turns their light on. I watch through my window as they pad about their living room. They nestle into a chair with a book. They look out their window. I shut the blinds. Stifling myself in the hot living room.
A study conducted by the British Security Industry Association determined that for every 70 private security cameras, there is 1 publicly operated CCTV camera. In the United States, approximately 68 million homes use a security camera. If you search up “Ring Footage” on TikTok, you could scroll indefinitely, watching strangers complain about lawn care, steal packages, or stumble home drunk as I did last night. “It shouldn’t bother you, though, right? If you have nothing to hide?” BBC radio host, Caroline Martin, asks Mark Johnson from Big Brother Watch, an anti-surveillance activist group.
“It’s a larger question of what kind of society you want to live in. And what of our right to privacy? It comes down to–who is collecting this data about me and how will they use it?”
He’s calling me. He’s done with work for the day. He will now take the 9 bus from Hammersmith Broadway to Sloane Square. He’ll stop at the supermarket and pick up carrots, onions, and lentils to use for soup. He’ll text me asking if I want any dessert. I always do. It’s usually a pint of ice cream, chocolate chip cookie dough.
He’ll then cross the street, walk through the park, and pass the sight of my fall last evening. He will take the stairs, never the elevator. It’s only one floor, after all. He will open the door to find me, having successfully worked out, showered, and fed myself for the day while awaiting his arrival. We’ll eat while watching a movie on Netflix. We’ll talk over the movie, and eventually abandon it for bed. Our lights will go out around 11 PM, though we’ll both stay up looking at our phones till 11:30. We will do it again tomorrow.
How much of this is witnessed by unknowing parties? Which neighbors can watch his comings and goings? My phone knows when I go to sleep. Amazon knows when I’m out of shampoo. TikTok knows when we’ve had a fight, it feeds me couples’ therapists, and girls crying through their breakups. The CCTV knows when I leave the house, if I do.
I do not answer the phone. I do not reply to his text. He does not stop at the supermarket, but instead rushes home out of concern.
At least with Google Glass, you had to wink to take a photo, so everyone already knew you were a creep. At least there’s the General Data Protection Regulation, which protects EU citizens from companies overzealously collecting and selling their data. But the UNITED KINGDOM LEFT THE EU. FUCK YOU BREXIT.
At least Meta has rolled out a “marketing campaign in the EU markets to raise awareness about what signals people should look for when the glasses are in use, and that you should stop recording if anyone around you indicates that they don’t want to be in a photo or video. The campaign will also alert people to being mindful of taking photos around minors.” No such campaign exists for wearers outside Europe.
As I write the phrase, “British Security Industry Administration,” Grammarly corrects me. It’s not “administration,” it's “association.” I googled it again to confirm. Grammarly is right. HOW DOES IT KNOW THAT? I slam my laptop shut.
I throw open the blinds. We’re surrounded by other windows, other lives. Each could have a camera directed at me at this very instance. My new one-bedroom, a panopticon. My laptop’s fan whirs. My phone chirps with a notification. They’re trying to lure me back to them, to pose my face in front of their cameras. To register my likeness into a database that TSA will use to identify me on my flight back to the States. Can I opt out of it? What were all those website cookies I willingly accepted!?! I thought there would be ACTUAL COOKIES!
He opens the front door, panting from having sprinted up the stairs. I am curled in a ball on the floor, draped in a blanket of tinfoil. He kneels next to me, petting my hair, the overhead light reflecting off his thick-rimmed glasses.
“What’s wrong, baby?” He coos.
The glasses fly off his nose as I punch him in the face.
