ICE just told its own staffers to keep Mark Zuckerberg's spy glasses off their faces — and if the feds don't trust them, ordinary Americans shouldn't either.
Acting ICE director David Venturella issued a memo banning Meta's smart glasses from the federal workspace, warning the devices "could unintentionally capture, record or transmit sensitive information, potentially compromising privacy and legal protections," according to The New York Times. When the agency the left loves to hate says a Big Tech surveillance product is too invasive for its own halls, that tells you everything about what it's doing to the rest of us.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the Times that workers have "always" been barred from using "personally owned body-worn cameras." But that policy hasn't stopped agents from strapping them on anyway. ICE and Customs and Border Patrol agents have been spotted wearing Meta's smart glasses repeatedly over the last several months — recording with them, wearing them on immigration raids, across at least six states, according to investigations by 404 Media and The Independent. One CBP agent was caught recording despite the existing ban.
So the memo is less a new rule than a confession: the old one wasn't working, and Zuckerberg's always-on face computers were proliferating on federal payroll faster than anyone could police them.
But here's where it gets interesting. While DHS is telling its workforce to keep the glasses off, it's also shopping for its own pair. Budget documents reported by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein show ICE wants to equip officers with bespoke smart glasses featuring "biometric identification capabilities" by next year. The problem isn't the technology — it's who owns it.
The Verge framed the ban as a straightforward workplace policy clarification. Engadget buried the real news deeper: that ICE doesn't want to ban smart glasses at all — it wants to build its own, with biometric surveillance baked in.
If a federal agency recognizes that always-on recording devices strapped to someone's face are a privacy threat inside its own walls, why should the rest of the country tolerate them on the street, in the coffee shop, or at the school bus stop? And if the government's only objection is that Zuckerberg gets the data instead of them, the surveillance state isn't being reined in — it's just cutting out the middleman.
The feds don't trust Zuckerberg's glasses on their own people. They want their own pair with your face in the database. The only question left is who's watching whom.
