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The dream that women in Pakistan might finally get to move through public life a little more freely has been dashed once again thanks to a new technology that has arrived to quietly erode the two things that in this country have never really been separate: privacy and ‘honour’.

The new Meta Smart Glasses were launched on June 23, 2026 with a 63 per cent price reduction from the original 2025 model, from $799 or over Rs221,000 to a far more affordable $299 or Rs83,000 through Meta’s partnership with EssilorLuxottica, Ray-Ban’s parent company. Meta’s Chief Technology Officer, Andrew Bosworth, described affordability as central to the company’s strategy: “You really want to be able to be in many places in the market… it’s also about the price point.” As competitors like Apple and Google develop their own smart eyewear, wearable cameras are rapidly moving from novelty to mass consumer technology, with lower prices making them accessible to increasingly diverse markets, like Pakistan.

Meta’s smart glasses are ordinary-looking Ray-Bans fitted with a camera, microphones, speakers and Meta’s AI assistant. Visually, they’re almost indistinguishable from the “first copy” your neighbourhood vendor sells off a cart for Rs600. Except his pair can’t quietly record strangers, capture private conversations or livestream footage with a tap.

Around the world, Meta’s smart glasses have become known by another name: “pervert glasses”, an unsurprising yet rather apt label given the technology’s incredible potential for misuse. Unlike a smartphone, which makes recording obvious, smart glasses make it easy to capture footage discreetly while appearing to do nothing more than wear an ordinary pair of spectacles.

Of course, not every recording made through these glasses is sinister. Someone might wear them to record a birthday, film their children playing, capture a friend’s reaction at a dinner or document a holiday. The person in the background may simply happen to be there. That is exactly what makes the technology difficult to dismiss as a problem: the person wearing the glasses may have no malicious intent at all, while the person being recorded may have no idea that a camera is pointed at them.

Meta has built a small recording light into the glasses that illuminates when the camera is in use. But for someone who does not know what that light signifies, a tiny LED on the side of an otherwise ordinary pair of glasses is hardly an obvious indication that they are being recorded. Unlike a phone held up in front of you, there is no unmistakable gesture that says: I am recording you.

And, the internet is full of ‘hacks’ to disable or cover-up the light with many, many users interested in no one knowing they’re recording.

Privacy advocates have warned that the glasses blur the line between public and private space, making covert filming easier in places where people reasonably expect not to be recorded. Child safety advocates have also raised concerns about the implications for children and minors, while women’s rights advocates have pointed to a growing online culture in which men secretly film interactions with women and upload the footage to TikTok or other social media platforms without their knowledge or consent. Wearable cameras do not create these behaviours, but they make them significantly easier to carry out unnoticed.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Pakistan is safe from this technology. After all, Meta hasn’t officially launched its smart glasses here. However, a quick search reveals the glasses are already being sold online in Pakistan. One website lists them for Rs126,899, while another offers them at a ‘discounted’ price of Rs121,999. No official launch. No PTA fuss. Free delivery.

The only thing missing from this package is a conversation about what happens when the technology lands in a country that isn’t remotely prepared for it.

Unfortunately, Pakistan’s archives are filled with the names of women whose lives have been dictated by the fragile currency of ‘izzat’ and the impossible expectations placed upon them. Some cases are reported but countless others are never documented.

In a country where a woman’s image can be weaponised against her, the ability to secretly capture that image is not merely a technological feature; it’s a perilous instrument of control. The threat posed by wearable cameras extends far beyond the loss of privacy. It’s the loss of agency over who gets to see you, record you, circulate your image and ultimately decide what it means. The wearer knows when the camera is on, the person being recorded may not even know there is a camera. In Pakistan, that loss can become blackmail, extortion, harassment, social ostracisation or, in the most extreme cases, violence committed in the name of ‘honour’.

We do not have to imagine what happens when a woman’s image becomes a source of shame or accusation. Pakistan has seen it before — long before wearable cameras existed. In the 2011 Kohistan honour killings, five women, Bazeegha, Sereen Jan, Begum Jan and Amina, were reportedly killed by male relatives after a video of them singing and clapping at a wedding surfaced. The Supreme Court was told in 2019 that all evidence pointed to them having been killed. In 2020, two teenage girls were killed in North Waziristan a video of them with a man went viral on social media. And in 2023, one girl was killed while another was saved by the police after a jirga ordered their murders for appearing in a video with two boys from their village.

While honour-based violence and cybercrimes are widespread in Pakistan, so is blackmail, doxxing and the non-consensual circulation of intimate images. The 2021 Usman Mirza case, which later inspired the Kashf Foundation’s drama Aik Aur Pakeezah, exposed the devastating consequences of covert recordings. In the real case, a young couple was assaulted, filmed and threatened inside a guesthouse in Islamabad, with the footage allegedly used to blackmail and humiliate them.

What Aik Aur Pakeezah captured so powerfully is something our public discourse often ignores: while a leaked or viral video may implicate both a man and a woman, the burden of shame rarely falls equally. The woman’s reputation, character and izzat are placed on trial long before anyone asks what happened to her. That is precisely why technologies that make covert recording effortless pose a disproportionate threat to women in Pakistan. They do not simply invade privacy, they amplify a culture in which a woman’s image can be weaponised against her.

And when that image is weaponised, where does she turn?

Think about how ordinary moments could become recordings without anyone thinking twice. A woman dancing at a wedding. A group of women sitting together at a restaurant. Someone adjusting her dupatta on the street. A woman speaking to a man who is not her husband or relative. A stranger walking through the background of a family video. On a phone, recording these moments usually involves someone raising a device, pointing it at the scene and making their intention visible. With smart glasses, the camera can be sitting at eye level while the wearer appears to be doing nothing at all.

None of these moments are inherently compromising, but in a society where a photograph or video can be taken out of context and used to question a woman’s character, izzat or relationships, the distinction matters. The danger is not that every recording will be weaponised. It is that the person being recorded may never know that the recording exists until someone else decides what to do with it.

Over the past five years, approximately 1.8 million women in Pakistan have been victims of cybercrimes such as harassment and blackmail, yet only around 225 perpetrators have been convicted. A conviction rate of just 3.5 per cent does more than deny individual women justice — it creates a cycle in which perpetrators have little reason to believe they will be held accountable.

This is where Meta’s smart glasses raise a question that goes beyond privacy and into jurisdiction.

Meta has not officially launched the product in Pakistan. The glasses arrive through online retailers and importers, outside any formal commercial presence by the company. If a woman in Pakistan is secretly recorded through a pair bought from an Instagram seller, who answers for it beyond the first FIR? The reseller? The wearer? Meta? The platform that hosts the video? Or does responsibility just disappear somewhere between California and Karachi?

Pakistan may be importing Meta’s smart glasses, but it isn’t importing the legal ecosystem that accompanies them. We are making a highly sophisticated recording technology accessible in a society where the consequences of being recorded without consent can be devastating, while still struggling to hold perpetrators accountable for the technologies we already have.

In the United States, Meta has already faced legal scrutiny over the privacy practices surrounding its smart glasses. There, questions of consent, data handling and corporate responsibility can be taken to court with the expectation that the company manufacturing these glasses could be held to account.

If the next woman in Pakistan is secretly recorded through a pair of Meta glasses bought online, who can she hold responsible? Who will she sue? Which law will protect her? Who will remove the footage? Who will restore her reputation? And who will be held accountable when the consequences cannot be undone?

Until those questions have answers, Pakistan is not merely importing a new gadget. It is importing a risk it has yet to reckon with.