A coalition of 70+ civil rights organizations including the ACLU is demanding Meta abandon its facial recognition feature for Ray-Ban smart glasses, saying it would let stalkers and federal agents silently identify strangers in public. Meta internal documents show the company planned to launch the feature during the current political chaos, betting that advocacy groups would be too distracted to respond. The real tension here is that Meta is claiming its competitors already offer facial recognition — but the civil rights groups are right that bystanders have no way to consent to being identified by someone passing them on the street, which is a distinction between commercial capability and public safety that Meta's comparison glosses over.