More than 70 civil liberties, domestic violence, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+, labor, and immigrant advocacy organizations are demanding that Meta abandon plans to deploy face recognition on its Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses, warning that the feature—reportedly known inside the company as “Name Tag”—would hand stalkers, abusers, and federal agents the ability to silently identify strangers in public.

The coalition, which includes the ACLU, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Fight for the Future, Access Now, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, is demanding Meta kill the feature before launch, after internal documents surfaced showing the company hoped to use the current “dynamic political environment” as cover for the rollout, betting that civil society groups would have their resources “focused on other concerns.”

Name Tag, as revealed in February by The New York Times, would work through the artificial intelligence assistant built into Meta’s smart glasses, allowing wearers to pull up information about people in their field of view. Engineers have reportedly been weighing two versions of the feature: one that would only identify people the wearer is already connected to on a Meta platform, and a broader version that could recognize anyone with a public account on a Meta service such as Instagram.

The coalition wants Meta to scrap the feature entirely. In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, it argues that face recognition in inconspicuous consumer eyewear “cannot be resolved through product design changes, opt-out mechanisms, or incremental safeguards.” Bystanders in public have no meaningful way to consent to being identified, it says.

Meta is also urged to disclose any known instances of its wearables being used in stalking, harassment, or domestic violence cases; disclose any past or ongoing discussions with federal law enforcement agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, about the use of Meta wearables or data from them; and commit to consulting civil society and independent privacy experts before integrating biometric identification into any consumer device.

“People should be able to move through their daily lives without fear that stalkers, scammers, abusers, federal agents, and activists across the political spectrum are silently and invisibly verifying their identities and potentially matching their names to a wealth of readily available data about their habits, hobbies, relationships, health, and behaviors,” write the groups, which also include Common Cause, Jane Doe Inc., UltraViolet, the National Organization for Women, the New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the Library Freedom Project, and Old Dykes Against Billionaire Tech Bros, among others.

Meta did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

EssilorLuxottica, the Italian-French eyewear conglomerate that owns Ray-Ban and Oakley and manufactures the smart glasses with Meta, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the May 2025 memo from Meta’s Reality Labs that the Times obtained, Meta reportedly wrote that it would launch “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”

The coalition calls the distraction play “vile behavior” and accuses the company of taking advantage of “rising authoritarianism” and the Trump administration’s “disregard for the rule of law.”

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) sent its own letters to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state enforcers in February urging them to investigate and block Name Tag’s rollout. Real-time face recognition, the group warned, would compound what it called the “already serious and apparently unlawful” privacy risks of the existing Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which can covertly record bystanders with no warning beyond a small light that is easily hidden. People could be identified at protests, places of worship, support groups, and medical clinics, EPIC wrote, “destroying the concept of privacy or anonymity in public spaces.”

This does not amount to an antimicrobial certification, hence Lifestraw’s caution to market the device for anything but municipal water. But if my primary worry were the bacteria or mold known to potentially accumulate in other water filters and pitchers, I would certainly spring for this Lifestraw. The same IAPMO India lab data also shows good removal of PFAS and PFOA “forever chemicals,” though not quite to the levels of my top filter picks.

This doesn’t mean the filter is perfect. The Home’s tall dual-stage filter, comprising both a membrane filter and a replaceable activated carbon filter, causes the 10-cup Lifestraw to be quite lofty for a fridge pitcher: about 13 inches tall. It only fits in my refrigerator because I’d already removed a shelf to allow for tall bottles and meal kit boxes.

The Lifestraw filter is also among the slowest I’ve tested, requiring more than 20 minutes to filter on the 10-cup pitcher. And while it removes free chlorine, it does not remove chloramine—a more stable disinfectant found in about half of municipal water systems. And so if your city uses chloramine to treat its water and you’re sensitive to the aroma, be forewarned.

For those especially worried about plastic even after filtering out microplastics, Lifestraw also makes a glass version of its 7-cup water pitcher. But note that the filter housing is plastic, and so this still won’t make for an entirely plastic-free water pitcher.

Other Water Filters Tested

Waterdrop 10-Cup Lucid Water Filter Pitcher for $21: Waterdrop is a decade-old, California-based company best known for innovative countertop reverse osmosis water filters. This hands-free water filter pitcher from Waterdrop is a much more economical option than most filters; in fact, it’s the cheapest filter I’ve tested. It also sports a weirdly likable design, with a little hinged lid that’ll drop down almost frictionlessly to accept even a trickle of water into its reservoir before snapping back shut. The water filter is also the fastest I tested, dripping through a full reservoir in less than two minutes, and it’s certified to NSF standards for lead-free manufacturing and chlorine removal. Its makers also claim to have tested filtration to NSF standards on 372 other substances. So far, so good. But lab results aren’t posted publicly, nor is the identity of the third-party lab. My own testing showed that the filter is less successful at filtering chloramine, the substance used for disinfection of municipal water in half of American cities. The filter removed about 75 percent of chloramine, far worse performance than my top-pick filters.

Aaron Saran is worried about his family business. His freight distribution company PNL, which has been based in Southall in west London for 30 years, had to move last year after a developer bought the industrial site it operated from to build a datacentre. 

PNL’s new premises are smaller and lack a warehouse. Saran found it hard to find a suitable space with reasonable rent and is concerned he will have to move out of Southall and away from clients.

“One side of the business is already gone,” he said. “We don’t know how to grow.” 

Neighbouring businesses at PNL’s former location on the International Trading Estate told Computer Weekly they, too, are worse off as a result of the development.

There are around 200 datacentres in the UK, and most artificial intelligence (AI) datacentres are still in planning or under construction. The UK government has gone so far as to designate datacentres as critical national infrastructure, and has announced “AI growth zones” for datacentre construction in parts of the country. 

Although datacentres fulfil key functions, powering everything from chatbots to medical imaging, they have prompted protests, controversy and growing scrutiny. AI is driving a sharp increase in datacentre energy demand, with some projections suggesting it will exceed the electricity use of cryptocurrency mining at its peak. And research shows that datacentre energy consumption is straining local power grids and contributing to higher electricity costs for nearby residents.

Developers, meanwhile, are seeing the value of community support and are touting the benefits the developments can bring, from funding for local infrastructure, education and training, to the creation of jobs. 

But can these benefits – which rely heavily on negotiation and the goodwill of the developer – make up for the impact a development has?