Smart glasses have a massive, undeniable creepiness problem. As face-mounted cameras become mainstream, public anxiety over covert recording has reached a boiling point — especially as Meta Connect is just about to start.

So at the Snapdragon Summit, I got to talk to Ziad Asghar, Qualcomm’s SVP and GM of XR about it, and he mounted a passionate defense of the smart glasses category.

But the issue is clear: while Qualcomm’s hardware-level privacy tools are genuinely impressive, they rely on a big leap of faith regarding consumer behavior and corporate accountability.

When I pressed him about the public backlash against face-mounted cameras, Asghar brushed off the anxiety as a generational growing pain.

“Today, you carry devices that have multiple cameras on them. All of you do. It’s called a phone, right?” Asghar commented. “I think different age groups are thinking about it in a very, very different way, because the younger people are so used to people blogging and vlogging and carrying their cameras in public spaces and all. So I think some of the concern honestly, in my opinion, is just because it's a new form factor.”

Fair answer, and I’ll give props to the silicon-level tools Qualcomm is building in a minute. But here’s where I have an issue with that — a smartphone and smart glasses are not socially equivalent. Lifting a rectangular slab and aiming it at someone is an overt, highly visible social cue.

However, wearing sunglasses that look near-identical to Ray-Bans while recording is inherently covert.

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