A local domestic abuse charity boss ‘terrified’ smart glasses could be used to control victims
Leeway's chief executive fears recording glasses could provide perpetrators with another way to stalk or control partners
The head of a domestic abuse charity in the East of England says she is "terrified" by the potential for smart glasses capable of recording video to be misused by perpetrators.
Jools Ramsey-Palmer, chief executive of Leeway Domestic Abuse Services in Norfolk and Suffolk, raised concerns about products such as Meta's smart glasses, which can be used to capture photographs and video.
Her warning comes as the national domestic abuse charity Refuge says its specialist team is seeing smart accessories, including glasses, being used to secretly record survivors.
Refuge says referrals to its Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment team increased by more than 62% in 2025 compared with the previous year, with the final three months of 2025 its busiest quarter on record.
It also reported a 24% increase in referrals involving survivors aged under 30.
‘The ramifications are slightly terrifying’
Ms Ramsey-Palmer said her concern was that recording glasses could become another piece of technology available to perpetrators of domestic abuse.
She said: “My concern obviously is, oh, these are another piece of IT equipment that perpetrators could use in terms of domestic abuse, particularly around coercion and control, particularly around stalking.”
She also raised concerns about recordings potentially being posted online without the subject's consent.
“The ramifications are slightly terrifying, if I'm honest,” she said.
“Why would we create yet another way for people to hold control over other people, you know, without consent?”
Ms Ramsey-Palmer acknowledged that smart glasses could have legitimate uses, including for people working in areas such as law enforcement or investigations.
But she said she feared the technology could also provide another avenue for abuse.
She added: “It just feels like another avenue which will be picked up by perpetrators and used in other ways to be abusive towards partners.”
Wearable technology and domestic abuse
Refuge says its frontline specialists are encountering increasingly complex cases involving wearable technology.
The charity says smart glasses have been used to secretly record survivors, while health trackers including rings and watches have allegedly been misused to monitor people's movements, location and fertility information.
In one case shared by Refuge, a survivor given the pseudonym Mina left a smartwatch behind when fleeing an abusive relationship.
According to the charity, her perpetrator subsequently located her at emergency accommodation after accessing linked cloud accounts.
Refuge says Mina was later located at another refuge by a private investigator hired by her perpetrator, with technology suspected of having been used to track her.
The charity has called for the potential safety implications for women and girls to be considered during both the design of wearable technology and the development of regulations surrounding it.
Emma Pickering, head of Refuge's Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment Team, said the charity repeatedly saw what could happen when devices reached the market without sufficient consideration of how they might be misused.
She said protections for survivors needed to keep pace as wearable technology became increasingly integrated into everyday life.
Could smart glasses also help victims gather evidence?
Ms Ramsey-Palmer also cautioned against suggesting survivors secretly use recording glasses themselves to gather evidence of abuse.
While she acknowledged that might initially appear useful, she warned that discovery of a recording device by an abusive partner could put a victim in danger.
She said: “On the face, you think, ‘Oh, well, what a cracking idea.’ But of course, that's not at all. That's incredibly dangerous.”
She added: “Could you imagine if they found a secret recording device in the house?”
Ms Ramsey-Palmer questioned whether further safeguards or regulation of wearable recording technology might be needed, although she said she did not know what form that should take.
She said technological developments often had legitimate purposes but could subsequently be used in unintended ways.
“There will be people who absolutely think this is a really cool gadget,” she said, adding that technology created for one purpose could be used by others for something “quite unexpected and at times unpleasant”.
“There have to be safeguards in place for that,” she said
We've reached out to Meta for comment.