In the first of a regular series of columns, Fixer & Future CEO Venessa Hunt has called for greater governance and Big Tech accountability for products that are being used for nefarious purposes such as surveillance and covertly recording footage of women.
There’s a difference between innovation and expansion without restraint.
Over the past week, two stories landed almost on top of each other.
One via BBC News about Meta’s AI-enabled glasses being used to covertly record women in public spaces. The other via Forbes outlining privacy concerns around Ring’s new “Search Party” feature, which uses AI to help locate lost pets by scanning neighbourhood camera footage.
On their own, each story can be debated on its merits. Together, they expose something bigger. Not a glitch, but a pattern.
This is no longer about whether someone should own a smart doorbell or a pair of connected sunglasses. It is about what happens when private consumer devices become a distributed surveillance network at national scale, powered by artificial intelligence, with limited independent oversight.
At a certain scale, features stop being features and they become infrastructure.
Meta’s smart glasses are sold as convenience. Hands-free capture. Seamless sharing. But once AI allows real-time processing, facial recognition, object identification, and database matching, we are not simply talking about recording memories. We are talking about turning every wearer into a roaming data node.
Ring’s ‘Search Party’, developed by Ring, is framed as neighbourly and helpful. Who would argue against finding a lost dog? But the feature works by allowing AI to scan footage across participating cameras. Even if participation is technically voluntary, the architecture itself is what matters. When millions of cameras can be searched collectively, this is no longer a collection of households. It is a privately operated surveillance grid.
The problem is not that someone films their front porch. The problem is what happens when footage is searchable at scale, storable indefinitely, analysable by AI, and potentially accessible to actors well beyond the original intent. The shift from device to network changes the moral equation.
Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, put it plainly in a recent interview about AI surveillance: “When you combine ubiquitous cameras with powerful AI, you create tools that can be abused by stalkers, authoritarian governments, and corporations alike.” That is not hyperbole, but it is a sober assessment of capability.
Policy vs regulation
Technology companies often argue that misuse is rare and policies exist. But policy is not the same as regulation. Internal guidelines are not the same as external accountability. And goodwill is not a governance framework.
We regulate pharmaceuticals because they affect public health. We regulate financial markets because systemic risk affects everyone. When privately owned cameras, augmented reality glasses, and AI search systems begin operating as de facto public surveillance infrastructure, the regulatory conversation should mature accordingly.
What does responsibility look like at this level?
It means acknowledging that scale introduces societal impact. It means building products with the assumption that bad actors exist. It means independent audits of AI systems. It means clear limitations on data retention and secondary use. It means meaningful transparency about law enforcement access. It means default settings that prioritise privacy rather than growth.
Most importantly, it means accepting that “we can” is not the same as “we should.”
The current posture from big tech is often framed as inevitability. Innovation marches forward. Adoption is voluntary. Users can opt out. But infrastructure does not feel voluntary when it becomes all around us without disclosure. When cameras are everywhere, when glasses record silently, when AI can search what was once forgotten, the individual’s ability to meaningfully consent diminishes.
This is not about panic. It is about proportional governance.
In an era where public trust is already strained, expanding surveillance capability without corresponding oversight feels reckless. Not dramatic. Reckless. The social licence that technology companies rely on is not guaranteed. It is earned through restraint, transparency, and accountability.
Meta Platforms has the engineering talent to build extraordinary tools. Ring has the resources to design genuinely helpful safety products. The question is whether they will match their technical ambition with civic responsibility.
Because once infrastructure is embedded, rolling it back is nearly impossible.
Big tech does not need to be vilified. It does need to grow up.
At scale, power demands supervision. And the larger the network becomes, the more that responsibility shifts from the user to the platform.
Innovation is not the problem. Unchecked accumulation is.
The line between product and public system has already blurred. The governance conversation needs to catch up.
