His Majesty's Courts & Tribunals Service will now confiscate Meta smart glasses from anyone entering judicial buildings in England and Wales, returning them on the way out, following similar bans in New York courts and a growing list of UK pubs and restaurants.
The move follows a case in which a claimant, Laimonas Jakštys, was accused by a judge of being coached through smart glasses during cross-examination in a high court dispute over a property company's directorship; he denied it. Separately, members of Mark Zuckerberg's own security detail were spotted wearing the glasses in a California courtroom in February, prompting the judge to threaten them with contempt.
HMCTS admits it doesn't actually track how many smart-glasses incidents have occurred, and smartphones remain welcome in court on the honor system that they won't be used to record proceedings. Meta sold seven million pairs of the glasses last year and declined to comment on the ban, noting only that a light blinks when they're recording — assuming nobody's figured out how to cover it, which the company says it's working on.
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