In 2016 there was a spy themed nerdy convention I was going to. As a way of getting into it. I ordered a lot of what I thought was fun spy gear. Camera sunglasses, camera wristwatches, camera pens, etc.

They worked (the pens… Their vest clip is the worst thing! I cannot put it anyway). They were low res. But I will say they this: they were 100% airgapped. No Bluetooth or WiFi. And you had to pull the data with a cable (it stored the stuff on a removable microSD card). Unhackable and private, basically.

I wish I kept a pair of camera sunglasses. I used them when on vacation to record things hand free (the camera was on the nose bridge, between the eyes) and I took some nice stuff going through the streets and in a museum (where we are allowed to film).

I also did people that they were camera glasses and pointed out where the lens was. Many were surprised but didn’t care too much. In 2016, same year I got them. I was in Chicago and I did film a cop with someone they arrested and had cuffed to a bench. The cop glared at me when he caught me looking at him. He was entirely unaware I was filming him.

The only other case I heard of at that time of someone using camera glasses was some guy in Australia who was being racially abused by his neighbors (he was Indian I think) and had camera glasses on all the time to record his neighbors when they were being assholes to him so he can report them.

I gave those glasses away a long time ago. I wish I hadn’t. All the new shit is unacceptable with a forced cloud upload and easily hackable.