The scene seems innocuous: a young man speaks to two women on the banks of the Alster in Hamburg, followed by a little small talk in the sunshine. For the then 29-year-old Zeina, the encounter in the bikini was meaningless until she suddenly saw herself again on TikTok a short time later. The video went viral, with hundreds of comments rating her body and looks. She was filmed from her counterpart’s first-person perspective, without a smartphone or camera in sight.
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The tool was smart glasses, which are visually almost indistinguishable from a conventional model. This makes it possible to more or less discreetly record everything the wearer sees. As SWR research shows, the case described is an example of a new dimension in digital border crossing.
According to experts, the secret Hamburg recording and publication reveals a legal loophole in German criminal law. Anyone who believes that such a massive invasion of privacy is automatically punishable is wrong. The Cologne law professor Indra Spiecker, known as Döhmann, warns of the significant deficits in the current legislation: Secret filming in public spaces is prohibited, but as a rule does not result in any criminal consequences.
Recordings are currently considered punishable primarily in areas that are particularly protected from viewing – such as your own apartment or a changing room. However, according to current case law, popular places in public life such as the banks of the Alster, the Oktoberfest or swimming pools and saunas are not included.
Population demands consequences
There is a high level of awareness of the problem among the population. A representative survey by the opinion research institute Infratest Dimap on behalf of the SWR makes the extent clear: 85 percent of those eligible to vote consider it a major or very major social problem when people are secretly filmed in private or intimate situations and the recordings are misused. Among women, this figure is almost 90 percent.
The discrepancy between the discomfort of citizens and the real protection provided by the state is enormous. Those affected cannot rely on the help of the police and public prosecutor’s office, but must file a civil lawsuit for violation of personal rights on their own initiative and at their own financial risk. This is often expensive and exhausting.
The rapid development of technology fuels legal defenselessness. Models like the collaboration between Meta and Ray-Ban are booming. According to manufacturer partner EssilorLuxottica, seven million such smart glasses were sold worldwide in 2025 alone.
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The reality on platforms like TikTok or Instagram has long shown the dark side: using hashtags like “rizz” – derived from charisma – self-proclaimed dating coaches and “pickup artists” distribute photos of women on the beach, in bars or on the street. The devices do have a small light that is intended to signal that a recording is in progress. But that can be masked. When asked, Meta emphasizes that users are responsible for compliance with the law.
The new draft law apparently falls short
According to Spiecker, the law to protect against digital violence presented by Federal Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig (SPD) will do little to change the existing legal loophole. Although recordings in saunas would be explicitly punishable in the future, the draft would remain too specific and, from a legal perspective, an unfortunate solution. In particular, the formulation that recordings must be made in a “sexually specific manner” in order to be punishable offers too much scope for interpretation.
Whether filming a woman in a bikini on the banks of the Alster already meets this criterion remains legally controversial. This hardly helps those affected in practice. The justice department does not currently want to comment on the open questions and refers to the jurisdiction of the courts in individual cases. But for experts like Spiecker one thing is clear: without a fundamental, practical reform of criminal law, public space threatens to become a zone in which the right to one’s own image is de facto undermined by the spread of inconspicuous smart glasses.
(mma)
