"The number-one consumer technology trend seems to be devices that constantly listen to and record everything and everyone around us at all times — with or without consent," Janus Rose writes in a feature for The Verge, published 24 September 2026. The piece centres on two recent product moves, new listening features on the Apple Watch and a redesigned line of Meta smart glasses, and on the researchers and advocates who argue that neither company's safeguards amount to real consent.
Background
Earlier in September, Apple announced that its new Apple Watches can continuously listen to spoken words they detect and summarise what is happening nearby. Apple published a page of technical detail to address the reaction: one feature, Live Rewind, uses a rolling buffer that transcribes only the last 15 seconds of speech; another, Siri Recap, produces "high-level summaries" of a day's activity; neither is said to identify individual speakers, and an audible chime is meant to warn people nearby when the watch is transcribing. Meta, for its part, launched a version of its smart glasses with no camera at all at Meta Connect 2026, alongside further camera-equipped models, months after a marketing campaign for earlier glasses drew mockery and a lawsuit; Meta plans to offer 100 versions of its glasses by the end of the year [1].
Findings
The critics The Verge quotes do not accept that a blinking light or a chime resolves the underlying problem. Chris Gilliard, an independent privacy researcher and author of the forthcoming book "Luxury Surveillance", told The Verge that such safeguards are "after the fact and require some action from the people who are already being recorded / listened to, rather than them being able to say 'no' before a recording begins." He argues their real function is to shift the burden of privacy from the company, to the device's owner, and finally to whoever happens to be nearby [1].
Opt-out models are not consent. Being given the option to opt out rather than choosing actively to opt in are very different. One requires a person to be informed and to be enthusiastically and intentionally choosing something, and the other is passive and doesn’t actually place any power into the consumer’s hand.
Jenna Sherman, campaign director at UltraViolet, quoted in The Verge
Sherman's point is that the default decides the outcome: when a product records unless someone notices and objects, the burden of managing that falls on the person nearby, and "not everyone sees the recording light, not everyone hears whatever warning sound is playing on a watch, especially if you're at a party or a concert." The Verge also records the pushback this has produced: an app that detects nearby smart glasses over Bluetooth became one of the top paid apps on Apple's App Store, and restaurants, bars and nightclubs have started banning smart glasses outright to protect patrons' privacy [1].
Implications for Mac users
None of this is something an app on a Mac can fix: no software on a personal computer can stop a stranger's watch or glasses from listening in a café, or change what a manufacturer's terms of service allow. That is a question for lawmakers, venues and the companies that build these devices. What a Mac user does control is the computer in front of them, and the same principle Sherman describes applies there: the difference between opt-in and opt-out is who decides by default. On a Mac, most apps simply connect to the internet whenever they choose, with no chime, no light and no question asked, which is the opt-out model applied to one's own machine [1].
Recommendations
- Review which apps on your Mac and phone can access the camera and microphone, in System Settings › Privacy & Security, and remove access from anything that does not need it.
- Turn off automatic transcription or "ambient" listening features on wearables you do not use, rather than leaving them on by default.
- Ask, before buying a device that listens or records by default, what its warning signal is and whether it can be turned off entirely.
- On a Mac, prefer software that asks before it connects to the internet over software that connects silently and only discloses it in a privacy policy.
Relevance to FireAI
FireAI cannot make the world around a Mac user quieter, and it does not affect what a watch, glasses or other wearable records; that is outside what any Mac firewall can reach. It turns the opt-in principle Sherman describes into the default for the Mac itself.
- FireAI asks before an app connects to the internet for the first time, and remembers the answer as a rule; nothing is decided without a prompt or a rule the user set.
- The world map shows where every connection goes, so an app talking to a server abroad is not invisible.
- See who uses your camera and microphone shows which app turned the camera or mic on, and what that app sent while it was active.
- Paranoid mode also blocks known telemetry and requires even Apple’s own system tools to be approved like any other app.
Limitations
The Verge's account relies on named critics' assessments of Apple's and Meta's stated safeguards; it does not independently test whether Live Rewind's 15-second buffer or Siri Recap's summarisation behave exactly as Apple describes. The piece does not report sales figures for the new Apple Watch or Meta glasses, nor the outcome of the lawsuit it mentions against Meta. How many venues have adopted smart-glasses bans, and how consistently they are enforced, is also not stated.
Try FireAI, by HisnLabs free for 17 days.