Hidden danger

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Tech giant Meta is now facing a lawsuit in the United States regarding its Meta AI smart glasses for violating privacy laws and engaging in false advertising.

Using these AI glasses, one can text and send voice messages hands-free, make calls, chat with Meta AI to ask anything and use voice controls to record and share photos and videos, among other functions. Over seven million people are said to have bought these smart glasses in 2025.

The class action lawsuit in the US, led by purchasers and users of these Meta AI-enabled smart glasses sold under Ray-Ban and Oakley branding alleged that Meta and its co-manufacturer marketed the glasses as “designed for privacy” and “controlled by you” while failing to disclose how data collected by the device was actually processed and used.

It said that audio, visual and contextual data collected by the glasses were transmitted off the device to Meta’s servers and portions of the recordings, including footage captured in homes and other private spaces, are reviewed and labelled by human contractors based in Kenya as part of Meta AI-training pipeline.

A Fortune Magazine article noted that when Meta made its Ray-Ban smart glasses available, it said that they are built with privacy at its core, but the marketing was unambiguous about privacy and as a result, people are wearing them around town, or even at a court proceeding about child safety on Meta’s own platforms. Even ICE agents were reportedly wearing them in the field, it said.

According to an investigation by Swedish newspapers, the Nairobi workers were data annotators, teaching Meta’s AI to interpret images by manually labelling content. But the content they saw was often extremely sensitive, including users watching pornography. In one instance, a worker said that a man’s glasses were left recording in a bedroom where it filmed the man’s wife undressing.

Now, many schools are explicitly banning AI glasses during school hours, or inspecting glasses worn by students prior to examinations. This is because students can use the cameras in these smart glasses to scan exam papers, transmit them to external parties or use built-in AI to solve the problems in real time. The devices can also be used to access internet-enabled apps.

Channel News Australia reported that AI-powered smart glasses are emerging as serious concern for educators, with reports revealing students using the devices to cheat in exams – often undetected. It said that students scan the exam questions using built-in cameras, send them to AI systems and receive answers directly on the lens in real time.

It added that the shift has even created a small rental economy where in some markets, students are renting the glasses for a small fee specifically for use during tests.

Last April, The STAR reported that more and more college students in China rent AI glasses for 40-80 yuan (P350-P700) a day for use in exams.

Philippine educational institutions have started to raise alarm over the possible use of AI smart glasses during examinations. These glasses are being marketed for productivity and immersive learning but the fact that they can also provide real-time, hidden assistance during exams is threatening academic integrity.

AI glasses are also coming to the workplace, bringing with them an array of challenges for employers and employees alike, including unauthorized data collection such as recording sensitive meetings and conversations.

Hurdling the toughest test

The Asian Development Bank’s April 2026 special update on the Middle East conflict is worth our attention.

The brief, titled “The Impact of the Middle East Conflict on Asia and the Pacific: An Updated Analysis,” is grim reading. Regional growth gets cut to 4.7 percent. Inflation climbs to 5.2 percent. The ADB warns that the energy shock is “not purely price-based but reflects a disruption to the logistics and availability of energy supply.”

Buried in its tables, though, is something less obvious: a careful, technical account of how the Philippines has actually handled the global oil shock. That account reflects well on the Marcos administration’s handling of the problem.

The bank’s economists surveyed 44 of its member economies. They sorted responses into eight categories: fuel subsidies and excise tax cuts, price controls, demand reduction, strategic reserve adjustments, targeted assistance, accelerated renewable energy investment, supply-side actions and a final bucket of “other” measures like price monitoring and trade-route diversification.

The Philippines appears in seven of those categories.

The detail that should stand out is the supply-side row, where only India and the Philippines appear. That row is for governments doing more than cushioning consumers – those that diversify import sources and adjust fuel standards so supply keeps coming. Two governments in the region met that bar. Ours was one of them.

Last March, the President issued an executive order declaring a state of national emergency in light of conflict in the Middle East and the resulting imminent danger posed upon the availability and stability of the country’s energy supply.

To safeguard national interest by ensuring the stability of domestic energy supply, the uninterrupted delivery of essential services, the continuity of economic activity and the welfare of its citizens and to mitigate the impact of the Middle East conflict, the EO also adopted the United Package for Livelihoods, Industry, Food and Transport (UPLIFT) as the government’s coordinated, whole-of-government response framework.

The ADB in its brief did not name UPLIFT but it did map the Philippine response onto the kind of whole-of-government coordination that UPLIFT was designed to deliver, with critical departments working under a single Cabinet-level committee chaired by the President himself.

On April 16, the President signed EO 114 temporarily suspending excise taxes on liquified petroleum gas or LPG and on kerosene for three months. The two are the kitchen and lighting fuel of working-class homes as well as small restaurants and carinderias.

On the supply side, government-owned Philippine National Oil Company procured more than one million barrels of diesel to shore up local inventory. The government also helped Petron secure 700,000 barrels of Russian crude under a US sanctions waiver.

ADB’s own four-point policy menu – allow price signals to work, target fiscal support to the vulnerable, keep central bank action measured, curb non-essential energy demand – lines up almost item by item with what our government has actually delivered.

ADB was blunt about the wrong response. Blanket subsidies and price controls, it said, are fiscally costly and distort incentives. Many governments in the region went heavy on exactly those instruments. On the other hand, the Philippines used staggered pump-price adjustments to preserve price signals while cushioning the most exposed sectors.

Over a million public utility vehicle drivers received direct cash subsidies while P20-per-kilo rice was made available to low-income households through KADIWA outlets. Tuloy Pasada service contracting put extra peso-per-kilometer payments into the hands of PUV operators struggling with high diesel prices. A ten-peso per liter diesel discount lowered fuel costs for drivers and allowed them to continue plying the streets.

By listing the Philippines in nearly every policy row, the ADB sent a sobering statement: this government did not sleep through the alarm. It mounted one of the most active responses in Asia and the Pacific. The President’s leadership was tested by a real crisis, and so far it has held up under that test.

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