Meta glasses allowed truck-ramming suspect to blend in: Experts
"It will be used by bad guys without a doubt," said one expert.
In a self-recorded video, the suspect in the deadly New Orleans truck-ramming attack appeared to be an average tourist pedaling through the city's French Quarter on a bicycle while wearing what appeared to be a pair of normal sunglasses.
But FBI officials now believe the bike ride Shamsud-Din Jabbar took in late October was not intended for mere recreation. Lyonel Myrthil, special agent in charge of the bureau's New Orleans field office, said during a news conference on Sunday that the shades Jabbar was wearing were a pair of Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, equipped with cameras in the frame, allowing him to take video and photos without using his hands.
"Everything he does with the glasses you could do with a cellphone, but it does give you cover," said Brad Garrett, a retired FBI profiler and an ABC News contributor.
The FBI released Jabbar's bike-riding video Sunday, portraying it as a reconnaissance mission to become familiar with the area he allegedly picked to commit an act of domestic terrorism in the early morning hours of New Year's Day.
The attack killed 14 people and injured dozens more.
Jabbar, an Army veteran from Houston, died in a gunfight with police before he could set off two improvised explosive devices planted in coolers on the streets of the French Quarter, according to the FBI.
The IEDs failed to go off either because Jabbar was shot to death before he could detonate them or because he used the wrong mechanism to detonate the explosives, Joshua Jackson, the special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives field office in New Orleans, said Sunday.
The FBI also noted that Jabbar, a U.S.-born citizen, made several videos as he drove from Texas to New Orleans on Dec. 31, in which he professed support for ISIS and claimed he was inspired by the terrorist group to carry out the attack. But Christopher Raia, FBI deputy assistant director from the agency's counterterrorism division, said that investigators have not uncovered evidence that Jabbar received help in the attack from ISIS -- or from any other individuals within or outside of the U.S.
"I've never heard of anybody using it [the smart glasses] in a crime, but why wouldn't they? I mean it's just another piece of technology," Garrett said.
Besides taking video and photos, the $300 Meta glasses contain speakers that allow users to talk on the phone and communicate with their phone's voice-activated digital assistant, such as Siri for iPhones. The glasses can even allow users to livestream events.
"He has on sunglasses, he doesn't have a camera in his hands. Who would even remember seeing him, particularly in the French Quarter?" Garrett said. "In other words, it's another way to blend in. You're not like the touristy guy snapping photos like we see Americans do all the time."
Myrthil said Jabbar, who served as an IT and human resources specialist in the Army, made two trips to New Orleans in advance of the attack, one in October where he recorded the bike-riding video and another in early November.
The company introduced the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses in 2021 along with a companion app allowing users to upload content to social media.
Myrthil said Jabbar was wearing the glasses when he allegedly committed the massacre, but did not activate the glasses' livestream function before he was shot dead.
Around 3:15 a.m. on Jan. 1, Jabbar allegedly drove around a police car blocking Bourbon Street and mowed down people with a rented Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck going at high speed. He eventually crashed and got out of the truck firing a .308-caliber semiautomatic rifle at police who shot him dead, according to the FBI.
FBI officials said the attack could have been far worse had Jabbar been able to set off the explosives that a security video showed him planting in advance of the French Quarter attack.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, did not respond to ABC News request for comment. In its 2021 "Meta Human Rights Report," concerns were raised about privacy violations occurring due to the glasses.
"Prior to launch, to mitigate human rights issues posed by people who may misuse such a device, Meta undertook an internal analysis of the possible human rights implications of this project," according to the report. "Salient risks identified included: informed consent from bystanders, the safety of people wearing the device, as well as its effect on vulnerable groups that might be at increased risk of adverse effects from its operation, like women and children, human rights defenders, or minority groups."
The report added, "To mitigate these issues, the due diligence exercise recommended exploring several courses of action in consideration of bystanders, such as: developing an acceptable use policy, a do-not-disturb function, other signals for bystanders or the option to tag content as being from the device when it is shared."
John Lucich, a computer forensic expert and retired law enforcement officer with the New Jersey Attorney General's Office, told ABC News that the legitimate uses of the Meta glasses are beneficial to "documenting what an area looks like" and that some companies use them to monitor the progress on construction sites.
"There are a lot of great reasons to have this kind of stuff. You're out there with nothing in your hands but you can still take notes, you can talk on the phone. It's great technology," said Lucich, president of the High Tech Crime Network, a cyber security management firm in Union, New Jersey. "It will be used by bad guys without a doubt."
However, both Lucich and Garrett said the glasses can provide law enforcement with a wealth of information in investigating crimes such as the New Orleans attack.
Lucich said the FBI has likely already served Meta with a communications data warrant, requesting all videos, text messages or other messages Jabbar has uploaded through his Meta glasses.
"They'll get it all," Lucich said.
Asked if the Meta glasses present a new challenge for law enforcement, Garrett said, "I don't think it's any more of a challenge than what we already face."