Four senior federal officials have been ordered to appear in person before the Lahore High Court on 15 October over the unregulated sale of camera-equipped smart glasses in Pakistan. Chief Justice Aalia Neelum issued the summons after their departments failed to file replies to notices already served.
The officials named are the Interior Secretary, the Chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue, the Commerce Secretary and the Member Customs. Summoning secretaries and a tax chairman in person over a consumer electronics product is unusual, and it reflects the court’s stated displeasure at the absence of any response.
What the petition asks for
The case concerns eyewear fitted with cameras and microphones — devices built to look like ordinary glasses while able to record or livestream the people around the wearer without their knowledge. Ray-Ban Meta glasses are the product most often cited.
- An immediate halt to the sale of camera-equipped glasses
- An explanation from the authorities responsible for permitting their import
- A stop to customs clearance of new consignments
- A review of any approvals already granted by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority
- A ban on the devices inside courts, airports and government buildings
- Disclosure by the cybercrime agency of complaints it has received about them
The constitutional basis invoked is Articles 9 and 14 — the right to life and liberty, and the inviolability of the dignity of the individual. The petition argues that unrestricted use of covert recording devices in public is incompatible with both.
A gap in the approval regime, not a breach of it
The central difficulty is that Pakistan has no rule written for camera-equipped eyewear. Devices of this kind enter the market through PTA’s general import and type-approval process for telecom and IT equipment — a framework designed to check radio emissions and network compatibility, not to assess whether a product enables covert recording.
That distinction matters for what the court can usefully order. If approvals were granted under a process that never contemplated this category, the officials summoned may be able to say accurately that nothing was done wrong and that no rule was broken. The absence of a rule is the complaint.
Meta has not formally launched the product in Pakistan. Counsel told the court the glasses are nonetheless already on sale in Lahore’s electronics markets, including Hafeez Centre — which points to grey-channel import rather than an authorised distribution agreement, and raises a question about what a review of PTA approvals would actually find.
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Who appeared, and who did not
Two respondents engaged with the proceedings. Hassan Naqvi, Deputy Director of the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency, attended, and Deputy Attorney General Riffaqat Ali Dogar submitted an NCCIA report to the court. PTA’s legal adviser, Muhammad Afzal Khan, sought additional time to file the authority’s response, which the court granted.
It was the ministries and the revenue side that did not reply, and it is their heads who must now attend. The contents of the NCCIA report have not been made public, and that document is likely to matter more than any of the submissions still outstanding — it is the only evidence before the court on whether these devices have actually generated complaints.
One case or two
Reporting on the petitioner’s identity does not agree. One account names the petitioner as Nadira Bibi; another names citizen Husnainul Abideen, represented by advocate Shahram Saqi, in a petition raising closely similar grounds before the same Chief Justice.
That may indicate two separate petitions on the same subject rather than an error in one outlet. We have not been able to confirm which, and the distinction is worth settling because it affects whether the court is hearing a single challenge or a cluster of them.
Pakistan is not the first to run into this
Camera eyewear has created the same problem everywhere it has appeared, and the pattern of response is consistent. Regulators discover that the device is legal to import, legal to own and legal to wear, and that the conduct they object to — recording someone without consent — is already covered by existing law whether the camera is worn on the face or held in the hand.
What makes the eyewear different is not the recording but the absence of a visible cue. A raised phone tells bystanders what is happening. Glasses do not, which is why manufacturers have added capture indicator lights and why the arguments abroad have centred on whether those indicators are adequate rather than on whether the product should exist.
Neither the petition nor the reporting addresses whether the units sold in Pakistan have working indicators, which matters for grey-channel imports in particular. Devices brought in outside an authorised channel may be sold without the firmware or markings the manufacturer ships elsewhere, and that is a question customs and PTA are better placed to answer than a court.
The enforcement problem a ban would face
A prohibition on sale is enforceable at the retail counter and at customs. It is considerably harder to enforce against a product whose entire design premise is that it does not look like what it is.
The narrower reliefs sought — restricting the devices in courts, airports and government buildings — are the more practicable ones, because those are controlled-entry locations where screening already happens. A general import ban, by contrast, mostly moves the trade from Hafeez Centre’s open shelves to its back rooms.
The more durable answer is a rule that names the category and sets conditions on it, which is a job for the legislature or for PTA’s framework rather than for a writ petition. What the petition has achieved is to put the absence of such a rule on the record, with four officials obliged to explain it in person on 15 October.
