Meta glasses gave New Orleans truck-ramming suspect ‘cover’ in attack planning: Experts

In a self-recorded video, the suspect in the deadly New Orleans truck attack He looked like an average tourist cycling through the city’s French Quarter wearing what looked like ordinary sunglasses.

But FBI officials believe Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s bike ride in late October wasn’t meant for mere entertainment. Lyonel Myrthil, special agent in charge of the bureau’s New Orleans office, said at a news conference 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 be caught. video and photos hands-free.

“It does everything with the glasses that you can do with a cell phone, but it gives you coverage,” said Brad Garrett, a retired FBI profiler and ABC News contributor.

The FBI released video of Jabbar’s bike ride on Sunday, portraying it as a mission to reconnoitre the area he chose to carry out an act of domestic terrorism in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

attack He killed 14 people and dozens more injured.

Jabbar, an Army veteran from Houston, died in a shootout with police before detonating two improvised explosive devices planted in refrigerators on the streets of the French Quarter, according to the FBI.

The IEDs did not go off because Jabbar was shot and killed because he used the wrong mechanism to detonate the explosive device, said Joshua Jackson, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. office in New Orleans, he said Sunday.

The FBI also said Jabbar, a US-born citizen, made several videos while driving from Texas to New Orleans on Dec. 31 in which he professed support for ISIS and encouraged the terrorist group to carry out the attack. . But Christopher Raia, the FBI’s deputy director of the agency’s counterterrorism division, said investigators have found no evidence that Jabbar received help in the ISIS attack, either from within the U.S. or outside the U.S.

“I’ve never heard of (smart glasses) being used in a crime, but why wouldn’t they? I mean it’s just another technology,” Garrett said.

In addition to taking video and photos, the $300 Meta glasses have speakers so users can talk on the phone and communicate with their phone’s voice-activated digital assistant, such as Siri for iPhones. The glasses can also allow users to live stream events.

“He’s wearing sunglasses, he’s not holding a camera. Who would remember seeing him, especially in the French Quarter?” Garrett said. “In other words, it’s another way to blend in. You’re not the touristy guy taking pictures, 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 before the attack, one in October where he filmed the bike ride and another in early November.

The company introduced the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses in 2021, along with a companion app that allows users to upload content to social media.

Myrthil said Jabbar was wearing the glasses when he allegedly carried out the massacre, but did not activate the live function of the glasses before he was shot to death.

Around 3:15 a.m. on Jan. 1, Jabbar allegedly drove around a police car blocking Bourbon Street and cut people off while driving his rented Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck at a high rate of speed. He eventually crashed and exited the truck with a .308-caliber semiautomatic rifle, shooting and killing the officers, according to the FBI.

FBI officials said the attack could have been far worse if Jabbar had set off the explosives that a security video showed him planting before the French Quarter bombing began.

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment. Its in 2021 “Meta Human Rights Report”, Concerns arose about privacy violations that occurred as a result of the glasses.

“Prior to its launch, in order to mitigate the human rights concerns raised by people who might misuse this device, Meta conducted an internal analysis of the potential human rights impacts of this project,” according to the report. “The significant risks identified were: the informed consent of loved ones, the safety of people wearing the device, as well as its impact on vulnerable groups that may be at greater risk of adverse consequences from its operation, such as women and children, human rights defenders or minority groups”.

The report added: “To mitigate these issues, the due diligence exercise recommended considering various courses of action, such as: developing an acceptable use policy, a do not disturb feature, other signs, or other signs. tag content on device when it’s shared.”

John Lucich, a computer forensics expert with the New Jersey Attorney General’s office and a retired law enforcement officer, told ABC News that the legal uses of Meta glasses are beneficial for “documenting what an area looks like” and some companies use it to monitor. progress in construction sites.

“There are a lot of great reasons to have things like this. You’re hands-free, but you can still take notes, you can talk on the phone. It’s great technology,” said the Lucich president. High Tech Crime Network, a cyber security management company in Union, New Jersey. “Bad guys will definitely use it.”

However, both Lucich and Garrett said the glasses can provide a wealth of information for law enforcement to investigate crimes like the New Orleans terrorist attack.

Lucich said the FBI has likely subpoenaed Meta for communications data, requesting all videos, text messages or other messages Jabbar has uploaded through his Meta glasses.

“They’re going to get everything,” Lucich said.

Asked if meta glasses present a new challenge to law enforcement, Garrett said, “I don’t think it’s a challenge other than what we already face.”