New Orleans Attacker Wore Meta Smart Glasses

The attacker who drove a rented pickup truck into a crowd in New Orleans on New Year’s Day visited the city twice before the attack and recorded video of the French Quarter with Meta smart glasses, the FBI said.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a US citizen and former US Army soldier, visited New Orleans twice in the months before the attack, in October and then November, the FBI said.

During his 31 October visit he recorded video using Meta smart glasses while he rode through the French Quarter on a bicycle as “he plotted this hideous attack”, said Lyonel Myrthil, FBI special agent in charge of the New Orleans field office.

“Our agents are getting answers to where he went, who he met with and how those trips may or may not tie into his actions here,” Myrthil said.

Smart glasses

Jabbar was also in New Orleans on 10 November, Myrthil said.

The attacker also wore the glasses, which are capable of livestreaming video, during the attack but did not activate them, the FBI said.

Meta declined to comment.

The FBI released the video recorded by Jabbar during the trip to New Orleans as well as video showing him placing two containers with explosive devices in the French Quarter at around 2 a.m. the morning of the attack.

One of the containers, a cooler, was moved a block away by someone uninvolved with the attack, the FBI said.

Jabbar killed 14 people with the rented truck, before exiting it wearing a ballistic vest and helmet and firing on police, wounding two officers before being fatally shot.

The Meta glasses in question are a branding partnership with Ray-Ban and include a built-in camera, speakers and a voice-activated artificial intelligence that can perform simple tasks.

They do not include a display, which is a feature Meta is working on with a follow-up augmented reality device.

Video recording

The Ray-Ban glasses, introduced in September 2023, were updated to include the “Live AI” features in December of 2024.

The camera can be used to record images and video that can be uploaded to Meta-owned Instagram or Facebook, or livestream to Meta-compatible platforms.

The glasses include an LED indicator to show those nearby when the glasses are recording, a feature that can’t be turned off, according to Meta.

In a separate incident, also on New Year’s Day, active-duty US Army special forces soldier Matthew Alan Livelsberger parked a Tesla Cybertruck in front of Trump International Hotel Las Vegas in Paradise, Nevada, and killed himself with a gunshot wound to the head, immediately before the truck was set afire by firework mortars and gas canisters.

The vehicles in both incidents were rented from Turo, a peer-to-peer carsharing service, but the incidents are not believed by authorities to be connected.