Smart Glasses Recording-Indicator Trust Model (2D)

Recording State

Indicator Architecture

Attack Surface

Firmware compromise 0%

BLE beacon jamming 0%

Bystander distance 3.0 m

Live Readouts

LED reliability

100%

BLE detection P

Covert recording incidents (LED suppressed while recording)

How it works

This is the same real trust model as the 3D version, drawn as a literal circuit schematic instead of a rendered device: a physical LED indicator and an independent wireless recording-state beacon (e.g. BLE advertisement), each with a different trust root.

Hardware-wired LED:
  LED sits directly on the camera's power rail (one wire, no switch)
  → LED state ≡ camera power state, reliability = 100%, always
  (malicious firmware cannot dim a wire it doesn't control)

Software-controlled LED:
  LED is driven by a separate GPIO line from the firmware/OS
  → LED state = firmware.setPin(led, value), reliability R = 1 − c
  c = firmware compromise fraction ∈ [0,1]
  each recording tick, P(indicator suppressed) = c

BLE bystander beacon (independent of the LED):
  received signal power  S(d) = P0 / d²         (inverse-square falloff)
  effective SNR          = S(d) · (1 − j)        j = jamming fraction ∈ [0,1]
  detection probability  P_detect = clamp01(SNR)

Hardware-wired vs software-controlled — the toggle rewires the schematic: in hardware mode the LED sits in series on the camera's own power trace, so current MUST pass through it whenever the camera is powered. In software mode the LED instead hangs off a GPIO pin controlled by the firmware box — a second, separate current path the camera's power flow does not depend on.
Firmware compromise slider — with a software-controlled LED, this is the probability a malicious firmware GPIO write blanks the LED on any given tick while the camera-active data flow (the animated packets on the sensor→storage trace) keeps moving. It has zero effect on a hardware-wired LED because there is no software path to compromise.
BLE jamming slider — attenuates the second, wireless channel; the bystander's detection probability falls with both distance (inverse-square) and jamming strength.
Covert recording incidents — counts every tick where recording was active but the LED failed to light, i.e. a bystander looking directly at the glasses would have seen nothing.

Defense-in-depth relevance: this two-channel design (physical indicator + wireless beacon, as used by products like Ray-Ban Meta) means an attacker must defeat an unspoofable hardware circuit and a wireless protocol at once to record covertly — collapsing either channel alone is not enough.

Recording LED Current / data flow BLE beacon ring Bystander (aware)