Is Norway the first country to ban smart glasses?

Norway is considering banning smart glasses that come with cameras for taking videos or photos.

Norway’s Minister for Digitalization and Public Governance, Karianne Tung, said that smart glasses put people’s privacy and security “under pressure,” while explicitly expressing concerns about certain features such as facial recognition operating in “public spaces.” To address the issue, the government plans to set up an expert group to guide future legislation, while consumer advocate Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad urged retailers to immediately freeze sales.

See more articles from iGuRu.gr when you search for news on Google.

iGuRu.gr preferred source

The facial recognition part is interesting because earlier this year, news broke that Meta was preparing to add facial recognition capabilities to its Ray-Ban smart glasses. With the technology, called “Name Tag,” a person can put on the glasses and artificial intelligence will automatically recognize people in the wearer’s field of view and link their faces to personal profiles or names.

Meta is reportedly planning to launch the controversial feature in a “dynamic political environment,” where the company expects activists who typically attack it will have their “resources focused on other issues.”

Even without facial recognition, it's not hard to see why some people find smart glasses quite annoying. They can easily record private moments of strangers.

Smart glasses have also become a favorite tool among social media “pranksters,” if you can call them that. Some smart glasses feature a light that lets others know when you’re recording video. For example, in Meta’s case, the smart glasses have a bright white LED and the device can’t record if you cover it, but some people fill the glasses’ LED with resin so they can secretly record video.

Meta recently released a mandatory firmware update that completely disables the camera during recording if it detects that the LED has been covered or tampered with in any way. But in July, the Financial Times revealed that Meta is testing internal “always-on” prototypes (codenamed Aperol) that take photos every few seconds and record audio without the warning light.

newsbot

Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.