Norway is considering becoming the first country to ban camera-equipped smart glasses like Meta's and Snap's. Needed privacy protection, or regulation racing ahead of useful tech?
The worry is that they enable covert filming and facial recognition in public. Norway's digital minister is weighing a ban on facial recognition in public and possibly the camera-enabled wearables themselves.
What happened
Norway's Digitalisation Minister Karianne Tung said the government is considering regulating or banning camera-enabled wearables such as smart glasses from Meta and Snap, and is weighing a separate ban on using facial recognition on other people in public. An expert advisory group is being convened to guide the policy, following a similar criminal complaint filed against Meta, Ray-Ban and Oakley in Germany.
Why people disagree
Privacy advocates argue glasses that look like ordinary eyewear but can secretly record people, and could soon add facial recognition, cross a real line the law has not caught up to. Skeptics counter the devices also enable legitimate accessibility, translation and navigation uses, and that regulating capability rather than banning ownership outright is genuinely difficult to draw and enforce.
What's still unclear
Whether Norway's proposal ends up as a narrow rule targeting facial recognition specifically, or a broader restriction on the devices themselves, and whether other countries follow if it does pass.
Sources
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