If there’s one thing that has people concerned about the growing wave of smart glasses, it’s privacy. Sure, we’ve had cameras at our sides for ages now, but never on our faces in a discreet form factor that makes it hard (sometimes impossible) to recognize when someone is recording. Because of that potential shift, people are reacting accordingly to protect spaces that should remain at least relatively private. By that, I mean they’re restricting smart glasses or just banning them outright.
The latest ban comes courtesy of the cruise liner, Royal Caribbean, which now prohibits the use of any glasses that can record video and take pictures in various parts of its ships. Altogether, the partial ban sounds pretty reasonable, disallowing smart glasses from being used in “casinos, spa service areas, restrooms, locker rooms, medical facilities, security screening locations, youth facilities, during back-of-house tours, in crew areas, or anywhere there is a reasonable expectation of guest and crew privacy.” Basically, just don’t be an a**hole when you use smart glasses, and you’re good.
It’s reasonable, for sure, and also completely unenforceable.
The thing about smart glasses nowadays is that they’re hard to identify. As someone who’s been wearing Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses consistently for a couple of years now, I’m fairly certain that almost no one recognizes that I have them on. They’re about the size of regular glasses, the cameras blend in pretty seamlessly, and even despite Meta’s safety measures, recording is easy to miss.
To let people know you’re taking a picture or video, Meta’s AI glasses have an LED indicator (a green light) on the outside that turns on the minute you begin recording. I suppose if you know what to look for on a pair of smart glasses, it’s a semi-apparent sign that someone is recording, but if you’re unaware of its existence (like many are), it’s easy to overlook. That’s not even counting the fact that it can be obscured with a little work and $60.
© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo
Then there’s the matter of enforcement. If smart glasses are difficult to spot (and they are), who is going to be responsible for actually sniffing them out and making sure they’re being used appropriately? If you’re banking on an underpaid worker on a cruise liner going out of their way to stop new wave glassholes from recording discreetly in inappropriate locations, I would adjust your expectations ASAP. Royal Caribbean’s threat is that they’ll confiscate smart glasses used improperly, but that sounds like a whole other can of worms to me, especially if anyone caught recording isn’t keen on handing their expensive Ray-Bans over. And what if they have prescription lenses? Would you deprive a poor astigmatist of his reading spectacles?
Cruise liners aren’t the only entities trying to ban smart glasses, either. Recently, the College Board banned wearing smart glasses while taking the SATs, which is another no-brainer. Smart glasses, especially those with AI and internet access, would be an adept cheating tool and could be used to get answers to all sorts of stuff quietly and quickly. That ban feels even more hopeless, though, if I’m being honest. As I pointed out recently, smart glasses that could be useful for cheating, like those made by Even Realities, are even harder to spot since they don’t have cameras or speakers and pass for normal glasses.
To put it mildly, the whole thing is a bit of a mess. Google Glass may have been partially impeded by bans way back in 2013 when some bars, restaurants, and casinos basically outlawed them, but that was a different world and a different product. The fact of the matter is that banning today’s smart glasses is going to take effort and consistency. And those traits, my friend, aren’t always easy to come by.
