Should Meta’s “pervert glasses” be banned?
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What real‑world incidents sparked the “pervert glasses” controversy?
Yep, here I am just minding my business at the airport and this guy starts to talk to me. Didn't know he was recording me. They've been dubbed pervert glasses and with good reason. So this morning I wake up and my brother sends me this post on Instagram. No idea he recorded this whole conversation with his glasses. Is that just creepy? He never asked.
But this week, the federal government ruled out an import ban on smart glasses as concerns about the technology rise and examples of their misuse flood the internet.
Hey, um, I want to introduce myself to you. I think you're beautiful.
Oh, God, you
did this at church. Would you just go away? You and your glasses. Go away.
What are you
talking about?
Go away. Just trying to be nice.
Go away. I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to 7am. Today, Associate Dean of Interaction Technology and Information at RMIT, Dana McKay, on the rising popularity of smart glasses and the dangers if wearable surveillance technology becomes widespread.
How do smart glasses differ from traditional phone cameras in terms of covert recording?
It's Thursday, September 3. So, Dana, smart glasses have been around for a while now, but they're really just starting to take off in the last few months. We've seen that Kylie Jenner PR campaign with the meta glasses in supermarkets in Australia, in Kmart. You can buy them now for less than $100. So tell me, as the tech becomes more accessible and more popular, what are the dangers here? Yeah.
look, we're used to people having phones and cameras, you know, but you can see when someone's pointing a phone at you. It's really obvious. We're used to certain professions wearing body-worn cameras. But again, you can see that that camera is being pointed at you. So it's really obvious. The problem with these things is they look just like glasses, like they're not totally obvious. So essentially, they're a really non-obvious piece of recording technology that point a camera at whatever your eyes are pointed at. And, you know, that can be in places where you wouldn't expect to find a camera, you know, gym bathrooms, change rooms, all of these types of places that we would normally expect to be private, private conversations with people that you maybe wouldn't expect to share a conversation with.
The girl that was giving me the wax or the esthetician, whatever you want, the waxer, she was wearing meta glasses and I didn't notice it at first. And then it was like, I'm like looking at her and I like looking at her glasses and then I'm like, are you wearing meta glasses?
You know, your doctor or there was a recent case of a surgeon who was told he wasn't to wear his recording glasses during surgery anymore. So there's a lot of opportunity for covert recording.
But then after that, I kind of like shut down and I could not stop thinking like,
What types of harassment and privacy violations have been documented with these glasses?
Could this girl be filming me right
now? And we've already seen plenty of cases of the glasses being misused. There's these videos around of men who are filming women that they're trying to pick up.
Hey, you are a very attractive lady. Yeah. Is there a sister?
That's my daughter.
Yeah. Can I take her on a date? Hi, what's your name?
And that's what's led to the glasses being called pervert glasses. Can you describe some of those videos to me?
So the first case I remember of seeing this in Australia was a police complaint was made about a man who had, I suspect, one of the first pairs of these glasses to enter Australia in the country. And he was wandering down Bondi Beach and talking to women in bathing suits and then uploading their interactions to Instagram. Holy
shit. Yo, can I get your number? You are sexy. Yo, can I get your numbers? Yo, I'm going to need all your numbers, like right now. Yo, cough that shit up.
What does university research reveal about the prevalence of non‑consensual recordings?
And the woman was like, hang on a minute, I don't remember being recorded, what's going on here? And New South Wales is not what's called a single-party recording state, so if he wanted to talk to them, he had to have their permission to make that recording, and he didn't. There's been a really good piece of research come out of the University of Sydney just recently, looking at what kinds of videos are being posted on Instagram from these smart glasses.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What real‑world incidents sparked the “pervert glasses” controversy?
0:01–1:15
2
How do smart glasses differ from traditional phone cameras in terms of covert recording?
1:15–3:10
3
What types of harassment and privacy violations have been documented with these glasses?
3:10–4:10
4
What does university research reveal about the prevalence of non‑consensual recordings?
4:10–6:08
5
What safeguards does Meta claim to have built into its smart glasses?
6:08–8:30
6
Why might a blanket import ban on smart glasses be ineffective or counter‑productive?
8:30–10:49
7
How could new privacy laws like the right‑to‑erasure protect victims of covert recording?
10:49–13:08
8
What long‑term societal impacts could widespread wearable surveillance have?
13:08–15:56
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