The privacy crisis of smart glasses hidden in plain sight

For much of the digital age, surveillance has at least announced itself. A CCTV camera hangs conspicuously from a ceiling. A smartphone must usually be raised and pointed. A television camera arrives with lights, microphones and operators. Smart glasses are changing that bargain. The decision by courts in England and Wales to ban Meta's smart glasses from judicial buildings may therefore prove more significant than an argument about a fashionable new gadget. It is an early warning of a much larger collision between artificial intelligence, ubiquitous computing, personal privacy and national security. His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service introduced the prohibition after mounting concern that camera-equipped glasses could permit discreet photography, video and audio recording inside highly sensitive judicial environments. The glasses can sit on a person's face looking sufficiently similar to conventional spectacles while possessing capabilities previously associated with conspicuous electronic devices. Earlier this year, an English High Court judge found that a claimant had been receiving assistance through smart glasses while giving evidence. The device was connected to a nearby telephone, and the judge ultimately regarded his testimony as unreliable. New York has moved in the same direction. Its Unified Court System announced a prohibition on smart glasses across court facilities, reflecting growing recognition that judicial proceedings, witnesses, jurors, and confidential conversations require protection from technologies capable of recording almost invisibly. But the courtroom is merely where the problem has become impossible to ignore. The smartphone created a world in which almost everyone carried a camera. Smart glasses take the next step by making the camera wearable. That distinction matters enormously. When someone points a phone towards you, you can normally see the act of recording. When the recording device is embedded in spectacles, the social signal disappears. A person may be looking at you, photographing you, recording your voice or potentially allowing an AI system to analyse what it sees and hears, and the difference may be difficult for the subject to determine. Meta points to a recording indicator light as a privacy safeguard. Yet critics argue that an illuminated signal on a pair of glasses provides weaker notice than the obvious physical act of holding a camera or smartphone towards someone. The controversy has already prompted bans beyond courtrooms in some British restaurants, pubs and theatres. The fundamental issue is therefore not glasses. It is ambient artificial intelligence. We are moving from an era in which people intentionally consult computers towards one in which computers may continuously accompany us, observe our surroundings, listen to conversations and provide real-time assistance. That could be extraordinarily useful. It could also create the largest expansion of informal surveillance in modern history. Privacy becomes a national-security question if one considers what happens when millions of citizens begin walking through airports, government ministries, military installations, banks, factories, corporate boardrooms, and research laboratories wearing internet-connected cameras and microphones. A technology designed for consumers suddenly becomes a potential intelligence-gathering device. An employee could unintentionally expose confidential documents. A visitor could capture the layout of a restricted facility. Conversations involving ministers, military personnel or corporate executives could theoretically be recorded without participants recognising what was happening. The national-security question consequently extends beyond who is recording. Governments will increasingly need to ask where captured information travels, where it is processed, which AI systems analyse it, how long it is retained and who ultimately has access to it. In the geopolitics of AI, data sovereignty can no longer mean merely protecting databases sitting in government servers. Increasingly, it must include information gathered at the edge of society by billions of intelligent devices. Related News Africa cannot afford to arrive late. For African countries, the issue deserves particular attention. Because Africa frequently encounters transformative technologies after their standards, architectures and business models have already been determined elsewhere. Smart glasses and other wearable AI devices provide governments with an opportunity not to repeat that pattern. Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda and other increasingly digitised African economies should begin developing rules before mass adoption rather than after abuses become widespread. Courthouses, military facilities, immigration centres, examination halls, hospitals, banks, schools, government offices and critical national infrastructure will require clear policies concerning wearable recording devices. African regulators must also confront a more difficult question. Much of the continent's digital information is processed through technology platforms ultimately controlled outside Africa. Wearable AI could dramatically increase the quantity and intimacy of that information. A photograph is data. A conversation is data. A person's location is data. A meeting is data. A face is potentially biometric data. When intelligent spectacles combine all of them, the sovereignty question becomes unavoidable. Institutions and governments have to regulate, without destroying innovation. The answer, however, should not be an indiscriminate global ban. Smart glasses can offer considerable benefits, particularly for people with visual or other disabilities. Users have described systems that can read signs and menus, translate text and provide hands-free assistance in navigating everyday life. Disability advocates have therefore cautioned against treating every wearer as a potential surveillance threat. Medicine, industrial maintenance, logistics, education and emergency response could similarly benefit from workers receiving information while keeping their hands free. Good regulation must therefore distinguish between useful augmentation and invisible intrusion. Manufacturers should be required to make recordings unmistakably apparent. Sensitive institutions should be permitted to restrict or disable recording devices. Organisations should establish wearable-technology policies just as they previously developed policies for smartphones, removable storage and cybersecurity. Above all, societies need a renewed principle of consent. Technology should not quietly abolish social boundaries merely because engineering has made their violation convenient. The controversy surrounding Meta's glasses is therefore about something much larger than Meta. The smartphone placed the internet in our hands. Artificial intelligence is now placing it before our eyes and beside our ears. The next frontier of digital governance will be deciding whether the people around us retain the right to know when technology is watching and listening to them. For Africa in particular, the moment to establish that principle is not after millions of such devices have arrived. Governments must come up with balanced legislation and guardrails to protect citizens' privacy. About the author: Sonny Iroche is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of GenAI Learning Concepts Ltd and an Artificial Intelligence strategist and advocate. He completed the postgraduate Artificial Intelligence for Business programme at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School. He serves on Nigeria's National Artificial Intelligence Strategy Committee, the UNESCO Technical Working Group on Nigeria's AI Readiness Assessment Methodology, and the Africa AI Council of Smart Africa. He is a former Executive Director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria and writes regularly on artificial intelligence, governance, business, economic development, and Africa's digital future. Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date Open In Whatsapp