Lawmakers are once again turning up the legal heat on smart glasses. Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Ciresi (D-Montgomery) has introduced a bill that would require every pair of smart glasses “manufactured, sold, and used” in the state to have a “visual indicator” that tells others when they’re recording.
From my reading, that doesn’t mean that the hardware has to be manufactured in Pennsylvania for the law to apply, just that the law would encompass all of those scenarios. Here’s the salient passage from the proposed House Bill 2603:
“An individual shall not operate a wearable recording device to capture sound or video of any other individual in any place without the other individual’s actual knowledge if: (1) the wearable recording device does not have a visual indicator; or (2) the visual indicator of the recording device has been permanently or temporarily disabled.”
For context, the vast majority of smart glasses already have a “visual indicator” to tell people when they’re recording, including Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses and the Meta Ray-Ban Display. On those pairs, there’s a green LED on the front of the glasses that turns on when pictures or videos are being captured. There is, however, no current legal requirement that those privacy features be put in place, nor is there any law preventing disabling such a light—at least not yet.
Beyond requiring a visual indicator, Ciresi’s bill takes things further by proposing that retailers would be “required to clearly inform users of Pennsylvania’s recording laws.” The bill also aims to prohibit anyone from disabling the visual indicator on a pair of smart glasses, though it doesn’t outline what a potential penalty would be for doing so.
This legal scrutiny comes to light at an interesting time. Just last week, journalist Joanna Stern reported that people across the country have been taking money in exchange for removing the privacy light on the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses with a drill, allowing them to record without anyone’s knowledge, which is arguably worse than previously reported methods. Those involve covering the LED with a specially designed vinyl sticker meant to fool sensors in Ray-Bans that clock when the indicator is being obscured.
Whether the bill will actually pass remains to be seen, but it’s clear that scrutiny is building around smart glasses, and Meta’s icky plans to add facial recognition to its smart glasses aren’t the only thing on lawmakers’ radar.
