Karianne Tung, Norway’s minister of digitalisation, told AFP she wants smart glasses regulated more strictly than they are today, and she named the feature she has in mind. “This could, for example, mean banning features such as facial recognition of other people in public spaces,” Tung said. Gizmodo carried the announcement, which also urges public and private organizations in Norway to consider their own guidelines while the government works out what a national rule would look like.
No such rule exists yet. Nothing has been drafted, nothing has been voted on, and Norway has no countrywide restriction on wearing a camera on your face. What the ministry has done is say out loud that it intends to move.
The feature Tung wants banned is not shipping on anybody’s glasses. Code for facial recognition was found sitting unused in the Meta AI app, and no such feature has reached Meta’s devices. Meta’s answer to the people who found it was that the feature would be encrypted and the information kept on the device itself, which has not settled the argument.
Meta is the biggest seller in the category right now, so a Norwegian ban on facial recognition in public would land mostly on one company.
Meta is the biggest seller in the category right now, so a Norwegian ban on facial recognition in public would land mostly on one company. Gizmodo reports Meta is looking in that direction, and Meta’s response to the discovered code was about how such a feature would work rather than whether it is coming.
Norway is not alone, and it is not first. Privacy groups in Germany have already filed criminal complaints over smart glasses, arguing they breach the country’s Telecommunications, Digital Services and Data Protection Act. The European Data Protection Board is finishing a report on the privacy risks of the category, due this summer.
Meta has not shipped facial recognition. Norway is preparing to ban it, Germany’s complaints are already filed, and the European report lands this summer.
One outlet is carrying this, and the Norwegian position is a statement to a news agency rather than a bill. Tung’s statement asks Norwegian organizations to write their own guidelines in the meantime. The capability she is proposing to regulate currently exists as unused code inside an app.