I’ve talked about smart glasses for years, and Norwegians and others will be talking about them for the foreseeable future.
2013: Sometimes it’s OK to be a Luddite (Shotwell’s vs. Scoble)
My first foray into the world of smart glasses was years before I started Bredemarket. Back in February 2013 when I wrote my Empoprise-BI post, Google Glass was the product of note. A bar in San Francisco called Shotwell’s was a flashpoint for debate. People would walk into Shotwell’s wearing Google Glass. And Shotwell’s co-owner Tom Madonna was not impressed, and (according to him) neither were the other Shotwell’s customers.
“It seems normal to them to walk into a bar with Google Glasses, even though everyone’s smirking at them.”
One person didn’t like Tom Madonna’s rejection of Google Glass: noted technologist and naked converrsationalist Robert Scoble.
“[S]oon I’ll be directed to the best bars by the Google Glass and if the bartender doesn’t like me wearing them I’ll change the review so that people get guided to go somewhere else!”
2018: Revisiting the Shotwell’s / Google Glass controversy, several years and one ocean later
Fast forward to 2018. Scoble has referenced his Naked Conversations fame by posing naked in a shower wearing Google Glass, and a patent application incorporated a line drawing of that picture. Oh, and Google withdrew Google Glass from the consumer market, repositioning it as a niche product for verticals such as factory work.
2025: Using Personal Devices at Work: Meta AI Smart Glasses at a CBP Raid?
Fast forward again to 2025, when the big provider was Meta. The company had grown from “just Facebook” to “Facebook and other software” to a full provider of all sorts of things, including “Meta AI glasses.”
But in the intervening years since 2013, the opposition to smart glasses changed. Rather than being the symbol of a tech weenie, they now symbolized a draconian invasion of privacy. Consumer companies such as Meta feared the privacy advocates, and explicitly said that Meta AI glasses were for “personal non-commercial purposes” only.
And not to be worn at, say, a Customs and Border Protection raid. But wait…
“A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent wore Meta’s AI smart glasses to a June 30 immigration raid outside a Home Depot in Cypress Park, Los Angeles, according to photos and videos of the agent verified by 404 Media.”
Now this didn’t indicate CBP organizational adoption of Meta AI glasses, nor did it indicate that the agent in question was performing facial recognition for immigrants. But this could have potentially caused problems for the agent, for CBP, and for Meta itself.
Now that I’ve looked at the past, let’s return to the present and cross the ocean.
2026: Norway’s Temporary Ban on Smart Glasses in Public Places
TechSpot reports about a place that dislikes smart glasses as much as Shotwell’s Bar did, although this place is much larger: the country of Norway. There are privacy concerns regarding someone wearing such devices in a place such as a park, a school, or a beach. While taking the time to work toward a permanent solution, Norway proposed a temporary ban on smart glasses in certain places.
“According to Torgeir Eikstad Micaelsen, Norway’s Minister of Digitalisation and Public Governance, people are increasingly concerned that smart glasses can be abused to invade privacy. Norwegians, and everyone else for that matter, can now easily become unwilling ‘guests’ in photos and video clips recorded through a new-generation pair.
“A temporary ban will give the government ‘time to conduct a thorough assessment and hold an informed debate that can lay the foundation for permanent regulation,’ Micaelsen said.”
The comments on the original TechSpot post indicate no consensus on the matter. They range from “there can be no reasonable expectation of privacy in public” to “Just BAN it everywhere.”
To be continued.
