Key Notes
- Norway's Digitalisation Minister Karianne Tung says the government will regulate smart glasses and similar camera-enabled wearables (from Meta, Snap and others) more strictly, with a specific proposal to ban facial recognition of other people in public spaces.
- Tung is forming an expert advisory group on the rules, with no draft law, timetable, or enforcement plan yet announced.
- Consumer Council digital policy head Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad welcomed the move but called it insufficient, noting Meta's facial-recognition feature ("Name Tag") is reportedly built and ready to deploy, and that banning just that function "would not prevent wearers from filming people covertly".
Norway’s government is preparing to regulate smart glasses and similar camera-equipped wearables more strictly, Digitalisation Minister Karianne Tung said in a statement quoted by AFP. The devices under scrutiny include products from Meta and Snap, which have pushed camera-equipped glasses into the mainstream consumer market over the past two years.
It is worth being precise about what is actually being proposed. Despite headlines describing a potential outright ban on the glasses, Tung’s specific proposal is narrower: a ban on facial recognition features that would let a wearer identify strangers in public. “This could, for example, mean banning features such as facial recognition of other people in public spaces,” she said, describing it as one tool under consideration rather than a plan to prohibit the devices themselves.
Tung framed the concern as part of a broader pattern. “There is a clear trend that artificial intelligence is being combined with cameras and microphones that are built into things like glasses, earbuds, caps, and other items we use in everyday life,” she said. “We must avoid this equipment being used to monitor other people in public spaces.” Some consumers and critics have taken to calling the devices “pervert glasses,” a term reflecting concern that the cameras allow people to be filmed discreetly and without consent in public settings.
Tung plans to appoint a group of outside experts to advise the government on strengthening privacy protections, and is urging both public and private organizations to draft their own interim guidelines while formal rules are developed. No draft legislation, timetable or enforcement mechanism has been announced, and the government has not said when a proposal might reach parliament.
The Gap Between the Fix and the Problem
The Norwegian Consumer Council welcomed the announcement but argued it doesn’t go far enough. Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad, the council’s head of digital policy, said Meta has already built a facial-recognition feature, internally known as “Name Tag,” that would let wearers identify people in their field of view and pull up information through Meta’s AI assistant; the company reportedly shelved the feature in June after the American Civil Liberties Union called it “a red line society must not cross.” Myrstad said the technology remains ready to deploy and called the misuse risk “enormous.”
His sharper critique targets the logic of the proposed fix itself: banning facial recognition specifically would not address the more basic problem, that these glasses let wearers record other people covertly regardless of whether any recognition software is running. A stranger filmed on a public street has no way of knowing whether the footage will ever be run through facial recognition, so restricting just that one downstream function leaves the upstream capability, discreet recording without consent, largely untouched. Myrstad is pushing retailers to stop selling the devices entirely until legal clarity exists, a more sweeping response than the government has proposed.
Norway is not acting in isolation. France, Germany and the Netherlands have separately considered restrictions on Meta’s smart glasses following earlier reporting on planned facial-recognition features, and Meta has faced lawsuits after workers reportedly reviewed sensitive footage, including nudity, captured by the devices. If Norway does proceed with formal legislation, it would be among the first countries to write rules specifically targeting this category of wearable technology, a marker other governments wrestling with the same privacy question are likely to watch.
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