The Australian Greens will introduce legislation to place a 12 month ban on the import of camera-enabled wearable devices, including Meta and Anko glasses, and to implement urgent reforms to Australia's privacy laws to prevent big tech companies selling covert surveillance as a fashion accessory.
The Bill will apply a temporary ban to imports of glasses and other covert wearable devices with an integrated camera, with an exemption for genuine disability aids. It will also update the Privacy Act so that filming, storing or sharing footage from these devices without consent is a clear breach of the law, and give the Information Commissioner and eSafety Commissioner power to investigate complaints and issue penalties.
A third of Australians already want these devices banned outright, and a Monash University study found a disturbing number of owners admit to using them to secretly record people, including in change rooms, beaches and workplaces. Schools have already banned them from classrooms over deepfake and livestreaming risks.
Senator David Shoebridge, Australian Greens spokesperson for Digital Rights, said:
"These covert wearables are a disturbing technology. They're built to let someone film you without your knowledge in a change room, on the street, or at your kid's swimming lesson, and our law does nothing about it.
"Big tech won't police itself, it never has. That's why we need Parliament to act now and stop the influx of these devices into Australia.
"Australia's privacy laws were written four decades before this technology existed, and every day we wait is another day these devices fly off the shelves with no rules attached.
"While some of these devices have lights when they are recording these are far from any real privacy protection, and many have no warnings at all
"Big corporates like Meta and Kmart see these as all about profit and have no regard to the impacts they have on communities, or the risks to children and vulnerable people.
"There are good reasons to allow recordings in public, using hand held phones or cameras for journalism, art or just sharing your day with family and friends. This bill targets covert surveillance, where no one is aware they are being recorded, and where the privacy risks skyrocket.
"A few weeks ago we saw Labor's Attorney General respond to this privacy risk by writing a letter to the Privacy Commissioner. That was about as useful as an inflatable dartboard when it comes to protecting people's privacy.
"META and other corporations profit from selling secret surveillance devices to the public. It's time our laws caught up, and that's going to require more than a letter to a bureaucrat."
