Newsom Vetoes California Smart Glasses Privacy Bill

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday vetoed a bill that would have fined or imprisoned people for using smart glasses to record others without permission in changing rooms, doctors' offices and other spaces people generally consider private.

The legislation, known as SB 1130, also would have required companies making smart glasses or other wearable devices to include a light or another indicator showing when a person is recording video or audio, starting in 2028. It would have banned the sale of any technology designed to conceal a recording light or sound on a smart device.

Newsom wrote in a letter explaining his decision that the bill's definition of a wearable recording device was too broad. He noted that California already bars people from recording someone without their consent in spaces generally considered private.

The veto is a clear win for the wearables industry. Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses, rolled out in 2021, have grown sharply in popularity, with more than 7 million of the AI-powered devices sold last year. Meta develops the glasses with EssilorLuxottica, which owns the Ray-Ban, Oakley and Persol brands.

State Sen. Eloise Gómez Reyes, who wrote the bill, said it would have helped the state respond to the technology's rapid growth.

"Whatever we can do to protect an individual's right to privacy, we have to do," she said.

The bill would have been the first of its kind in the nation. It built on California's existing privacy protections. California is one of about a dozen states that already requires both parties' consent before a conversation can be recorded via audio or video.

Reyes' proposal was designed to clarify that the consent rules applied to smart glasses and to make it easier for someone to tell when those devices are recording. Any person who violated the bill by secretly recording someone would have faced prison time or fines of up to $1,500. A company that made devices not complying with the bill would have faced fines of up to $2,500.

TechNet, a group of executives from companies including Meta, Google and Amazon, said the legislation would have been unfair to businesses and customers.

"California already has extensive laws governing unlawful recording, and as currently written, SB 1130 is not the right approach to addressing these concerns," TechNet Executive Director Robert Boykin said in a statement.

Meta responded to the veto by touting the benefits of its smart glasses, including an initiative providing the devices to blinded veterans to help them read documents and identify objects.

"We're still in the early days of building this technology and we're committed to continuing prioritizing privacy as we build," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

About a dozen states, including California, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, require someone who wants to record a conversation to get the other person's permission.

Justin Brookman, director of technology policy for Consumer Reports, said it is important to strengthen privacy laws for wearable smart devices because it is harder to tell when a person is recording with them compared with filming on a phone or a camera.

In a letter to lawmakers earlier this year about the bill, Consumer Reports referenced a TikTok in which a woman recounted getting a wax when she realized her technician was wearing smart glasses. The technician told the content creator, Aniessa Navarro, that the glasses weren't on, but the experience was still unnerving, she said in the TikTok. The Consumer Reports letter cited a separate incident in which a woman said she was secretly filmed with smart glasses at a gym and harassed online after the video was uploaded to social media.

"The stories are enough to cause alarm, and we need to do something as soon as we can," Reyes said at the end of the legislative session.

With the veto, device makers avoid new hardware mandates and penalties at least through the current session. But with millions of AI-powered glasses now in consumers' hands and documented abuse cases mounting, similar legislation in California and other consent-required states remains a question of when, not if.