Attorney-General Michelle Rowland has just unveiled the government’s proposed changes to Australia’s privacy laws.
They include:
A test so companies can no longer justify collecting more information than they need, or using it in ways Australians don’t expect.
A right to erasure so Australians can request social media. companies and search engines delete their personal information.
Measures to stop businesses in trading personal information, such as shopping habits and location data, without clear permissions.
Bolstering of rules and expectations on how organisations respond to data breaches and manage fraud and financial abuse.
On the issue of smart glasses, Rowland says there are serious concerns and while the Privacy Commissioner is looking into it an import ban won’t be addressed in this tranche of changes.
Finally! I’ve been waiting so long for them to budge on this, right to erasure is pretty big will be interesting to see what it actually looks like in practice though. It is quite sad that the smart glasses aren’t being banned, hopefully that can happen at some point in the future.
I think these are good changes, but I’m not entirely sure that banning smart glasses would actually be a good move.
The reason is that there are lawful reasons someone might use them that don’t involve recording people. For example, they are incredibly useful for accessibility, both for those who are hearing impaired and for people managing neurodegenerative diseases. I can imagine that a service providing live subtitles would be amazing for a deaf person.
It is already unlawful to have any other type of secret spy camera, like those hidden on clothing buttons. Since it’s already illegal to record people without their consent in most places, the rules should just focus on enforcing that rather than banning a piece of hardware entirely.
Maybe so, or maybe because its just novel factor and the price. These people likely didn’t want to fork out for Apple Vision (Pro) and Google Glass was extremely expensive when it came out too.
The point is though a ban includes everyone for all purposes and that’s a problem when someone might be using them for non-creepy reasons.
I also don’t think banning Australian stores from selling them would really work, as they’d be easy enough to import from Aliexpress or Temu anyway. A lot of stuff slips through customs which is never detected.
No they’re not, what usually happens is the creep goes and does something which triggers a report to police. Then assuming they care enough and that person’s devices are seized (yes they usually have to be prolific unfortunately) and that is due to resource allocation on law enforcement’s side then then their devices may be seized as part of an investigation. There are already laws against voyeurism which is what this would be.
and Google Glass was extremely expensive when it came out too.