TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod argues in a column that South African companies should write a smart-glasses policy now, before the devices are common in their offices. This is his opinion and analysis, not a ruling or official guidance.
The trigger: Meta and EssilorLuxottica said last month that Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta glasses will go on sale officially in South Africa later this year. Smart glasses add video, shot at eye level, of everything the wearer looks at, including slides and screens, and nobody asks a colleague to take their glasses off. A formal launch with retail partners and marketing budgets will put far more of them into circulation, McLeod writes, including in offices.
What the law says, according to the column
The Regulation of Interception of Communications Act (RICA) prohibits recording a conversation you are not part of, but section 4 lets anyone who is a party to a conversation record it without telling the others. That includes the colleague across the boardroom table, a supplier pitching for a contract, or a candidate in a job interview.
The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) does not apply to processing “in the course of a purely personal or household activity”, a gap TechCentral highlighted in July. McLeod says that exemption offers employers no cover: an employee recording a client meeting for work is not engaged in a household activity. POPIA’s responsible party is whoever determines the purpose and means of processing, and when a recording is made for work, that may well be the company, which could then be answerable for recordings it did not know existed and does not control.
The Information Regulator, which met Meta in September while the company demonstrated the glasses, was cautious in its responses to TechCentral this week. Several existing laws “may potentially be relevant”, it said, and the legal framework “may be capable of addressing a range of harmful conduct”. The column notes the Regulator could issue a guidance note, as it already has for direct marketing and for children’s personal information, and argues it should do so before the glasses go on sale officially.
What other countries are doing
Courts in England and Wales have prohibited Meta’s glasses, and New York’s court system banned all recording eyewear from its buildings from 20 July. British cinema operators are drawing up their own rules. In Australia, public service minister Katy Gallagher has asked the public service commission whether camera-equipped glasses should be barred from government workplaces altogether. Germany’s federal and state data protection authorities said in September that wearers are responsible for their recordings and that an indicator LED is not enough to tell people they are being filmed, and the Dutch regulator has said filming others with camera glasses is “almost always” prohibited. Neither needed new legislation; both set out how existing law applies. Norway’s government has said it will propose a temporary ban on AI glasses in places such as schools, parks, beaches and shopping centres, which McLeod is sceptical about: a ban on devices that look like ordinary sunglasses would be close to unenforceable on a beach.
What a policy needs
McLeod says a policy need not be complicated. It should set out where the glasses may not be worn, such as boardrooms, server rooms, HR or legal meetings and anywhere customer data is on screen; say whether staff may use them for work and, if so, which features must be switched off; tell visitors what to do at reception (New York’s courts simply ask people to hand them over for safekeeping); and cover how work recordings are stored and deleted. The same risks apply, he writes, in trading floors, hospital wards, laboratories, data centres and client meetings.
His closing point: until a policy exists, a company has left the decision to whoever walks into its next board meeting wearing a pair. For more on privacy and technology, see our Tech & Telco coverage.
