Katy Gallagher, Australia’s minister for the public service, has asked her department for advice on whether smart glasses with cameras should be barred from Commonwealth workplaces.

She told reporters on Thursday that the public service needs “clear and consistent guidance for public servants,” warning that the devices “can raise legitimate privacy and security concerns, particularly because of their ability to record and capture information,” and that workplace policy has to keep pace with technology moving quickly.

Departmental offices fall inside the question, as do Centrelink service centres and CSIRO laboratories. Canberra casts the review as an attempt at a global benchmark; no national government has yet prohibited the frames across all its agencies.

Elsewhere the picture is patchy. New York state and the courts of England and Wales have both restricted the frames, and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly classes them as body-worn cameras, which keeps the glasses out of federal workspace.

Gallagher has framed the public service as a model employer that should be setting the benchmark other Australian workplaces follow. Town halls have gone further. Canterbury-Bankstown’s mayor, Bilal El-Hayek, branded the frames “pervert glasses” after similar moves by Brisbane, Yarra, the City of Sydney and Blacktown. Separately, 60% of a sample of Instagram clips filmed through the glasses counted as potential harassment, according to University of Sydney research.

Not everyone backs a ban: Vision Australia and advocates for Australians who are blind or have low vision treat the frames as an aid. Attorney general Michelle Rowland has said Canberra is not chasing a prohibition, while leaving the door open.

Source: The Guardian