"(1) It is prohibited to possess, manufacture, make available on the market, import, or otherwise bring within the territory to which this Act applies, telecommunications equipment that, by its appearance, purports to be another object or is disguised as an object of everyday use and that, because of these circumstances or because of the way it functions, is particularly suited and intended to intercept, without that person’s knowledge, the non-publicly spoken words of another person or to record images of another person without that person’s knowledge."
IANAL, but this sounds like it's directly applicable.
Violations can be punished with up to two years in prison or a fine.
I think the light makes it pretty clear it's recording? There will always be devices made to suppress this... I'm not sure I want to go down the path of mandating an audible camera click sound like they have for smartphones in Japan
I think Apple if and when releases their smart glasses they could/should add a privacy feature. The feature would anonymize and or randomize all strangers faces in the pics and vids you take who are not in your network (Apple already knows many faces in your network now).
Though Apple may never release such glasses but Google via Samsung will purportedly be releasing theirs this fall.
So you film the ground?
It's specifically about bug-like devices which transmit the recording. A typical consumer camera does not provide simultaneous uploading, I think. A device that is just recording for storage is not regulated this way.
The law has been applied to baby monitors disguised as toys, which makes some sense to me. Smart watches and phones where the microphone can be controlled remotely, with that capability being marketed specifically for monitoring purposes, have also been targeted.
> The first layer concerns the primary way in which the controller first engages with the data subject. At this stage, controllers may use a warning sign showing the relevant information. The displayed information may be provided in combination with an icon in order to give, in an easily visible, intelligible and clearly readable manner, a meaningful overview of the intended processing (Article 12 (7) GDPR). The format of the information should be adjusted to the individual location (WP89 par. 22).
> The information should be positioned in such a way that the data subject can easily recognize the circumstances of the surveillance before entering the monitored area (approximately at eye level). It is not necessary to reveal the position of the camera as long as there is no doubt as to which areas are subject to monitoring and the context of surveillance is clarified unambiguously
> The first layer information (warning sign) should generally convey the most important information, e.g. the details of the purposes of processing, the identity of controller and the existence of the rights of the data subject, together with information on the greatest impacts of the processing
While recording by these might not always implicate GDPR directly (as it might be exempted under household exemption or the broader allowances given for journalistic purposes), it does give good idea on how unambiguous it should be.
I'd guess that the glasses first transfer the recordings to Meta who process and store them abroad for various commercial purposes. That way of working can never fall under the household or journalistic exemptions. And per GDPR the owner of the glasses is on the hook for whatever Meta is doing, because the owner is (by GDPR) contracting Meta to do data processing for him/her.
And I believe in case of European users the contract is between Meta Ireland and user, Meta Ireland is the one who would be the one doing the exporting in that case.
Now if user actually did publish it on Meta's service for broader consumption then they might become controller for that & if initial purpose was that then the initial recording is unlikely to be exempted under household exemption.
The user is supposed to have read Meta's terms and conditions and agreed to them. Of course nobody does that, but that doesn't absolve of the responsibility, it rather means that the user who uploads stuff to Meta does things in full knowledge and willingly or carelessly. It just might make Meta liable as well, because naturally their terms were sneaky, hidden, unclear and probably illegal.
And I'd guess that Meta Ireland has been sued often enough that they have some export clause deep in their conditions as well, which the user should also have read and agreed to.
* Who actually determines the essential means and purposes for each processing purpose (and is truly doing it). Fashion ID case is quite relevant here.
* If terms which grant Meta these rights and user a lot of obligations would fall under unfair terms or unfair commercial practices directives. If they do then those aspects of the terms are invalid. These could, for example, affect requirement that the user must get consent from data subject for Meta's processing operations.
Effectively, their complaint is that a specific model looks too much like normal sunglasses that other people are unable to distinguish them as such.
Article with a bit more detail:
https://www.heise.de/en/news/AI-glasses-Criminal-charges-aga...
But then probably fewer people would buy them.
Even so, it might still run afoul of German law. The German radio directive specifically forbids recording devices made to blend in and be surreptitious. The LED would have to be extremely obvious and hard to tamper with.
(It's not even a privacy directive; you're just not allowed to sell devices like that. Baby monitors have run afoul it.)
[German] https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Fachthemen/Datenportal/V...
Blue is "online offers actioned/removed", orange is "legal proceedings initiated against vendors & sellers". That's more than 7 legal actions per day in 2024.
https://thenewthings.com/p/i-paid-someone-to-hack-my-meta-gl...
(It just means the applicable law is another one, i.e. the one against recording in secret, which applies regardless of what the recording device looks like.)
[Ed.: it could still be considered a design/manufacturing defect, I guess. It certainly would fail if it were intentionally made such that the LED is trivially disabled. The courts may have to decide if this is in the grey zone.]