Norway Moves Toward Banning Camera Wearables Dubbed 'Pervert Glasses'

The country's digital minister says the government is looking to regulate camera-enabled smart glasses and headsets — possibly banning facial recognition in public — as privacy backlash against the devices grows.

Published: 2026-09-08 Category: Quick Take Sources: TechCrunch

The proposed action

Norway is considering a ban on smart glasses and other camera-enabled wearable headsets as it seeks to regulate the controversial technology amid privacy concerns. The country's digital minister, Karianne Tung, said the government is looking to regulate camera-enabled wearables such as those made by Meta and Snap. These devices feature cameras, are internet-connected, and may soon include facial recognition — drawing ire from civil liberties advocates, who say they intrude on people's privacy. Some call them "pervert glasses," prompting considerable consumer backlash.

Tung said there is a clear trend toward combining artificial intelligence with cameras and microphones built into glasses, headphones, hats, and other everyday objects. "We must prevent this equipment from being used to monitor other people in public places," she said, adding that this may include banning the use of facial recognition of other people in public spaces. She plans to set up a group of experts to advise the government on better protecting privacy rights.

Why this is significant

Norway is small, but it is not an outlier. The backlash against camera wearables has been building across Europe and elsewhere, and Norway's move offers a concrete regulatory shape for concerns that have mostly been expressed as consumer discomfort. The explicit mention of facial recognition in public places is the sharp edge — that is where wearable cameras become surveillance rather than personal recording.

The "pervert glasses" framing matters more than its crudeness suggests. It captures a specific anxiety: a camera pointed outward from someone's face is inherently different from a phone you can see someone raise. With a wearable, you can't tell when you're being recorded, and the device is always pointed at whatever the wearer is looking at. That asymmetry is the core privacy problem, and it is not solved by better consent pop-ups.

The AI dimension

The minister's framing ties the issue directly to AI. It's not just cameras — it's cameras plus AI-powered recognition and analysis embedded in objects we wear every day. An AI that can identify faces, read expressions, and infer context from what a wearable sees is materially different from a dumb camera. The capability leap is what pushes this from a nuisance to a regulatory question.

There is also a real tension here for the tech industry. Meta and Snap have bet heavily on the idea that the next computing platform lives on your face. Norway's move is an early test of whether that bet is compatible with European privacy norms. If bans and restrictions spread, it could slow the wearable-AR roadmap significantly — not because the hardware fails, but because the social license to wear cameras everywhere never materialized. Norway is one of the first governments to name that problem and act on it, and the rest of the industry will be watching.

Source: TechCrunch, "Norway considers ban on camera-enabled wearable 'pervert glasses'" (2026).