Smart eyewear users will be strictly monitored.
It’s a sign of the times: Security conference DefCon has added smart glasses to its list of banned audio- or video-recording devices.
The organizers have said that, with no consistent way to understand whether smart glasses are recording or not, they have taken the step to ban them in their entirety on the grounds that they erode trust and invade people’s privacy.
Putting corrective lenses in the smart glasses will be no excuse: DefCon insists that visitors bring a pair of glasses without the smarts instead.
The smart glasses ban has been added to DefCon’s already strict rules on photography, which among other things ask visitors not to take group shots and to use “portrait” mode (or a low F-stop for those with old-fashioned cameras) to focus on the foreground, so that people in the background appear blurred.
The smart glasses market has gone up a notch lately. Google and Samsung have both announced Gemini powered eyewear running on Android. Apple is looking to launch its new generation of smart glasses next June, citing privacy concerns as the reason for the delay.
It is not only tech conferences that are getting jumpy about smart glasses. CISOs are beginning to get wary about their impact on organizations and whether their data is secure.