As smart glasses show up more often at events and in meeting rooms, here’s what you can put in your terms of entry — and what could land your organisation in hot water.
Smart glasses are turning up more often at events, in cafes and in meeting rooms, and businesses around Australia are starting to respond.
An Adelaide cafe recently banned them over privacy concerns and Brisbane City Council has restricted non-consensual recording with camera-enabled devices at its public pools.
If you’re the one setting terms of entry for a client event, an office visit or a company function, it’s worth understanding what you can and can’t enforce.
Dr Mark Giancaspro, senior lecturer at the University of Adelaide Law School, explained more when writing for The Conversation.
An outright ban is riskier than it looks
Banning smart glasses outright, according to legal experts, carries real risk under Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act.
Smart glasses can be fitted with prescription lenses and some models offer accessibility functions – hands-free calling and live captioning for people with hearing difficulties, or captions overlaid in the wearer’s line of sight. Some can even transcribe conversations, which helps people with visual, hearing or cognitive impairments.
A blanket ban risks discriminating against someone who has a legitimate reason to wear them. And businesses that get this wrong can face fines, compensation orders or a requirement to redress the harm caused.
The safer model
Rather than banning the device, the more defensible approach (and the one Brisbane City Council has taken) is to prohibit non-consensual recording specifically.
This lines up with existing surveillance device laws in most states and territories, which already prohibit using a device to record someone’s private conversation without their consent. (Tasmania and the ACT are the exceptions – their listening device laws don’t currently extend to optical/recording devices.)
Framing your policy around consent to be recorded, rather than the glasses themselves, protects attendees’ privacy without risking a discrimination claim against someone using the technology for a real access need.
What this means for setting terms of entry
If you’re responsible for an event, a client visit or an office policy, a few practical points are worth building in:
- Put your terms clearly at the point of entry. For a venue without formal membership (a cafe, function space or meeting room) any condition needs to be visible where people enter. Once someone’s inside, they’re taken to have agreed to what’s displayed.
- For anything membership-based (a gym, a club, a professional association), the governing contract is what applies. There may be a requirement to notify members of a rule change in advance – worth checking before assuming a new policy takes effect immediately.
- Avoid clauses that let you confiscate a device. Any term allowing you to temporarily take someone’s smart glasses could be legally challenged.
- Focus the policy on recording, not appearance. ‘No unauthorised or non-consensual recording’ is easier to justify legally and enforce than ‘no smart glasses’ as it doesn’t penalise someone wearing them for reasons that have nothing to do with recording anyone.
The federal government has confirmed it isn’t currently considering banning the import of smart glasses, and with cheaper models now on the market, they’re only going to become more common at events and in workplaces.
Clear, well-drafted terms of entry, focused on consent rather than the technology itself, are the most practical way to protect attendees’ privacy without exposing your organisation to a discrimination claim.
