One of Sydney\u2019s largest councils has joined the City of Brisbane and the City of Yarra to issue a ban on AI smart glasses at public pools as concerns mount over the potential for predators to exploit the new technology.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday evening, Canterbury-Bankstown voted overwhelmingly in favour of banning the tech at its pools, with its mayor, Bilal El-Hayek, describing them as \u201cpervert glasses\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n Since their release, there have been reports of women being filmed without their consent and their interactions with a glasses-wearing influencer posted on social media.<\/p>\n \u201cChat groups, Facebook, local community forums and TikTok are just some of the online platforms where women are venting their concerns over the smart technology that threatens both safety and privacy,\u201d El-Hayek told councillors at the meeting.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cTheir biggest concerns are around \u2018perverts and paedophiles\u2019 secretly filming in change rooms, swimming pools and around schools.<\/p>\n \u201cThe latest AI smart glasses are wearable devices with high resolution cameras \u2026 and AI powered features like real time translation, object recognition and open-ear audio \u2026 these glasses can not only film, record and share footage, they can also scan your face and potentially access and retrieve information about you.\u201d<\/p>\n Last month, Brisbane became the first council in Australia to publicly announce a ban on covert filming at its 21 public pools amid growing fears of threats to child safety.<\/p>\n The head of policy at Digital Rights Watch, Tom Sulston, praised the decision. He said it was \u201cvital that councils across Australia ensure that public spaces like swimming pools are safe for families to enjoy without the threat of unwanted video surveillance\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all need to be able to go out in public without fear of being covertly recorded and having the images uploaded to the internet without our consent,\u201d he said. \u201cWe look forward to seeing not just councils following Brisbane\u2019s lead, but also state and federal governments.\u201d<\/p>\n Yarra in inner-Melbourne followed suit, voting last week to ban smart glasses from its leisure and aquatic facilities, childcare centres and playgrounds. It also confirmed it would call on the federal government to bring in stronger privacy laws to protect people from new technologies.<\/p>\n Randwick council in Sydney\u2019s eastern suburbs has also banned the new technology at the Des Renford leisure centre. In a statement, it said \u201cgrowing community concerns\u201d about their potential misuse were behind the decision.<\/p>\n \u201cSignage has been installed at the entrance and anyone wearing smart glasses in the centre will be asked to remove them or leave,\u201d it said. \u201cThis precautionary measure will help ensure the centre remains a safe, welcoming and family-friendly place for all visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n The bans will not apply to people with accessibility concerns, including vision impairment.<\/p>\n The federal attorney general, Michelle Rowland, has not ruled out banning the glasses but has indicated how complex the laws are governing the new technology.<\/p>\n In August, she wrote to the privacy commissioner, Carly Kind, raising concerns she\u2019d received from the community about their growing uptake and requesting it be given priority consideration.<\/p>\n \u201cPrivacy is an essential part of all our lives; it allows us to be who we are with dignity and without fear,\u201d she said at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cUnlike other forms of technology, smart glasses may be used more discreetly, making it harder to know when you are being recorded.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government is continuing to work on the next phase of privacy reforms to ensure our privacy laws are fit for purpose in the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s online safety regulator has urged smart glasses companies to automatically blur people\u2019s faces<\/a> filmed on the devices, and make it clearer when someone is filming.<\/p>\n In advice to industry published at the end of August, the office of the eSafety commissioner warned that while smart glasses with cameras, such as Meta\u2019s Ray-Ban, can offer accessibility benefits to low vision or blind people, companies might pit \u201caccessibility benefits against safety and privacy considerations\u201d, and noted there was already a backlash to the technology<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of Sydney\u2019s largest councils has joined the City of Brisbane and the City of Yarra to issue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":892916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-892915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/892916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}