Australian privacy regulator investigates China-based maker of Kmart smartglasses app

The Australian privacy commissioner, Carly Kind, announced the investigation in a blog post on Wednesday. She said no other companies would be investigated as part of the process. The attorney general had asked Kind to assess the privacy implications of the glasses at the time.

Kind had written to Kmart and BDI Technology, retailers for the glasses, as well as Shenzhen Qingcheng. She also wrote to Meta about its Ray-Bans glasses and to Google, which is planning its own smartglasses.

The probe follows public outrage over covert use of the devices. Guardian Australia reported in August that Kmart had sold out of the Anko-branded discount version of Meta’s smartglasses, which can capture images and record high-definition video. A GetUp petition has had more than 55,000 signatures calling to restrict the use of what has been labelled as ‘pervert glasses,’ and councils around the country have looked to ban the glasses in public spaces such as swimming pools. The federal government is also considering a restriction on use in government workplaces.

Kind highlighted the difficulty in applying privacy law to individuals who may use the devices, given the Privacy Act only applies to companies and Commonwealth agencies, not individuals. Retailers that sell smart glasses, for example on an e-commerce website, or companies that manufacture them, may not have any Privacy Act obligations if they do not collect any personal information with respect to those devices, she said. Instead, the entity providing the software at use in the device is likely to be the entity that collects and holds the information for the purpose of privacy law.

Kind said potential changes to the Privacy Act proposed by the government would strengthen how privacy law would apply to surveillance wearables such as smartglasses. The most substantial change would be the replacement of the ‘reasonably necessary for an entity’s functions and activities’ test with a ‘fair and reasonable’ test, she said. The new test would require an entity to look at a range of factors, including the extent to which an individual had genuine choice in the collection of their personal information, as well as the best interests of the child where children are involved.

Kind said she hoped the community would ‘find comfort’ in the proposed reforms as it would raise the bar over what personal information smartglasses can collect. She said the reforms were likely to become increasingly necessary ‘as we face subsequent generations of surveillance wearables and connected devices, from personal assistant gadgets to ambient recording badges.’

Researchers at the University of Sydney in August analysed 350 publicly available Instagram videos shot on smartglasses from around the world during 2023 to 2026. They described what they said was ‘a shift to discreet, point-of-view recording that is difficult for bystanders to detect.’ In a subset of these videos, about 60% of interactions could be classified as potential harassment, with subjects visibly uneasy or attempting to disengage.

Canterbury-Bankstown and Sydney City are among the councils in Sydney to have banned the glasses from some venues, as well as Brisbane in Queensland, and Yarra city council in Melbourne.