Georgia's viral clip shows smart glasses need social rules, not just laws

Is it still a public place if every passerby might be a broadcast studio? That is the uncomfortable question behind "Georgia," a 25-year-old who, according to Het Parool, went viral after being filmed with smart glasses, and whose story now comes with the question "but is that even allowed?" attached.

We only have the headline and section labels of that story (humiliating citizens, privacy, chilling effect), so we won't pretend to know what she thinks or what happened next. What matters is the pattern. Someone is filmed from a first-person camera, the clip travels, and the person in it learns about it afterward, if at all.

"Is it allowed?" is the wrong first question

The honest answer is: it depends, and mostly it's murky. As a European guide to the rules puts it, wearing the glasses isn't illegal; what matters is what you do with the footage. Keeping a clip for yourself generally falls under the household exemption. Posting strangers to an indefinite audience is a different matter. The European Data Protection Board said this month that the exemption should be "narrowly interpreted" and wouldn't cover sharing others' videos on a public social media account, according to POLITICO.

That's a welcome signal. But it's also a statement that isn't legally binding, and it arrives after the damage. In the UK, the BBC reported that a woman filmed on a Brighton beach was told by police there was nothing they could do, because filming people in public isn't illegal. A million views later, that is cold comfort.

The law regulates the camera; the harm comes from the audience

Here is our view: the core problem isn't recording, it's the combination of invisibility, a public approach and a monetizable audience. A phone held up announces itself. Glasses don't. The Norwegian Consumer Council's Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad said there's no way people can "in a meaningful way, consent and understand what they consent to if they're being filmed." We agree, and we'd add that for the filmed person the consent problem isn't only the filming. It's what the comment section does next.

The BBC's reporting is the grim illustration: comments that were sexually explicit and derogatory, a woman who said the experience made her afraid to go out in public. Meta says its glasses have an LED that flashes when recording and can't be turned off. The BBC, however, confirmed that some online methods can hide the light, and neither woman said she saw it. A safeguard that works only when nobody wants to defeat it is a courtesy, not a safeguard.

Murky-but-common filming needs norms, and fast

Law moves slowly, and it should. Social rules can move this week. The French regulator CNIL's advice to wearers, as summarized in that guide, is a decent start: tell people nearby, turn the glasses off where you'd be asked to turn off your phone, get consent before using footage in which people appear, and think before posting. That is basically etiquette with a regulator's stamp.

We'd go further. Venues should treat camera glasses like phones in gyms, spas and changing areas, and say so on the door. Platforms should treat "filmed without their knowledge" reports as a fast-track removal category, not a ticket in a queue. And manufacturers, who the EDPB says may share responsibility, should stop selling "discreet" as a feature while also citing a light as the answer. The regulators' own ideas, such as audio alerts or notifications to nearby phones, are a good test of whether companies believe their own privacy pitch.

The market won't wait: POLITICO notes that Samsung and Google have announced a collaboration, and Apple is reportedly aiming for the end of 2027. More glasses will probably mean more stories like Georgia's.

Our verdict: if you wear camera glasses, assume everyone you film is a person who didn't sign up, and don't post them. If you make money from "approach a stranger, film it, upload it," the law may eventually catch you; decency should have got there first. Nobody filmed this way asked to become content, and "technically allowed" has never been a very high bar.