Cinemas may ban camera glasses. Nobody has to watch you to know you're wearing them.

The story

Cinemas are considering following theatres, pubs and restaurants in banning camera-enabled smart glasses, as industry trade body UK Cinema Association said venues are weighing "policies to prohibit and/or restrict the wearing of camera-enabled smart glasses" over piracy concerns. Filming using the technology, dubbed "spy glasses" and "pervert glasses," has already been banned in court, as well as in several theatres and Wetherspoons pubs. Meta, which makes the glasses, said they "provide critical new technology for people in the blind and low-vision community."

The reframe

A hidden camera used to require someone to notice it. A pair of glasses does not need noticing to work. The venues considering a ban are not responding to anyone caught filming; they are responding to the fact that filming has become a feature of an object nobody can visually distinguish from an ordinary accessory. That is the shift this chapter describes: risk assessed at the level of what a system can do, not at the level of who is doing it or whether anyone is watching for it.

There may be no observer, no investigator, no individual actively monitoring behaviour.The Performance of Obedience, Ch. 17