The Veto
California Governor Gavin Newsom has officially shut down Senate Bill 1130, a piece of legislation that aimed to make secretly recording people with wearable tech a criminal offense. If it had passed, California would have been the first state in the US to regulate smart glasses, with penalties ranging from hefty fines to actual jail time.
Why the pushback?
Senator Eloise Gómez Reyes, who authored the bill, wanted to protect people's privacy in public spaces as always-on cameras and microphones become the new normal. We’re talking about gear like Meta’s smart glasses—which sold over 7 million units last year—and those AI pendants that lowkey freak some people out. People have been calling these devices “pervert glasses” for a minute because, real talk, they make it way too easy to film folks without their consent.
However, Newsom put the kibosh on the whole thing. In a letter to lawmakers, he claimed the bill’s definition of “wearable recording devices” was way too broad and imprecise. He argued that the current legal framework in California already covers these scenarios, and that the new bill would just create a mess of confusion and unintended consequences. Basically, he wasn't feeling the execution.
Why it matters
As tech giants like Apple continue to integrate "always-listening" features into our daily hardware, the line between staying connected and straight-up being watched is getting blurry. While the bill was meant to catch up with the rapid rollout of this tech, it’s giving a major L to privacy advocates who wanted clearer rules. For now, it’s still the wild west out there, and the plot thickens as the debate over who controls the footage keeps heating up.
