Norway Wants a Temporary Ban on Smart Glasses in Parks, Gyms and Schools

Norway's government said Monday, Oct. 5, 2026, that it will ask parliament for a temporary ban on smart glasses in selected public places, reversing the position of the minister who held the digitalisation brief before Torgeir Micaelsen. The glasses in question carry cameras, microphones and A.I. features, and look like ordinary eyewear.

Micaelsen, the Minister of Digitalisation and Public Administration, did not publish a bill. He said the government will bring one "as soon as possible", according to ABC News, and that an expert group will draft permanent rules.

Which places Norway has named

The list is longer than the headline suggests. TV 2 sorts it into three groups, and universities are listed as a possibility rather than a decision.

Group	Places named	Status
Public spaces	Parks, beaches, museums, shopping centres, amusement parks	Proposed
Children's areas	Playgrounds, schools, daycare centres, youth clubs	Proposed
Sensitive facilities	Healthcare institutions, gyms with changing rooms or showers	Proposed
Education	Universities	Under consideration

The government said it does not seek a blanket ban. Per the Fox News account, glasses could still be used privately and where others cannot be recorded without their consent, and officials are still deciding which devices and places the rule covers.

The quote, and the reversal

Micaelsen said, in the words ABC reported: "We do not want a society where people worry about being recorded without their knowledge, photographed, or filmed in places and situations where they are accustomed to not being monitored."

TV 2 reports that this departs from Karianne Tung, his predecessor in the same Labour Party, who opposed banning A.I. glasses. It also reports that Norway's Data Protection Authority had earlier urged restrictions on sales until rules exist.

What the hardware does and does not signal

None of the three outlets quotes a government document that names a product. ABC's account describes Meta's glasses, which carry an LED that lights during recording; ABC reports the light cannot be disabled without disabling the camera. Whether that indicator satisfies Norway has not been said.

The number that matters here is not the size of the ban but the size of the complaint behind it. ABC reports that e-Enfance, a French child-welfare organisation, received about 20 complaints involving women filmed without consent through Meta glasses, with some clips posted to social media. Twenty complaints is a small count against the number of glasses sold, and none of the outlets publishes that denominator. A complaint count also misses recordings the filmed person never learns about. The Danish register breach and the Claude diary case show how privacy disputes turn on who sees data they were not expected to see.

Oslo has already banned camera-equipped glasses in its schools, per ABC. Fox News reports that California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have penalised unauthorised recording and required recording indicators on devices from 2028. That detail rests on one outlet; this article did not find it confirmed elsewhere.

Why passage is not guaranteed

Labour leads a minority government, so the bill needs votes from other parties. TV 2 says several parties back restrictions, which makes passage plausible but not counted. The device definition is the open variable. A rule written around "cameras in glasses" catches Ray-Ban Meta frames, and a rule written around A.I. features may miss a plain camera in a frame.

What would change this read is the text of the bill: a definition by capability, a date for the expert group's report, and a sunset date for the temporary ban. Norway has given none of the three so far, and the bill's introduction to the Storting is the next point at which they could appear.