{"id":5486,"date":"2026-06-03T16:25:36","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T16:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=5486"},"modified":"2026-06-03T16:25:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T16:25:36","slug":"through-the-looking-glass-the-hidden-dangers-of-smart-glasses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=5486","title":{"rendered":"Through the looking glass: The hidden dangers of smart glasses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"textFreeArticle\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/iframe.iono.fm\/e\/1682425?layout=modern\" width=\"100%\" height=\"170\" frameborder=\"0\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS:<\/strong> I read that smart glasses are moving from novelty to mainstream, and South Africa\u2019s privacy laws may not get ready.<\/p>\n<p>Allan Juma from ESET is warning that wearable AI can record people without consent, and people could face real difficulties when it comes to the disclosure of personal information and, as a result, potentially expose users to cyberattack.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Now, with the Protection of Personal Information Act, Popia, built for an earlier digital age, the issue, I think, is no longer whether the technology is clever, but whether all of this is becoming invisible surveillance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It\u2019s a worrying situation.<\/p>\n<p>ESET, by the way, is a software company specialising in cyber security. Allan, a very warm welcome to you. Let me start bluntly. Are smart glasses already a privacy threat in South Africa, or are we overreacting?<\/p>\n<p><strong>ALLAN JUMA: <\/strong>Thank you very much, Jeremy. I would say officially it is not yet a threat because officially South Africa is not yet a region where smart glasses are sold. But unofficially we know that they are here, people are using them. So definitely it is a privacy risk.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS:<\/strong> So Allan, help an old man here. Maybe just explain to me exactly what smart glasses are, and what makes wearable AI more dangerous than simply filming someone on a cellphone, for instance.<\/p>\n<p><strong>ALLAN JUMA:<\/strong> Okay. Smart glasses basically are glasses. They look like normal glasses, normal prescription glasses. But the difference is they have the ability to record, to take photos and to livestream and actually store this particular footage on the device or somewhere else.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Now, the challenge with these particular glasses is that, like you said, I can record you without your knowledge.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>How do I do that? As long as I click record, there\u2019s a little light that blinks on the glasses and I can go record and livestream. The challenge comes in where nobody knows what I\u2019m doing with these glasses, so I can record privately or covertly without somebody ever knowing.<\/p>\n<p>What the challenge is, is how will the people know that they\u2019re being recorded, especially if the information is being used to monetise or for other uses?<\/p>\n<div class=\"visible-sm-block visible-xs-block m1010\">\n<div class=\"ad-container-wrapper\">\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS:<\/strong> So apart from that little light that you mentioned, which I imagine would be difficult to see, an ordinary person, I think I hear you say, wouldn\u2019t know that they are being recorded by smart glasses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>ALLAN JUMA:<\/strong> Correct. It would be very difficult to the untrained eye to detect whether they\u2019re being recorded using smart glasses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS:<\/strong> Does Popia then have enough teeth, Allan, to deal with invisible recording in public spaces?<\/p>\n<p><strong>ALLAN JUMA:<\/strong> I like how you put it, Jeremy. Popia has what we call \u2018baby teeth\u2019 or the \u2018milk teeth\u2019. They are there. They\u2019re doing some level. But like we have seen in the past, technology always outpaces legislation.<\/p>\n<p>Read:<\/p>\n<div class=\"ApplePlainTextBody\" dir=\"auto\">Who sold my phone number?<\/div>\n<div class=\"ApplePlainTextBody\" dir=\"auto\">Should South Africa follow Australia\u2019s social media crackdown?<\/div>\n<div class=\"ApplePlainTextBody\" dir=\"auto\">Truecaller faces complaint from SA companies over Popia breach<\/div>\n<p>Popia places a huge responsibility on the one who is recording. You need to get the consent of somebody you are recording; they either need to give you consent or withdraw their consent.<\/p>\n<p>In this particular case, because it\u2019s covert, that avenue of getting their consent is removed. So that\u2019s where the challenge is.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>So Popia is in its infancy as far as AI is concerned.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>But there are moves to try and expand the skill to capture such challenges.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS:<\/strong> Allan, tell me, to the best of your knowledge, how widespread is either availability or use of smart glasses in this country?<\/p>\n<p><strong>ALLAN JUMA:<\/strong> Officially, South Africa is not a country that is supported by the smart glasses. But I can assure you, with South Africa being the biggest economy in Africa, I can almost bet my last penny that they are there, and there are people who are using them.<\/p>\n<p>Why am I saying this?<\/p>\n<p>We had cases in Kenya and Ghana where somebody actually came from Russia and recorded people having intimate moments with these particular glasses. So if it\u2019s happening in these other countries, you can rest assured that they\u2019re there in South Africa.<\/p>\n<div class=\"visible-sm-block visible-xs-block m1010\">\n<div class=\"ad-container-wrapper\">\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT:<\/p>\n<p>CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS:<\/strong> And when biometric data is captured without consent then, who is legally responsible? Is it the wearer? Is it the platform or even the manufacturer?<\/p>\n<p><strong>ALLAN JUMA:<\/strong> So when it comes to data, there is what we call the data processor and the data collector. In this case, who is the data collector? That\u2019s what needs to be to be defined.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll give you an example. Like on social media if I take a photo and upload it to Meta or IG [Instagram], who then is the data processor? Who is the data collector in this particular sense? The data collector is the one who is taking. Who is the processor? That\u2019s now the social media organisation.<\/p>\n<p>So the responsibility will lie now with the developer of the technology and say, this is what we need to do to ensure that people are not recorded without their consent, and their images or video are [not] stored within our particular solution.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS:<\/strong> What is the danger of criminals hacking these devices and seeing what the wearer sees?<\/p>\n<p><strong>ALLAN JUMA:<\/strong> I need to put a disclaimer. It has not yet happened in the world, at least to the best of our knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>However, there was research done by students at Harvard. What they were doing is they had smart glasses. They were recording and taking videos and streaming, and they had hooked these particular smart glasses to an LLM [large language model], AI model, that was doing real-time image search.<\/p>\n<p>Read: Meta eyes stake in maker of Ray-Ban in smart glasses push<\/p>\n<p>Now, what this particular software was doing was it was able to recognise somebody and give you information about that particular individual \u2013 their full names, where they were working, where they were born. A lot of personal information.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Now, if such technology can be used just to showcase the capabilities, what about in the hands of somebody who is bent on doing malicious stuff?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>They can take advantage or take over your phone for surveillance purposes for spying purposes, for identity-theft purposes.<\/p>\n<p>So, because there has been a trial done, definitely it will go into full-fledged attacks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS:<\/strong> What about quality? How real is the risk of facial recognition being used to identify people in real time?<\/p>\n<div class=\"visible-sm-block visible-xs-block m1010\">\n<div class=\"ad-container-wrapper\">\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT:<\/p>\n<p>CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>ALLAN JUMA:<\/strong> It is there, because in embedded systems and in what we call the IOT \u2013 the internet of things \u2013 as well as the increasing presence of CCTV cameras, especially in South Africa, these are all interconnected in one way or the other.<\/p>\n<p>Read: Sapoa secures victory in Joburg CCTV by-law challenge<\/p>\n<p>All you need to do is, well, I can take a photo of myself and upload it to the internet and then it is already there. There\u2019s a record of it there.<\/p>\n<p>All it needs is a crawler, an internet crawler to go back there and just get my images and map it to myself. So in theory, this is very, very easy, especially in the highly connected world that we are in today.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS:<\/strong> Allan, one solution, I guess, would be to ban smart glasses in places like schools, maybe gyms, hospitals and workplaces. All well and good, but very difficult to enforce.<\/p>\n<p><strong>ALLAN JUMA:<\/strong> Extremely difficult. How do you even force that? You need a lot of user training. And furthermore, at the moment, the smart glasses are almost like a niche product. Only people who are \u2018well-monied\u2019 can actually afford them.<\/p>\n<p>However, we expect that the prices will go down even as they are rolled out to the market. So that is one way. But that might be, as people say, responding to a mosquito bite with a hammer. There are better ways to respond to this particular emerging issue.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS:<\/strong> So before that rollout, is there one rule maybe that we should be thinking about introducing before it becomes normalised?<\/p>\n<p><strong>ALLAN JUMA:<\/strong> Thankfully, South Africa has rolled out the AI policy or AI strategy that was put out for public participation. It has come at such an opportune time.<\/p>\n<p>Listen\/read:<\/p>\n<div class=\"ApplePlainTextBody\" dir=\"auto\">SA\u2019s draft AI policy: Can it boost innovation?<\/div>\n<div class=\"ApplePlainTextBody\" dir=\"auto\">Government pulls draft AI policy for using fake research<\/div>\n<p>This is where now we can sit down and discuss and say: \u2018Fine. Does this policy encompass or cover all these particular areas? How can we fine tune? How can we tighten the screws to ensure that it is <em>ahead<\/em> of technology and actually can forecast what technology will do and how to protect the masses and the most vulnerable in our society?\u2019<\/p>\n<p><strong>JEREMY MAGGS:<\/strong> Thank you very much indeed. Allen Juma is with ESET. It\u2019s a software company that specialises in cybersecurity.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>#glass #hidden #dangers #smart #glasses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here. JEREMY MAGGS: I read that smart glasses are moving from novelty to mainstream, and South Africa\u2019s privacy laws may not&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4741,1021,7766,1213,1510],"class_list":["post-5486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investing","tag-dangers","tag-glass","tag-glasses","tag-hidden","tag-smart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}