California governor vetoes bill banning use of ‘pervert glasses’ to secretly record people

At first glance, vetoing a bill aimed at "pervert glasses" seems like a political non-starter. The optics are terrible: a governor choosing to side with the hypothetical creep over the person being recorded without consent. But the decision, reported by TechCrunch (https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/01/california-governor-vetoes-bill-banning-use-of-pervert-glasses-to-secretly-record-people/), is a reminder that privacy law is rarely as simple as the headlines suggest. The bill's fatal flaw is likely its ambiguity—defining "secret recording" in public spaces collides directly with the First Amendment and the long-established legal principle that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in plain view. This veto sits at the intersection of two accelerating trends: the commodification of surveillance hardware and the failure of legislative language to keep pace. Smart glasses from major tech companies now ship with cameras, microphones, and on-device AI as standard features. A law that criminalizes their use in public, even for nefarious purposes, risks criminalizing the devices themselves. That is a slippery slope. Today it's "pervert glasses," tomorrow it's the phone in your pocket. The governor's calculus likely involved avoiding a messy legal challenge that would set bad precedent for all wearable tech, not just the creepy stuff. The deeper issue is that privacy law is fundamentally reactive. It names a specific harm—secret recording via wearables—but fails to address the underlying problem: a culture where consent is assumed unless explicitly revoked. California has been a leader in privacy regulation, from CCPA to biometric data protections, yet this veto suggests that even the most progressive states are struggling to articulate a coherent framework for public-space privacy in the age of ubiquitous cameras. The bill was a blunt instrument, and the veto is a recognition that blunt instruments cause collateral damage. What makes this story worth watching is not the veto itself, but what comes next. The problem the bill addressed is real and growing. As devices shrink and AI improves, the line between "recording" and "remembering" will blur further. Lawmakers will have to draft more precise legislation—perhaps targeting intent, data storage, or distribution rather than the act of recording itself. Until then, the best defense against the "pervert glasses" problem isn't a law; it's a societal expectation that technology companies build consent into their hardware by default. That's a harder problem, and one no veto can solve.