California Governor Gavin Newsom has refused to sign a law that would have banned secretly recording people with wearable devices. He sent back the bill, SB 1130, already passed by the state legislature, arguing that it defines recording devices "too broadly or imprecisely", which could lead to confusion and unintended consequences. Newsom added that some of the protections the bill offers already exist in California law.

Had the law passed, California would have become the first US state to regulate smart glasses. Violators could have faced fines or jail, and manufacturers of devices that don't follow the rules would also have paid penalties. Meanwhile, countries such as Norway are considering whether to ban the technology altogether.

The goal was to stop people being filmed in public without their explicit consent. The problem isn't theoretical: Meta sold more than 7 million pairs of smart glasses last year alone, and Snap makes similar glasses with cameras and microphones. AI pendants that listen to everything around them have hit the market too. Critics and users themselves have already come up with a nickname - "pervert glasses", after multiple reports of people using them to film and harass others.

The bill's author, State Senator Eloise Gómez Reyes, argued that California had to respond to the rapid flood of always-listening technology. Instead, the state that's home to Meta, Apple and Google decided the definitions weren't precise enough. Maybe they weren't. But the industry moves much faster than lawmakers: last month Apple announced that new Apple Watch software will have an always-listening feature, able to show the last 15 seconds of a conversation as a transcript and summarise a whole day's conversations.

When glasses become as ordinary as phones, the question will reach the cafés of the Balkans too: how will you know whether the person at the next table is just drinking coffee or filming you? And how late will the law be when it's finally our turn?