12
PETITION: Demand Kmart take the Anko surveillance glasses off the shelf
(petitions.getup.org.au)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
12 points (92.9% liked)
Australian News
985 readers
16 users here now
A place to share and discuss news relating to Australia and Australians.
Rules
- Follow the aussie.zone rules
- Keep discussions civil and respectful
- Exclude profanity from post titles
- Exclude excessive profanity from comments
- Satire is allowed, however post titles must be prefixed with
[satire]
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australia
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Australian Politics
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
Banner: ABC
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Resistance.
If we continue to be passive consumers for every privacy-destroying and potential exploitative gadget & system, we are just complicit with techno dystopia. At some point there will be glasses available that see through clothes.
This sounds to me like classic Technophobia. We've already normalised body cams to the point where we are outraged when law enforcement isn't recording and the kids working at Woolies are wearing them. You can buy personal body cameras also on Amazon that look like tie pins/lapels and are far more subtle than these glasses.
It is not against the law to record someone in a public setting. If you are walking down the street, you will already be recorded by dozens of cameras. I don't see the controversy. If someone is recording you in your home against your will, they are already breaking the law.
The silly thing is I don't actually care enough about these glasses specifically to be seen as defending them. I would prefer not being recorded everywhere I went. But that ship sailed 40 years ago. Unless we are going to make CCTV, Dashcams, bodycams, hell even phone cameras illegal, we are stuck with a world where you can already expect to be on camera pretty-much wherever you go.
Put whatever label you like on it and call me silly. Your examples show we are already in a technodystopia.
You don't address my strongest concern, which should be yours too as a parent. These glasses can be used in exploitative ways targeting vulnerable groups. Because they don't all have the flashing lights they can be misused in environments where children and people with disabilities, for example, do not recognise that they are camera glasses.
Cameras that I see as worse than the glasses already exist. Just google "spy camera" and you'll see lots of options that come in all sizes and shapes. Cameras integrated into caps you wear, cameras disguised as pens or clocks, cameras about 1cm wide that can be hidden just about anywhere in a room, others you wear around your neck as a necklace, the list is endless. Kmart sells a camera on their site that could easily be used for abusive purposes. Or it could be used to watch over and soothe a baby.
I see no point in being riled up by one style of camera being sold at one retailer. Do I want randoms filming my kids? No. Can I stop them? Also no. Unless we make a serious cultural change to our society, it's decades too late. The simple fact is that anyone can stand in a public place like a playground and film kids. They can do it secretly with a camera embedded into an item of clothing. They can do it blatantly with a giant television camera mounted on their shoulder. This is perfectly legal - you can't stop them. All you can do is remove your kids from that public place.
I take your point.
Do you ever wonder why our current 'developed' societies have such a fixation on photographing, videoing, surveilling, snooping? It's like people can't just live life, they have to be recording even the most trivial situations. Call me old-fashioned.