Newsom Vetoes California Smart Glasses Recording Ban Over Broad Scope

California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed SB-1130, legislation that would have prohibited secretly recording other people with smart glasses in certain spaces.

The action, reported Oct. 1, 2026, stops a California-specific restriction on wearable capture in private areas of businesses. The bill would have banned using wearables to secretly record others in those areas, including changing rooms and doctors' offices, according to contemporaneous reporting Engadget and AP.

SB-1130 paired that conduct ban with hardware obligations. Manufacturers of wearables would have been required to include an indicator, a light or sound that is on during video or audio recording. The bill would also have banned the sale of technology designed to mask that light or sound Engadget.

The penalties were tiered by actor. A person found guilty of secretly recording others under the bill would have faced fines of up to $1,500 and/or a prison sentence. Companies making wearables without an indicator, or technology designed to block such indicators, would have faced fines of up to $2,500 per violation.

Newsom pointed to scope as the reason. He said the bill's definition of wearable recording device was too broad and could include certain smartwatches or other worn devices widely used in public spaces, causing confusion and unintended consequences. TechNet, an advocacy group representing tech companies, opposed the measure.

That definitional issue will return in any future draft. Wearables no longer divide cleanly into glasses with cameras and watches without them. Microphones, cameras, cellular and Wi-Fi radios, and local buffering, or temporary storage on the device, now appear across form factors. Recording can be triggered by voice, gesture, companion app, or background routine. A statute built around a wearable recording device must specify whether it means any body-worn device capable of capture, only devices with specific sensors enabled, or only devices marketed for first-person recording.

Hardware mandates are harder than they look. An indicator during capture sounds simple, like a tally light on a studio camera. Implementation raises questions about brightness and audibility thresholds, behavior in low-power states, failure modes if the light or sound path is damaged, and whether covering or muting counts as user action or sale of masking technology. Because fines applied per violation, a design decision replicated across units would multiply quickly.

In my view, legislators will need to separate three problems that SB-1130 tried to handle together. The first is non-consensual recording in places with a reasonable expectation of privacy, which is largely about conduct. The second is bystander awareness in public and semi-private space, which is largely about notice. The third is deliberate evasion of notice, or anti-circumvention rules that bar bypassing a safeguard. Combining them made the bill legible, but it made a broad device definition carry too much weight. Narrowing the conduct ban to enumerated private spaces, while writing the hardware rule around verifiable signaling during capture, would be more workable for compliance testing.

The broader context here is worth noting, because clarity benefits builders as much as the public. Expert teams can design to a precise signaling requirement and test plan. They struggle to design to a category that might expand with the next sensor integration. The veto does not remove pressure for rules around surreptitious capture, but it signals California will demand tighter drafting before imposing indicator and penalty regimes across the wearable market. That preserves room for a narrower bill focused on secret recording where privacy expectations are highest.