Oslo bans smart glasses in municipal kindergartens

Oslo has banned employees from wearing smart glasses and AI glasses in all municipal kindergartens. The Department of Education sent a letter to the city districts detailing the ban, which applies to equipment capable of recording audio, images, or video.

City Commissioner for Education Julie Remen Midtgarden stated that children's safety and privacy must come first. Because kindergartens handle sensitive information about children, staff must exercise special care. Officials noted there is no good reason to make hidden recordings of children, and parents should be able to drop off their kids without worrying about hard-to-detect surveillance technology.

Oslo is taking this preventative step because current municipal guidelines require a legitimate purpose for handling personal data. However, Midtgarden is calling on the national government to act faster and implement a nationwide ban to prevent an uneven patchwork of local rules. She also urged the digitalization minister to ban smart glasses in other public areas outside municipal control, such as buses, swimming pools, sports halls, and outside school gates.