Western Australia bans charging and storing smart glasses on school grounds from 12 October

The person who has to make this work is a principal at the gate on 12 October, telling a contractor to take his glasses off ^[2][10]. Regulations 69 and 70 give him that power and let him order the contractor off the premises if the contractor refuses ^[5][10]. Both regulations also require the school to display the order publicly ^[5]. Wearing and using are the verbs a product deck would expect. Charging and storing are the ones that decide what happens on Monday. A student cannot hand the glasses in at reception and collect them at the bell, because storing them on school premises is covered by the same order ^[3]. The Next Web called the charging clause the one that closes the locker ^[22]. For hardware that sits on a face all day and lives in a charging case, that makes this a rule about whether the device enters the building. Six risks are named, and four of them are the ones anyone would have guessed: privacy, child safety and wellbeing, unauthorised recording and cyber security. The fifth is disruption to teaching and the sixth is examination and assessment integrity ^[6]. That sixth one is why the definition runs so wide: of the nine functions listed, three are capture, and the other six describe a networked computer worn on the face ^[8]. A camera-free pair running on-device transcription and answering questions sits inside the scope ^[7]. Sabine Winton, the state's education minister, said the department has recorded no instances of smart glasses being used irresponsibly in WA schools, and pointed to community concern about careless, criminal and malicious use ^[11]. "Smart glasses may look cool but there's absolutely no place in our schools or classrooms for them," she said on Tuesday ^[1]. Kya Graves of the WA Principals Federation told the ABC that principals had been writing their own school-level policies, with no departmental decree to work from. Some schools had incidents on their sites and put measures in place themselves ^[12]. Tama Leaver, who teaches internet studies at Curtin University, told the ABC the worst outcome would be indecent recording of children. About 30 seconds of footage is enough to make a deepfake with rudimentary tools, he said ^[13]. Canberra declined to act on imports. Attorney-General Michelle Rowland ruled out an import ban on 31 August and said the government was not consulting on one. She offered instead a privacy overhaul carrying a right to erasure from large platforms and search engines and a fair and reasonable test on data collection ^[14][15]. She encouraged councils to restrict the glasses in their own facilities and suggested retailers could police change rooms ^[16]. WA's instruction takes effect 42 days after her ruling ^[21]. Conditions of entry are spreading fastest. Lawyers Weekly reported that the City of Sydney and Canterbury-Bankstown have barred the devices from their pools and fitness facilities, joining Brisbane and Yarra, which is four councils so far ^[18][20]. Councillor Matthew Thompson's motion directs his council's chief executive to review and update conditions of entry covering leisure centres, libraries and council childcare centres ^[19]. WA's version needs more than a motion: section 233 of the School Education Act 1999, plus two regulations under it ^[5]. I'd expect the council route to be copied first, because a venue can rewrite its entry conditions in a week. Run the four verbs against a wearable roadmap. Wearing and using can be answered in software, with a mode a bystander can see the wearer is in. Charging and storing are answered by the building. Which leaves the exemption: a principal's approval for medical, accessibility or assistive technology use, or an educational programme that principal authorises ^[9]. The eSafety commissioner has made the accessibility case, citing speech to text for deaf users and scene descriptions for people with low vision ^[17].