01 — The part we think is a story
There is no standard by which a recording device announces itself.
In June 2026 the G7 data protection and privacy authorities published a compendium on smart glasses. In it, the Berlin Group’s position is recorded directly: for miniaturised devices, transparency should be provided by non‑visual means, “such as broadcasting a signal.” The same document acknowledges that obtaining the consent of bystanders captured in the background of a recording can, in some situations, be practically impossible.
Regulators have therefore described, in writing, the mechanism a detector would consume. The standards work has not followed — not through neglect, but because of where it is pointed. The IETF working group closest to the problem, Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers, is chartered around location‑tracking accessories; its programme of work does not extend to devices whose purpose is to record. That group is active and current: its threat model was revised on 6 August 2026.
So transparency for trackers is being specified, and transparency for cameras and glasses is being specified by nobody. In the meantime every product in this category, ours included, is reduced to fingerprinting manufacturers and reporting a probability. That is a policy gap, not an engineering one, and it is the thing we would most like to see written about.
We are not the story here and do not need to be in it. Full citations, with links to the primary documents, are in §06 of the reference document.
