California SB 1130 targets wearable recording devices like smart glasses, requiring explicit consent in businesses and banning indicator light tampering, with fines up to $10,000.
California Senator Eloise Gómez Reyes last week introduced legislation that would make it a crime to secretly record people using wearable devices inside places of business, targeting a gap in existing privacy law that has widened as products like AI-enabled smart glasses become more commercially accessible.
The bill, Senate Bill 1130, was formally introduced on February 17, 2026 and would add two new sections - Sections 632.8 and 632.9 - to California's Penal Code. It would amend eight additional existing sections. The legislation establishes specific restrictions on wearable recording devices, defined in the bill text as "any device that can be worn on or attached to the body that has the capacity to make sound or video recordings or transmit data received by the device to another device or to the internet." That definition is broad enough to cover not only smart glasses but also body cameras, smartwatches with microphones, and other emerging categories of consumer electronics.
"Californians have a constitutional right to privacy, and our laws must evolve as quickly as technology, to prevent harm," according to Senator Reyes. "Secretly recording someone under the guise of prescription-style glasses - especially when many people don't even know this technology exists - has real consequences. We have an obligation as lawmakers to put a stop to it."
The proposed law defines place of business narrowly as "any physical office or retail establishment in which members of the public receive goods or services from the business." That scope is notable: the legislation does not attempt to regulate recording on public streets or in parks, focusing instead on semi-private commercial environments where individuals may share sensitive personal, financial, or health information with staff or other customers.
Under the proposed Section 632.8, a person may not operate a wearable recording device to capture sound or video of another person in any area within a place of business where that person has a reasonable expectation of privacy - unless the device operator has explicit consent from that person. Crucially, the standard is explicit consent, not implied or inferred consent. Simply entering a shop where someone is wearing recording glasses would not satisfy the requirement.
The bill also prohibits disabling any indicator light or other signal on a wearable recording device that shows the device is capturing sound or video. Manufacturers, distributors, and sellers face separate restrictions under proposed Section 632.9: the bill would prohibit any person or entity from manufacturing, selling, delivering, holding, or offering for sale any technology that enables a person to disable such indicator lights. Purchasing, trading for, or otherwise acquiring that disabling technology would itself become a violation. So too would using any technology to permanently or temporarily suppress an indicator light on a device that would otherwise show it is recording.
The penalty structure aligns with California's existing wiretapping and eavesdropping law. A first-time violation under the new sections would carry a fine not exceeding $2,500 per violation, imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, imprisonment in the state prison under subdivision (h) of Section 1170, or both the fine and imprisonment. A person previously convicted of any of the listed related offenses - including violations of existing Sections 631, 632.5, 632.6, 632.7, and 636 - faces an enhanced fine of up to $10,000 per violation, in addition to the same imprisonment options.
The bill expressly states that no reimbursement to local agencies or school districts is required under the California Constitution because the act creates new crimes within the meaning of Section 17556 of the Government Code and Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution.
The legislative record accompanying SB 1130 points to a specific technical vulnerability: many wearable devices include small indicator lights to signal when recording is occurring, but these indicators can be subtle, easily overlooked, or potentially disabled through software or hardware modification. This creates documented risks of covert surveillance in environments where people reasonably expect some degree of privacy.
The concern is practical. A customer at a pharmacy counter, a patient in a medical office waiting room, or an employee in a retail back office has no reliable way to know whether a colleague or stranger wearing glasses is capturing audio and video. Unlike a smartphone held up to record, glasses-mounted cameras are designed to be unobtrusive. Their LED indicators are often small, positioned on the frame near the temples, and may not be visible to someone standing in front of the wearer.
The bill addresses this by treating indicator light tampering as a separate offense from the recording itself. Even if no recording takes place, disabling or acquiring technology to disable the indicator light would constitute a violation. That preventive framing reflects a broader regulatory philosophy: the harm begins at the point of concealment, not only at the point of recording.
The timing of SB 1130 coincides with a period of accelerating commercial deployment of AI-enabled smart glasses. Meta announced new AI features for its Ray-Ban Meta glasses in September 2024, adding real-time language translation, memory assistance, and visual question-answering capabilities. The glasses use an ultra-wide 12MP camera system coupled with a five-microphone array. When Meta expanded the same AI assistant features to France, Italy, Ireland, and Spain in November 2024, the company cited LED indicator lights and hardware-level privacy controls as key compliance mechanisms under European data protection law.
For marketing professionals, wearable devices capable of capturing real-world visual data carry significant implications beyond personal privacy. If smart glasses reach mass consumer adoption, they could theoretically generate data on physical-world ad attention - which outdoor placements users look at, for how long, and in what sequence. That prospect has drawn attention from the digital advertising community, where measurement and attribution remain persistent challenges. PPC Land previously examined how Ray-Ban Meta glasses could affect digital out-of-home advertising, noting that real-time visual data from wearables worn continuously could prove more granular than any signal available from smartphone interactions.
SB 1130 does not address those advertising use cases directly. Its scope is criminal law, not data regulation. But the bill's definition of a wearable recording device - covering any device worn on the body that can transmit data to another device or to the internet - would encompass AI smart glasses used in commercial environments regardless of their primary intended purpose.
SB 1130 arrives as California's privacy enforcement apparatus has grown considerably more active. CCPA updates that took effect on January 1, 2026 expanded consent and disclosure requirements for businesses handling consumer data, with enforcement actions already resulting in multi-million dollar settlements. The California Attorney General's office secured a $1.55 million settlement with Healthline Media in July 2025 - the largest CCPA penalty to date at the time - for failures including sharing sensitive health-related data with advertisers without adequate consent.
The legislature has also moved to strengthen browser-level privacy controls. California's AB 3048, passed in August 2024, required web browsers and mobile operating systems to include built-in opt-out settings for data sharing, effective January 1, 2026. That bill, like SB 1130, was premised on the view that existing consent frameworks had not kept pace with how technology actually collects information from individuals.
SB 1130 extends that logic to the physical world. Where previous legislation addressed how personal data flows through digital systems, this bill focuses on the moment of physical capture - the point at which a wearable device records a conversation or images in a business setting. The two regulatory domains are increasingly interconnected: data captured by a wearable device in a retail store could, in principle, be transmitted, processed, and used for purposes that fall within the scope of digital advertising law.
Senator Reyes, who represents Senate District 29 in the San Bernardino area and serves as a senior member of the Democratic caucus, introduced SB 1130 on February 17, 2026. The bill requires a majority vote to pass the California Senate and is subject to a fiscal committee review. According to the legislative press release, the bill will be assigned to policy committees for analysis and hearing dates in the coming days. The bill carries a fiscal note - it is classified as a state-mandated local program because it creates new crimes - but the bill text states that no reimbursement to local agencies is required for that reason under state constitutional provisions.
Whether SB 1130 advances through committee hearings will depend in part on whether the legislature views existing consent frameworks under Sections 631 and 632 of the Penal Code as sufficient, or whether the physical-world specificity of wearable devices justifies new standalone provisions. The bill's sponsors argue the latter: indicator lights can be disabled, the devices are not conspicuous, and most members of the public remain unaware that commercially available glasses can record them in conversation.
For the marketing and advertising community, the bill signals the direction of travel in California's privacy regime. Retail environments - stores, medical offices, financial services branches - are also advertising environments. They are places where consumer behaviour is observed, loyalty programs operate, and increasingly, where data-driven customer interactions take place. The introduction of a consent standard for wearable recordings in those spaces creates a new compliance variable for any business deploying or permitting the use of wearable technology among staff or in customer-facing areas.
The supply chain provisions are particularly relevant for technology manufacturers and distributors operating in California. Under proposed Section 632.9, simply selling a software update or hardware kit that disables a recording indicator would constitute a criminal offence, punishable by fines and potential imprisonment. That liability extends not only to direct sellers but to anyone who manufactures, delivers, holds, or offers for sale such technology in the state.
Who: Senator Eloise Gómez Reyes (D-Colton), representing California Senate District 29, introduced the bill. It targets individuals who operate wearable recording devices, as well as manufacturers, sellers, and distributors of technology that disables recording indicator lights.
What: Senate Bill 1130, the Wearable Device Privacy Protection Act, would create two new criminal statutes in California - Sections 632.8 and 632.9 of the Penal Code - prohibiting secret audio or video recording using wearable devices inside places of business without explicit consent, banning the disabling of indicator lights, and barring the sale or manufacture of technology enabling that disabling. First-time violations carry fines up to $2,500 per incident; repeat offenders face fines up to $10,000.
When: The bill was introduced on February 17, 2026, and will proceed to policy committee hearings.
Where: The bill applies in California, specifically in any physical office or retail establishment where members of the public receive goods or services - including medical facilities, financial offices, and retail stores.
Why: The legislation responds to the commercial proliferation of AI-enabled smart glasses and other wearable recording devices whose small indicator lights can be subtle, overlooked, or disabled through software or hardware modifications. Senator Reyes argued that existing consent law has not kept pace with the technical reality of devices that can record continuously without obvious visual cues, creating risks of covert surveillance in environments where people share sensitive personal, financial, or health information.
