What should Australian psychology practices do about smart glasses? Explore covert recording, WA law, consent, waiting-room privacy and accessibility-aware policy.
Smart glasses create a difficult problem for psychology practices because they can look almost identical to ordinary eyewear while containing cameras, microphones and artificial intelligence features. Some models can record audio or video. Others can translate speech, search online, describe the environment or send information to cloud-based services.
These functions can support independence and participation for people with disability. However, they also make it harder to know when sensitive information is being captured or processed.
The issue is not simply whether smart glasses should be “allowed” or “banned”. A psychology practice needs to protect privacy and therapeutic safety without treating every person wearing unfamiliar glasses as suspicious or placing an unnecessary disclosure burden on disabled clients.
That requires a more careful policy than “no phones during sessions”.
The Australian Government is considering restrictions on camera-equipped smart glasses in Commonwealth workplaces, but no federal ban has been announced.
On 17 September 2026, Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher confirmed that she had asked the Australian public service for advice about whether the devices should be prohibited in Commonwealth workplaces. This remains a request for advice, not a final decision.[1]
The federal government is also consulting on draft privacy reforms released on 31 August 2026. Attorney-General Michelle Rowland stated that the consultation was not considering an import ban on smart glasses, although other future measures had not been ruled out. She had separately asked the Privacy Commissioner to give the technology urgent consideration.[2]
For psychology practices, this means there is no new national rule that can simply be copied into a clinic policy. Councils and organisations have instead begun developing rules for their own environments.
Any Commonwealth workplace restriction would not automatically determine the rules for state-run services. Public hospitals and schools would remain responsible to their state or territory systems unless broader legislation was introduced. This distinction matters for psychologists working across private practice, education and public health.
Canterbury-Bankstown Council voted to restrict smart glasses across its five leisure and aquatic centres. Brisbane had already prohibited covert filming with the devices at its 21 public pools, while Yarra extended restrictions across settings including recreation facilities, childcare centres and playgrounds. These responses reflect genuine privacy concerns, but a public swimming pool is not a therapy room. A private practice still needs to consider its own legal, clinical and accessibility obligations.[3]
The eSafety Commissioner first published Smart glasses and online safety: When the camera disappears in August 2026. The guidance is primarily directed towards manufacturers and the wider technology industry.[4]
For the broader reporting and prevention context, see PsychVault's Online Safety in Australia guide.
eSafety recommends design safeguards including:
These recommendations are important, but they are not instructions telling psychologists how to manage smart glasses in a clinic. They also do not establish that current devices reliably use these safeguards.
eSafety notes that available models may include cameras, microphones, automatic translation, online search and other AI functions. Therefore, asking only whether a device is “recording” may be too narrow. Audio or images may still be analysed, transmitted or processed even when the client does not intend to save a conventional recording.
Australian surveillance-device laws differ between states and territories. Practices should not assume that a rule described for Victoria, New South Wales or another jurisdiction applies nationally.
Western Australia is stricter than some states. Section 5 of the Surveillance Devices Act 1998 generally prohibits a person from using a listening device to record a private conversation, including a conversation to which that person is a party, unless an exception applies.[5]
The consent and lawful-interests exceptions should not be collapsed into one rule. One exception applies where each principal party expressly or impliedly consents. A separate exception applies where a principal party consents and the recording is reasonably necessary to protect that party's lawful interests. A client seeking to justify their own recording might attempt to rely on the second exception because they are a principal party. However, it does not follow that every undisclosed recording protects a lawful interest or is reasonably necessary.
A therapy session would commonly carry a strong expectation of privacy. Accordingly, covertly recording its audio in Western Australia may already be unlawful even without legislation specifically naming smart glasses. However, whether a particular recording is unlawful will depend on the facts and any applicable exception. A clinic policy should not attempt to provide clients with definitive legal advice.
Audio is only part of the issue. Section 6 separately regulates the use of optical surveillance devices to observe or visually record a private activity, again subject to specified exceptions. Smart glasses capable of capturing both audio and video may therefore engage more than one part of the Act.
The Act also excludes spectacles used by a person with impaired sight to overcome that impairment from its definition of an optical surveillance device. It would be unsafe to assume that this automatically resolves the position of modern camera-equipped glasses. A device may perform several functions at once, including functions extending well beyond vision assistance. Practices should obtain legal advice before relying on this provision.
The legal gap may therefore be smaller than it first appears. The policy and detection gap remains substantial.
Privacy in therapy is not only an administrative requirement. It helps create the conditions in which people can speak openly about experiences they may not disclose elsewhere.
A client may discuss family violence, trauma, suicidal thoughts, sexuality, workplace conflict, parenting difficulties or family-court proceedings. In child and family work, several people may attend the same session and have different views about what can be shared. The presence of an undisclosed recording device changes the risk for everyone in the room.
Even the possibility of covert recording may narrow disclosure. A client may begin monitoring every sentence, avoid discussing another person or become unsure whether a vulnerable disclosure could later be replayed in a family dispute. The psychologist may also become more guarded. Therapy can start to resemble the production of evidence rather than a space for reflection.
This does not mean that every request to record should be refused. Recording may support memory, communication or accessibility. In some cases, a collaboratively agreed recording could be clinically helpful. The critical distinction is between a transparent, purpose-limited arrangement and undisclosed capture or processing.
A client may want a record because they struggle to remember verbal information, wish to review a strategy or want to share information with a support person. The psychologist should clarify the purpose, what will be captured, where the information will be stored, who may access it and whether another option would meet the same need.
Possible alternatives include a written summary, an audio recording of a specific explanation, a client-generated note, visual prompts or agreed take-home instructions.
Waiting rooms create a separate confidentiality risk. A device may capture other clients, conversations at reception or the fact that a person attended a psychology service. Those people have not entered the recording client's therapeutic agreement and may not know they are within the device's field of view or microphone range.
A practice policy should therefore address recording and live processing in reception areas, corridors and shared spaces, not only inside the consulting room.
Telehealth does not remove the issue. A person could wear smart glasses while joining from home, or another person in the room could use a recording device outside the camera's view. Routine telehealth consent should include who is present, whether any device or software is recording or transcribing, and whether audio or video is being processed by an AI service.
A psychologist wearing or using smart glasses creates additional concerns because the clinician controls the environment and owes professional obligations concerning confidentiality, informed consent, records and secure information handling. A device used for clinical work should not be introduced merely because it is convenient.
Before use, a practice would need to examine the device's purpose, data flows, cloud processing, retention, vendor access, security, accuracy, consent process and the client's ability to decline without disadvantage. These questions resemble the due-diligence requirements for AI scribes in Australian psychology practice, but the wearable format adds uncertainty about when the device is active and what falls within its field of capture.
A rule that asks only people wearing smart glasses to identify themselves may place the disclosure burden on disabled clients. It may also encourage staff to make assumptions about a person's eyesight, hearing or disability.
A more equitable approach is to ask every client about recording and processing technology as part of the ordinary consent process. For example:
Before we begin, is any device or software in the room recording, livestreaming, transcribing, identifying people, or processing audio or video through an online or AI service?
This question focuses on what the technology does. It does not require someone to disclose a diagnosis.
If a person uses smart glasses as an accessibility aid, the practice can then discuss the relevant function and identify a proportionate way to protect privacy. Depending on the circumstances, this might involve disabling recording while retaining captioning, adjusting where the person waits, agreeing on a non-recording mode or offering another accessible support.
Before finalising a policy, practices should obtain advice about how the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and relevant state legislation, including Western Australia's Equal Opportunity Act 1984, apply to their service. A blanket refusal may create a different legal or ethical problem where a device is being used for disability access and a safer alternative can be agreed.
A psychology practice is not a law-enforcement agency. Staff should be cautious about policies based on searching a person, confiscating equipment or making immediate accusations.
A safer initial response is to pause and ask directly:
I want to pause for a moment because I am unsure whether a device may be recording or processing our conversation. Our practice requires us to discuss and agree on any recording before continuing. Can we check what functions are currently active?
If recording is occurring, the next step should depend on the setting, the people captured, the client's needs and the practice's legal advice. Options may include stopping the recording, moving to a more private space, revisiting consent, offering an alternative accessibility support or rescheduling if privacy cannot be protected.
The response should be calm and proportionate. Suspicion alone is not proof, and ordinary prescription glasses should not become grounds for treating a client as deceptive.
Some existing policies already prohibit “any recording device”. That wording may capture smart glasses, but it does not resolve the practical questions created by devices that are difficult to identify and capable of processing information without saving an obvious recording.
A useful policy should address:
The policy also needs a client-facing explanation. A rule hidden in a long intake document is unlikely to support informed agreement or help staff respond consistently. The practical aim is to ask what a device is doing, whose information may be captured, what function it serves and whether the same goal can be achieved with less risk.
This article provides general educational information and is not legal advice. Surveillance, privacy, health-record and discrimination requirements vary by jurisdiction and setting. Practices should obtain advice relevant to their state or territory before adopting a recording or wearable-technology policy.
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