US Air Force bans use of smart glasses among its troops — earphones and other Bluetooth devices also limited to official duties while in uniform

Ray-Ban Meta Glasses — (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

The U.S. Air Force has banned the use of smart glasses for all its personnel, and it also limited the use of earphones and other Bluetooth devices while in uniform for official duties. According to its dress and personal appearance policy announcement, “It is unauthorized to wear mirrored lenses or smart glasses with photo, video, or artificial intelligence capabilities while in uniform.” Furthermore, the use of earbuds — specifically earpieces, headphones, or any Bluetooth wireless technology — is now limited to personnel who have been authorized for official duties.

The announcement did not give the reason why these gadgets were banned from use while in uniform, except saying that it was “designed to uphold military professionalism” and to support “a more effective and mission-ready force.” However, while not specifically mentioned, there’s also the fact that smart glasses often record photos and videos automatically, which are then uploaded to the cloud. This is a nightmare situation for operational security, as it could unintentionally reveal sensitive information, especially for those working at or near top secret bases.

Aside from that, it also prohibited uniformed personnel from using earbuds, both wired and wireless, unless authorized to do so for official duties. The ban even extended to using personal electronic media devices, including earpieces, speaker phones, or text messaging, while walking, unless in an emergency or as part of necessary official notifications. Nevertheless, the regulation introduced a couple of exemptions — uniformed personnel can use them while traveling on public transport or while wearing physical training gear during individual or personnel fitness training.

Public tracking technology has long been a problem for military forces. This first came to light in 2018, when exercise apps, like Strava and Polar, started showing where their users were taking their runs. This unintentionally revealed the location and layout of several U.S. bases — even the secret ones. Even though the users remained anonymous, jogging paths that seemingly appeared out of nowhere indicated that there was an installation there. Matching the publicly available exercise data makes it so much easier to confirm open-source intelligence, increasing the base’s operational risks.

Smart glasses are seemingly becoming a significant threat, too, especially as they have become more subtle and sophisticated. For example, Tom’s Hardware’s review of the Ray-Ban Meta Glasses show that they look like a perfectly normal pair of glasses, but still have the ability to capture what the user sees and hears. And while the Ray-Bans have a white LED light on the frame to indicate that they are recording, some users were able to deactivate it. This meant that they can be used for secretly recording.

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Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

9 Comments Comment from the forums

Findecanor

I don't think there should just be just specific bans of specific types of devices. That's reactive security.
There should be proactive security.

Personell in security-sensitive environments should be educated in what devices could do and what security risks that are associated with them, so that they think before bringing devices in.

At one workplace I've had, you had to get your device vetted before it was allowed on the premises.
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btmedic04

Just wait until yall find out that our military uniforms have pockets and youre not allowed to keep your hands in them 🤣
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COLGeek

btmedic04 said:
Just wait until yall find out that our military uniforms have pockets and youre not allowed to keep your hands in them 🤣
Ah, you refer to "air force gloves" as we soldiers called to them. Yep, those were definitely an Army fashion faux pas.
Reply
bobingus

Findecanor said:
I don't think there should just be just specific bans of specific types of devices. That's reactive security.
There should be proactive security.

Personell in security-sensitive environments should be educated in what devices could do and what security risks that are associated with them, so that they think before bringing devices in.

At one workplace I've had, you had to get your device vetted before it was allowed on the premises.
This is proactive security. They are banning potentially compromised devices before they become a problem. That's proactive.

Reactive security would be waiting until some goober leaks national Security secrets using his Meta glasses and then deciding maybe it's a good idea to ban them.

Law enforcement and other agencies are already getting way too comfortable wearing surveillance glasses that are controlled by weird billionaire oligarchs who are obviously and visibly interfering with government operations. Those Meta glasses are all over the place slurping up data and streaming it all into Facebook (and Palintir) servers with God knows what else. ICE agents are using them a LOT for some reason 🤔

There is no valid argument to be wearing third-party recording devices while in military uniform or in military installations. If you need to record things, there are already an entire list of approved devices at your disposal. Putting national security in the hands of companies that have shown a dozen times a year they can't be trusted with that level of authority is just careless.
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USAFRet

Findecanor said:
Personell in security-sensitive environments should be educated in what devices could do and what security risks that are associated with them, so that they think before bringing devices in.
That education already happens.
And people still make mistakes.
Reply
palladin9479

Findecanor said:
I don't think there should just be just specific bans of specific types of devices. That's reactive security.
There should be proactive security.

Personell in security-sensitive environments should be educated in what devices could do and what security risks that are associated with them, so that they think before bringing devices in.

At one workplace I've had, you had to get your device vetted before it was allowed on the premises.

All PED's (personal electronic devices) are prohibited from being brought into sensitive locations, those locations are loudly marked and are not the kinds of places you randomly walk into. If for whatever reason an uncleared person needs to walk into those locations, they are announced and held until the area is sanitized first. The issue with smart glasses is that it might not be evident someone is wearing them and you can end up with an otherwise cleared person walking around in a location with a recording device that absolutely should not be there. Normally if this happens, the device is seized and all material is sanitized from it, aka it gets nuked and wiped clean regardless.

Yes if you bring a cell phone into my vault, it's going to be taken and completely wiped, if you are lucky it'll be returned, otherwise kiss it good bye. These smart glass's are sending everything to "the cloud", aka someone else's datacenter, and it's not possible to clean that kind of spillage (official term for it). So best thing is to just outright prohibit them across the board. Has the side benefit of also preventing someone from sending SBU (sensitive but unclassified) to "someone else's datacenter", and for the Military almost everything that isn't classified is SBU. Emails, notes, meetings, all the paperwork on your desk, practically everything that gets touched has some sort of operational impact even if it's not classified.
Reply
USAFRet

palladin9479 said:
All PED's (personal electronic devices) are prohibited from being brought into sensitive locations, those locations are loudly marked and are not the kinds of places you randomly walk into. If for whatever reason an uncleared person needs to walk into those locations, they are announced and held until the area is sanitized first. The issue with smart glasses is that it might not be evident someone is wearing them and you can end up with an otherwise cleared person walking around in a location with a recording device that absolutely should not be there. Normally if this happens, the device is seized and all material is sanitized from it, aka it gets nuked and wiped clean regardless.

Yes if you bring a cell phone into my vault, it's going to be taken and completely wiped, if you are lucky it'll be returned, otherwise kiss it good bye. These smart glass's are sending everything to "the cloud", aka someone else's datacenter, and it's not possible to clean that kind of spillage (official term for it). So best thing is to just outright prohibit them across the board. Has the side benefit of also preventing someone from sending SBU (sensitive but unclassified) to "someone else's datacenter", and for the Military almost everything that isn't classified is SBU. Emails, notes, meetings, all the paperwork on your desk, practically everything that gets touched has some sort of operational impact even if it's not classified.
Similar at my location.
But our entire building is 'the vault'. With a WiFi/bluetooth sensor at the door.
Any signal (oops, I forgot the phone in my pocket), and it screams loudly.

But no camera/USB stick/phone/PDA/whatever....
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meski42

Uh, lots of private companies forbid the operation of cameras on their premises. I've not seen it enforced much.
Reply
das_stig

US Air Force bans use of smart glasses among its troops — can't find enough smart airmen/woman :tonguewink:
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