Summary

  • On 15 October, RIPE Chair Mirjam Kühne said RIPE Meeting rules do not allow recording without consent and invited people using smart glasses for assisted purposes to discuss their use with organisers.
  • RIPE 93 already distinguishes photography preferences from accredited-media rules. Neither public page describes a wearable-specific consent signal or an outcome from the still-future meeting.

Analysis

An open meeting gives people a place to speak. It does not give everyone else permission to record them. That distinction becomes harder to see when a camera is worn rather than raised, which is why a short paragraph in the RIPE Chair Team’s 15 October preview of RIPE 93 deserves more attention than a routine event reminder.

Mirjam Kühne, the RIPE Chair, said the meeting’s media policy and Code of Conduct do not allow recording without consent. In the same note, she invited people who use smart glasses for assisted purposes to talk with the organisers about how they use them. The passage does not announce a new policy, an exemption, or a ban on the devices. It puts two legitimate concerns into the same conversation: participants should not be recorded without consent, and an assistive use should not be presumed to be surveillance.

RIPE 93’s event photography page offers one visible safeguard. Photography is permitted, but attendees can request a yellow “Don’t Photograph Me” lanyard. Other attendees are asked not to photograph or publish pictures or videos of people wearing one without their express consent; the official photographer says they will do their best to avoid them. That is a clear signal for photography. It is not, by itself, a complete protocol for every form of recording.

The separate media-accreditation policy governs accredited media representatives. It asks them to respect participant privacy and to obtain explicit permission before publishing private conversations, interviews, or photographs. Those conditions are useful, but they have a narrower scope than the Code of Conduct, which applies to RIPE participation online and in person. A press badge, a meeting ticket, or a device’s assistive purpose does not itself establish another participant’s consent.

The public materials reviewed do not explain how consent should be signalled for a wearable device, whether an audio-only recording needs a different notice, or how an assistive-use conversation will work during RIPE 93. That is a limit in the published record, not proof that organisers have no procedure. Nor does the source say that smart glasses are always recording. The practical issue is whether a participant can understand when capture is happening and make a choice that others can respect.

RIPE 93 is scheduled for 26–30 October in Sofia. The meeting has not yet provided an outcome against which to judge the reminder. A useful standard is modest: make the consent rule visible, keep the accommodation path open, and give people a straightforward way to raise concerns without treating every wearable as a camera in use.

Sources