KF-OS 2, the Foundation’s open standard on bystander privacy for optical implants, has reached version 1.0 after two years of drafting and a public consultation that drew 1,040 comments.
The standard sets out what an implant may record, process and keep about the people its wearer looks at. Among other things, it forbids an implant to identify other people by face or voice without their consent, and to retain images of other people for longer than two seconds unless its wearer chooses to record.
Kiroshi Opticals has said it will apply the standard to its consumer implants from January 2025. Its Professional Systems devices, sold to police, security and armed forces under their own contracts, are outside the standard’s scope, as is diagnostic data kept to maintain a device. Both exclusions were contested in the consultation; the working group’s reasons, and two dissents, are published with the standard.
“A standard that covers ordinary wearers and not the devices sold to the people most likely to be watching is a beginning, not an end,” said Tomás Arriaga, who chairs the board’s Data and Ethics Committee. “We said so in the standard.”