Google has yet to make its head mounted device Google Glass available to the general public, but already several bars have banned the device over privacy issues and now data-protection authorities of five different countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Mexico have jointly sent a letter to the CEO of the search engine giant Larry Page in which they expressed their concerns regarding Glass, according to ZDNet’s report. The report also claimed that the authorities have asked eight specific questions from Google regarding Glass. Below is an excerpt from the original letter which the authorities have sent to Page:
“As you have undoubtedly noticed, Google Glass has been the subject of many articles that have raised concerns about the obvious, and perhaps less obvious, privacy implications of a device that can be worn by an individual and used to film and record audio of other people. Fears of ubiquitous surveillance of individuals by other individuals, whether through such recordings or through other applications currently being developed, have been raised. Questions about Google’s collection of such data and what it means in terms of Google’s revamped privacy policy have also started to appear …”
The eight questions that the authorities have asked from Google were:
“- How does Google Glass comply with data protection laws?
– What are the privacy safeguards Google and application developers are putting in place?
– What information does Google collect via Glass and what information is shared with third parties, including application developers?
– How does Google intend to use this information?
– While we understand that Google has decided not to include facial recognition in Glass, how does Google intend to address the specific issues around facial recognition in the future?
– Is Google doing anything about the broader social and ethical issues raised by such a product, for example, the surreptitious collection of information about other individuals?
– Has Google undertaken any privacy risk assessment the outcomes of which it would be willing to share?
– Would Google be willing to demonstrate the device to our offices and allow any interested data protection authorities to test it?”
It seems that with the passage of time privacy concerns related to Google Glass are increasing in spite of the fact that Google has already banned all sorts of face-recognition apps for the device until “strong privacy protections [are] in place”. However, the head mounted device is still facing a lot of resistance.
Source: 9to5Google
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