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Google Glass and Surveillance Culture
Nerval's Lobster writes "Tech journalist Milo Yiannopoulos asks the question lurking in everyone's mind about Google Glass. 'It's an audacious product for a company no one trusts to behave responsibly with our data: a pair of glasses that can monitor and record the world around you,' he writes. 'But if Glass becomes as ubiquitous as the iPhone, are we truly to believe that Google will not attempt to abuse that remarkable power?' With each new eyebrow-raising court judgment and federal fine levied against Google, he adds, 'it becomes ever more clear that this is a company hell-bent on innovating first and asking questions later, if ever. And its vision, shared with other California technology companies, is of corporate America redefining societal privacy norms in the service of advertising companies and their clients.' He feels that Google will eventually end up in some sort of court battle over Google Glass and privacy. Do you agree? Does Google Glass deserve extra scrutiny before it hits the market?"
btw how could the first post be marked as redundant? meta-mods, roll out!
Um, that's a BIT of scaremongering... Did this idiot somehow confuse Google with Facebook? Yes, Google has had some minor screwups (and some, such as the Street View mess, could barely be considered a screwup but more of FUD from clueless users who don't understand that ANYONE can see the MAC address of a wifi AP...), but nothing as major and spectacular as Facebook's routine privacy screwups.
And yes, overall - I trust Google, as do MANY other people.
Google has admitted to collecting from peoples WiFi networks “URLs of requested Web pages, partial or complete email communications, and any confidential or private information being transmitted to or from the network user while the Street View cars were driving down streets.” One of many sources on this.. They call it an accident, but this data they have admitted to collecting is quite a bit more than MAC addresses.
Some people - especially here on Slashdot -- also seem to believe Google came clean on this on their own. When in fact they first guaranteed the German authorities (the first to pressure them on this) that they were not collecting anything. And first after the German authorities despite this assurance still demanded a full audit of the data anyway, did Google do their disclosure. This sequence of events was covered extensively in European press (one of many sources), and I don't know how mostly US geek sites ended up with an alternative impression.
It still can perfectly well be ascribed to a screw-up on Google's part (although in the FCC investigation report it is claimed the Google engineer who wrote the code knew about the collection and told colleguages about it). I'm not even sure how major I think it is, but it shouldn't be downplayed and described inaccurately either.