The adventures of Edward Snowden captivated the American people this summer after his massive leak of classified government material showed just how involved the United States government is in our daily lives.
The government leaks released information that the US government, through a government agency called the National Security Agency (NSA), compiles phone records and emails of just about every American and scours over them, searching for key terms, phrases and people. The NSA defends this compilation by stating that they are using this surveillance to catch terrorists.
While extensive government surveillance is constantly portrayed in popular media, advances in digital technology have given major corporations (such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft) the ability to collect vast amounts of data of our personal lives, often without our explicit knowledge.
Have you ever noticed the cleverness of Facebook ads and, unlike years before, how their ads are actually for things we may buy? The truth is, with the help of massive data collections, corporations can acquire a great deal of information in our digital lives. There is a distinction between our digital lives and our own lives, but that distinction is becoming more blurred with an ingenious bit of innovation called Google Glass.
While there are other new products that could potentially be misused and allow privacy violations, there is no item more controversial than Google Glass. Shaq Katikali, an information privacy professional, describes Google Glass as a “phone in front of your eyes with a front-facing camera. A heads-up display with facial recognition and eye-tracking technology can show icons or stats hovering above people you recognize, give directions as you walk, and take video from your point of view.”
As well as being pretty cool, the Google Glass unfortunately creates a myriad of privacy issues. Katikali gives two frightening examples of what the Google Glass could do: First, Google Glass could enable police officers to use the video collected by Google Glass cameras to aid in their investigations without the individual’s knowledge.
The second example is the possibility of losing everything if someone hacked your Google Glass. Katikali asks, “How many of you will turn off your Glass while punching in your PIN? How about when a person’s credit card is visible from the edge of your vision? How about when opening your bills, filing out tax information, or filing out a health form? Computers can recognize numbers and letters blazingly fast – even a passing glance as you walk past a stranger’s wallet can mean that the device on your face learns her credit card number.” These frightening scenarios are made possible as technology further integrates itself into every aspect of our lives.
Massive data collections are by no means an inherently dangerous thing. These collections allow just about every entity that uses it to become more efficient. However, there are many reasons to be a little more suspicious when contemplating buying new products such as Google Glass.