Google's sinister glasses will turn the whole world into search giant's spies

They look like something you’d see at a Star Trek convention, perhaps worn with a pair of fake pointy ears.

And that’s entirely fitting, given that these high-tech specs are about to propel us into a sci-fi future few could have envisaged a decade ago.

Google Glass has had the tech world giddy with excitement since it was unveiled nearly a year ago.

Last week, at the South By Southwest technology convention in Austin, Texas, a Google designer gave the first demonstration to a rapt audience.

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Look into the future: But are Google's glasses a sinister invsion of privacy?

This remarkable new innovation represents the advance guard of what Silicon Valley is banking on being the next great step in our addiction to the internet: ‘wearable computing’.

Apple and Samsung are working on smart watches, Google is developing talking shoes, but nothing compares to these head-mounted ‘glasses’ that can shoot video footage, search the internet or send an email, all at the command of their wearer’s voice.

To look at, they are nothing special, certainly rather nerdy, but put them on and you are immersed in what the experts like to call ‘augmented reality’.

Audrey Hepburn in Google Glass: The high-tech headwear has also spawned a range of spoofs online

But what exactly is augmented reality?

Each pair of glasses is fitted with a miniaturised camera and web browser which displays digital information on a tiny screen — a clear plastic block the width of a pencil — just in front and slightly above a wearer’s eye.

The arm of the headset, which sits near the wearer’s temple, acts as a touch pad. By sliding your finger up and down it, you can scroll through the text visible in your eyepiece. To select something on the screen, the user simply taps the headset.

The device is also fitted with a tiny speaker, microphone and motion sensors which interpret commands based on the wearer’s head movements.

Google Glass does everything a smartphone does without the bother of having to pull it out of your pocket and fiddle with the controls. Text messages and emails can be dictated by voice command and then read back on the screen to check that the computer has heard — and spelt — everything correctly.

Want to catch up on the news? Wearers can see headlines and pictures and have full stories read back to them simply by tapping the frame of their glasses.

Wear them while driving and the glasses’ in-built GPS system will identify your location and give you turn-by-turn directions via Google Maps. Ask the glasses a question and the answer will pop up on screen.

At the Texas convention, the Google representative gave an in-depth demonstration showing how, in addition to voice commands, simple eye movements can also be used to control the device.

Looking up activates the screen and gentle head motions allow you to scroll through various different programmes.

The technician took a photo of the packed audience and then asked his glasses how to say ‘thank you’ in Japanese.

Google Glass is expected to go on sale by the end of this year at an estimated price of $1,500 (£995). Already, tech junkies have shown themselves willing to pay even more.

When someone claiming to be testing Google Glass offered their device for sale on eBay this month, bidding went as high as $16,000 (£10,610). The auction was cancelled only when it became clear that the opportunistic vendor didn’t yet have the device.



Google employees wearing them in San Francisco have been dubbed 'Glassholes' by locals

Google has allowed only a trusted few volunteer guinea pigs to try out the glasses, which they insist are still in development. Those who have put these early prototypes through their paces have generally been impressed — with a few caveats.



The screen, they say, is distracting because, when you are trying to get on with other tasks, you are always tempted to look up at it.



Those who normally wear glasses have also reported difficulties in reading the screen. Google says it is working on a spectacles-compatible version and Google Glass contact lenses are surely only years away.

Wearers also report feeling self-conscious while wearing them. They certainly are not the most chic of options. Google says it is working on that, too — by collaborating with trendy spectacles manufacturers to make later Google Glass designs more attractive.



Some reported that the glasses made friends and family feel uncomfortable. How can you be sure the Google Glass wearer you are talking to is actually paying attention — and not checking the sports results popping up on his screen?



Augmented reality: This demonstration shows off navigation information similar to what Google currently offers via its Maps service

But of all the promised features of these spectacular specs, it is the glasses’ ability to take pictures and shoot video footage and upload it instantly to the internet that is proving most disturbing.



Some fear candid camera snooping will become all too easy when no one realises that the person simply looking in their direction is actually filming them.



And it gets worse.



According to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the company plans to have Google Glass fitted with an automatic picture-taking mode, snapping photos at pre-set intervals. This could be as often as every five seconds.



While people may rightly worry about being photographed without their knowledge or permission, such fears pale into insignificance when you consider the true extent of the insidious reach of Google Glass.

Time and again, Google has proved that it has no time for that quaint old concept called ‘privacy’.



The 5 Point, a self-described dive bar in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, has already banned Google Glass. 'And a** kickings will be encouraged for violators,' said Dave Meinert, the bar's owner

The company already knows where its users are — by keeping tabs on where computer and smartphone searches originate — and what they are looking for.



The company analyses emails sent to and from Google email accounts, photographs people’s houses and back gardens as part of its Street View mapping project, and — as the company admitted in the U.S. last week — has looted passwords and medical and financial information by snooping on unprotected wi-fi accounts.



With Google Glass, soon it will know precisely what Google users are seeing at any given moment.

And never forget that Google Glass’s raison d’etre is to make money for a company which boasts the motto ‘Don’t Do Evil’ — while selling every last byte of private information it can to advertisers and retailers.



You may wonder why such a firm would be interested in footage of you, say, doing something as mundane as your supermarket shopping.



The answer is simple. Retailers are keen to find out such information as which shelves we look at first.

Private: Co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin models Google glasses before the Diane Von Furstenberg fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Spring Fashion Week in New York

A pair of Google Glass spectacles in film mode will tell them precisely that and, once the data from millions of users is aggregated, they will be able to position their products accordingly.



You may already have been filmed unknowingly by someone with Google Glass — one of those lucky guinea pigs hand-picked to try out the developing technology.



If not, rest assured you soon will be. A growing number of industry insiders say we should all be very worried.



Scott Cleland, an internet analyst, told me ‘creepy’ Google Glass technology represented the ‘ultimate escalation of Google’s privacy invasion’.



He says: ‘Say you’re huddled in Starbucks with your spouse and someone next to you is recording your conversation on Google Glass.

Remember, the glasses have no storage capacity so all the information goes directly back to Google’s huge data centres.’



Nick Pickles, of the UK privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, says Google Glass ‘makes CCTV cameras look trivial . . . the person next to you isn’t just a commuter any more, they’re a Google agent’.



Mark Hurst, of Creative Good, a New York company that specialises in improving customer experiences, sees a dystopian future in which Google will play all too prominent a role.

He predicts that ten years from now, if a company or organisation wants to know if you have ever said anything they consider offensive or threatening, a single search query on Google’s database ‘will instantly bring up documentation of every word you’ve ever spoken within earshot of a Google Glass device’.



Perhaps we should follow the lead of a Seattle bar which has announced a pre-emptive ban on customers wearing Google Glass.



The owner of 5 Point said his clientele were ‘not the sort of people who want to be secretly filmed and immediately put on the internet’.



Google — with its talking, stalking goggles — increasingly feels as if it, too, has come out of a futuristic film.