Google Goggles and Privacy?
As if Privacy wasn’t already a complex concern already, here comes the next nightmare for those of us who wish to keep our lives to ourselves.
Google Goggles. What is it? (Hint: NOT Google Mail Goggles)
http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles
Facial Recognition is already a fact of life. Law Enforcement, Intelligence and Military organizations have used it for years. It hasn’t hit full public use, yet — but it’s only a matter of time. I for one am not a huge fan of sitting in a room, waiting for a job interview while someone snaps a picture and lets my face do the searching for them.
Does that sound paranoid? Really? I am proud of who and what I am, but it’s my business. If I care to share it with anyone, that’s my business. It is not the business of the corporate world unless I’m purposely doing something to harm those with whom I have a professional relationship.
Below is some basic research on Google Goggles and the reason behind my growing irritation.
- A picture is worth a thousand words.
- No need to type your search anymore. Just take a picture.
- Find out what businesses are nearby. Just point your phone at a store.
- This is just the beginning – it’s not quite perfect yet.
- Works well for some things, but not for all.
- Your pictures, your control. Turn on ‘visual search history’ to view or share your pictures at any time. Turn it off to discard them once the search is done.
Available on phones that run Android 1.6+
GG will move to other platforms: http://bit.ly/5tPWzR
“It is our intention to quickly develop Goggles for the most popular mobile handsets and platforms,” Google’s Katie Watson tells me. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a specific time frame to share.”
Hands-on tour – http://bit.ly/5d02sB
Up to 1,000 photos are retained in your Google Goggles search history.
The Google Goggles search history is not related to your Google search history
Privacy: “Google indicates, the Goggles app retains your IP address and Google account details for five weeks in order to help “keep the service stable and secure.”
“If you’re worried about privacy, Google Goggles gives you two options: You can discard all of your images as you go, or you can save them in a searchable history. Selecting the searchable history option makes the images available to Google, separate from any personal data, for the purpose of improving the service. Aside from that, Google indicates, the Goggles app retains your IP address and Google account details for five weeks in order to help “keep the service stable and secure.” – http://bit.ly/5tPWzR
Facial Recognition?
Google has decided to not allow people to use its new visual search tool, Google Goggles, to identify people for fear of a privacy backlash (for now) – http://bit.ly/4Tu7qa
Marissa Mayer, vice president of Google’s Search Product and User Experience, revealed to The Telegraph exclusively at LeWeb 2009 in Paris, that Google Goggles will simply ignore people’s faces if people tried to apply the same technology to identify individuals rather than places or objects.
“Until we understand the implications of the facial recognition tool we have decided to make sure we block out people’s faces. We need to really understand how this tool affects people’s privacy and cannot change that decision until we do,” she explained.”
So, obviously it can do it now. Is it cataloging search results for fine-tuning until it’s released?
More words on this? http://bit.ly/88DFuu
Google spokesman Anthony House said: ‘We do have the relevant facial recognition technology at our disposal. For instance with our Picasa picture service a user can tag a friend in their photo album and it will search for and tag any other pictures of that person.
‘But we haven’t implemented this on Google Goggles because we want to consider the privacy implications and how this feature might be added responsibly.
‘So if someone uploads a picture of a stranger on Goggles there is no process to identify them and the search will come up with “no matches found.”
‘We will have talks with privacy advocates and consumers before we consider any changes – it may be people want such a service, but we don’t have a rigid timescale on when any decisions will be made.’
The controversy comes as Google CEO Eric Schmidt was lambasted by an Internet Privacy watchdog for some off hand remarks he made to the U.S news channel CNBC.
He was asked whether people should treat Google like a trusted friend. In his answer he said: ‘If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.’
So, decide. Do you like the idea of someone taking a picture of you and being able to see what the Internet has to offer on your face, identity, etc.
Start adding the small worries of this little graph.
“Around 70% of hiring managers in in US have rejected candidate just because of their online reputation. The chart looks at the various types of online information that have led companies to reject candidates.”
No thanks. I want the option to opt-out of this one.
