It’s the corporate version of Big Brother: a creepy, octopus-like global behemoth watching, assimilating and exploiting everything we do and see

◼ Google's sinister glasses will turn the whole world into search giant's spies - Daily Mail

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.

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’.

...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.

...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’.

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.’