Google Glass illegal, IP lawyer warns
Google’s landmark technology launch, Google Glass, which allows the wearer to access the internet using wearable hands-free glasses, is likely to be illegal to operate in the UK, two-time IP lawyer of the year, Phillip Hannay warns.
He'll be back
Glass wearers can access the internet and record and transmit what they are looking at, without any visible indicator to the public or people who are being recorded.
Writing in the London Review of Books, John Lanchester posited that the technology breaches basic data protection provisions, and Hannay agrees, adding that the recording facility is a breach of ECHR privacy laws.
“In the UK anyway, many or most of the recording functions of Google Glass seem likely to be illegal,” Lanchester says.
“The 1998 Data Protection Act defines data as ‘information which is being processed by equipment operating automatically in response to instructions; or is recorded with the intention that it should be processed.’ I don’t speak fluent lawyer, but it seems clear that definition encompasses the recording function of Glass.”
Hannay says Lanchester’s assessment is correct, but warns that if the technology is swiftly adopted and accepted, the privacy breaches may not be practically enforceable at state level.
“I would broadly agree with the article. I doubt there is little the UK will be able to do if there is sufficient first mover advantage for companies like Google, coupled with a global cultural shift to wearable technology -a shift by a generation who have a lesser concern over sharing data- and especially when Digital Britain is apparently the near to mid term plan for balancing UK GDP dependence on financial services,” he says.
“The UK will have to consider the EU line, and the EU is apparently finding it hard enough for data protection regulation to be understood and implemented.”
Hannay warns that the recording facility is potentially a breach of both Data Protection legislation and ECHR privacy standards, contrasting the Google Glass covert recording facilty with the requirement of CCTV to overtly carry a compliant accompanying notice.
“No mention was given regarding how notification will be given re recording," he says.
“No doubt Google will provide notification via a printed T-shirt meant to be worn with the Glass.”
The product is being trialled and is scheduled to be launched in the UK next year.