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After revelations that Google has not informed consumers of a microphone in its Nest safety devices, a long-standing privacy advocacy group is calling on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to take measurements.
On Wednesday, the EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) sent a letter to the FTC, informing it of the potential risk to the consumer and asking him to take quick action against Google.
"It's totally unclear whether Google, a remote hacker, or anyone else has turned on the microphones on Nest devices after they've been installed by customers at home," said EPIC in its letter.
Google indicates that the microphone on Nest devices is turned off by default and that any microphone on a Nest device will only activate if users turn on the voice activated Google Assistant.
Read more: Senator Warner blames Google for his hidden Nest microphone: federal agencies and Congress "must hold hearings" to denounce "the black belly of the digital economy"
EPIC nevertheless hopes that a federal commission not only is concerned about the protection of privacy, but that it is completely hijacking Google's Nest business.
"The FTC should now take legal action against Google in order to divest the Nest company and also require Google to return the wrongly obtained data to its Nest customers," he wrote. EPIC.
Google's request to give up more than $ 3 billion to the smart home hardware company acquired in 2014 is bold for the advocacy group, but it's not the first time that 39; EPIC is trying to take on Google.
In 2007, when Google began equipping fleets of digital camera cars around the world to take pictures as part of its Street View project, consumers were concerned about the invasiveness of the photos themselves.
But in May 2010, Google admitted that it was worse. The company said that in the process of collecting Street View photos, it also collected a large amount of Wi-Fi data, including MAC addresses (unique identifier for Wi-Fi devices) and network SSIDs (name of network). network identifier assigned by the user). ).
That month, the EPIC urged federal investigators to review Google's Wi-Fi data collection. Shortly after, the FTC took over the case.
In October 2010, Google had announced that it would stop collecting such sensitive information for its Street View project and had apologized for having done so in the first place. The company also stated that its error was more blatant than originally announced, indicating that in some cases emails, URLs and passwords had been captured and stored.
"We are mortified by what happened," wrote Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research at the time. "But we are confident that these changes to our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal security and privacy practices for the benefit of all our users."
This October, the FTC ended its investigation after the "assurances" of Google, provided to no longer collect such sensitive Wi-Fi data.
Now, with EPIC's Wednesday letter and lawmakers already criticizing Google for its inability to disclose appropriate information on its Nest devices, a federal investigation into the issue could result.
Read the full EPIC letter sent to the FTC:
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