Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group, which is critical of Google’s tracking of users to collect personal information about them, is going to try and embarrass the search engine giant’s CEO, Erich Schmidt, when he testifies before the Congress on September 21. The main purpose of Schmidt’s appearance will be to answer questions about the company’s huge share of the search market and whether the company uses that to stifle competition.
According to cnet, the advocacy group has hired mime artistes, who dressed in white track suits with the legend ‘Google Track Team’, will follow employees around Dirksen Senate Office building, in order to make them feel uncomfortable to prove the point that nobody likes to be tracked in their daily lives.
Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog said, “If you do it on the Internet though, you are Google and it’s got to stop.”
The mimes will also wear ‘wi-spy’ glasses, the comic futuristic goggles the group had created last year to highlight the data collection abuse by Google, which was disclosed last year. Google had acknowledged that the cars which had clicked images for Google Street View had also captured ‘payload data’, including consumer emails and passwords.
This is not the first time that Google has faced flak over breaches of consumer privacy. And, though the upcoming hearing is to establish whether Google has dominance over the Web Search, it is likely that it will cover the privacy issues as well.
The group has also planned a series of stunts, including a video to highlight the dangers of the Internet Giant’s growing power. You can have a glimpse of the view below:
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Last year, the group had released a video with a similar theme, wherein, a creepy-looking Schmidt drives an ice-cream truck, luring children with free treats and then conducting full body scans to collect data about them. The character concludes with the line, “Remember, we put the ogle in the Google.”
Though there are a number of groups which are worried about Internet privacy, Consumer Watchdog is the one which is the most vocal and active, and, is proving to be a thorn in Google’s side. The group has sponsored conferences, written editorials and issued ads, aimed at Google’s privacy breaches.
Terming Google’s information collection as an ‘information monopoly’, the group has concerns that the consumer is powerless to do anything about it. Consumer Watchdog wants Congress to pass the Do Not Track legislation, similar to the Do Not Call Rules managed by the Federal Trade Commission. Failing this, and in conjunction, if Google continues to gather consumer data, the watchdog wants the company to be broken up and regulated like a public utility. The group intends to submit testimony to that effect to the antitrust subcommittee, the same day Schmidt appears before the Senators.