Google’s new Nest Hub Max is a smart display unit that comes equipped with a 6.5-megapixel facial recognition camera that identifies you and monitors all your actions – inside your own home. And the Orwellian icing on the cake is that it is not equipped with a physical shutter to forcibly prevent it from monitoring what’s happening in your home.

The device allows you to check in on what’s happening in your home when you’re out, and because of its facial recognition capabilities, will detect when you enter the room and provide personalized information to you, such as your day’s appointments, the weather forecast, and so on, reported Natural News.  The camera also enables two-way video calls over Google Duo and comes loaded with the Google Assistant (which has been the focus of a huge number of privacy issues). While all these functions might sound super convenient and fun, the privacy issues raised by the camera and audio functionality cannot be overlooked.

There are concerns about Google’s face recognition.  The company has struggled to maintain a good reputation. They have proven to be biased toward Communism and authoritarian ideals, big government control over the population, and have even censored those who reject the force and violence inherent in those ideas. Today the face features are only accessible by Google, but what happens when it begins letting other apps and services access your face and you are one of those anti-government dissenters?

Clearly, there are real reasons to be concerned about Google’s latest tech offering, and those who wish to protect their online privacy might do better to steer well clear of it.