Close your eyes and think of the last person you saw wearing Google Glass. While it may have been Madeleine Albright, it’s more likely the wearer looked something like the stream of dudes pictured on the White Men Wearing Google Glass Tumblr. While the Tumblr is obviously a self-selecting sample, it reflects all too well most depictions that accompanied media coverage of the device so far. But the real issue is less media coverage and more an inherent level of early adopter privilege that allow some more access to and influence over emerging technology.

And being part of that early adopter class isn’t just about who gets to play with the fun new toys first, it’s about who has the ability to influence the development of uses for technology that will guide future products and how the device is rolled out to a larger audience. While the technology itself is neutral, the ways society decides to use it are not — and due to a variety of social and economic factors, an elite class often gets to make the first decisions about how technology is used before it trickles down to other classes who might have different, perhaps even more immediate, needs for it.

As Jamelle Boiue pointed out earlier this year, implicit networking connections and economic opportunities have made influencers in the tech sphere a fairly homogenized group that includes a lot of white males. While communities of color are huge users of technology, they are often underrepresented among those providing commentary that helps craft the future of the space or designing the actual technology — as are women.

When Google’s own Sergey Brin inadvertently confirmed assumptions of who the initial audience for Google Glass would be when it comes to gender by contrasting using Google Glass with the “emasculating” experience of a smartphone at a TED talk, it was likely just poor word choice. But it also hit a little close to how women using technology are stereotyped and reinforced the logic behind the findings of some research suggesting cultural stereotypes drive women down other career paths despite aptitudes for math and science.

But the lack of that female input in the early stages of development and user testing can result in tech overlooking resources or services more geared towards their needs. Remember how Apple’s Siri couldn’t find abortion providers, but could find strip clubs and escort services?

The systematic exclusion of minority and female voices from the development and early use of tech products is an unintentional byproduct of a larger system of social and economic inequality that is by no means exclusive to this particular device. But the White Men Wearing Google Glass Tumblr can be a vehicle to discuss how the structures controlling who has access to technological developments first influence its deployment, and if incorporating diversity into that system can maximize the benefits of technological innovations for all potential users.

The Washington Post reports search giant Google will face coordinated action by European Union (EU) data protection regulators after attempts to make Google’s new integrated privacy policy comply with privacy laws fell apart:

A taskforce of agencies led by France’s National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties today began follow-up measures in line with their national laws after a meeting with Google yielded “no changes,” the regulator known as CNIL said in an e-mailed statement today. U.K., German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch watchdogs are also part of the taskforce.

Google announced the new privacy policy objected to by the EU states over a year ago. Under the policy, the search giant can combine information provided from one service with information from other services to create a comprehensive profile of an individual’s online behavior across Google products. Privacy protections in the EU, where an umbrella Data Protection Directive leads much of the privacy policy, are generally more stringent than in the U.S., where a “patchwork” of legislation defines online privacy rights.

While Google has been somewhat ahead of the game on protecting consumer data from government snooping, such as requiring warrants for email content data, they have faced a number of sanctions for questionable data collection practices including in the U.S. They agreed to a $22.5 million Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settlement for bypassing Safari privacy settings in 2012 and a $7 million fine in March of this year for the “Wi-Spy” incident in which Google Streetview Cars collected information from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks without consent — both of which amounted to mere hours of 2012 revenues.

Yesterday it was revealed that Google’s first Privacy Director, the London-based Alma Whitten, is stepping down and will be replaced by a California-based long-time Google engineer Lawrence You.

Last week, Reuters noted that the online retail giant Amazon had avoided hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes by stashing cash in Luxembourg, a notorious tax haven. Today, Bloomberg News’ Jesse Drucker reported that Amazon is not the only tech company employing this strategy — Google last year avoided $2 billion in taxes worldwide thanks to shifting money to Bermuda:

Google Inc. (GOOG) avoided about $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting $9.8 billion in revenues into a Bermuda shell company, almost double the total from three years before, filings show.

By legally funneling profits from overseas subsidiaries into Bermuda, which doesn’t have a corporate income tax, Google cut its overall tax rate almost in half. The amount moved to Bermuda is equivalent to about 80 percent of Google’s total pretax profit in 2011.

The increase in Google’s revenues routed to Bermuda, disclosed in a Nov. 21 filing by a subsidiary in the Netherlands, could fuel the outrage spreading across Europe and in the U.S. over corporate tax dodging. Governments in France, the U.K., Italy and Australia are probing Google’s tax avoidance as they seek to boost revenue during economic doldrums.

The UK, in particular, has been cracking down hard on tax avoidance by multinational companies, including Google. “People want to know why companies which benefit from an infrastructure paid for by them and are paying people low wages who receive taxpayer-funded tax credits from the exchequer are not paying their fair share,” said Margaret Hodge, chair of the UK public accounts committee. .

In addition to corporate tax dodging, tax havens facilitate tax avoidance by the super-rich. According to the Tax Justice Network, the world’s wealthiest are shielding about $21 trillion in offshore tax havens. If that $21 trillion “was taxed at just 30 percent, this would generate tax revenues of nearly $200 billion — roughly twice the amount OECD countries spend on international development assistance.”