sorry for my bad translation, it's not easy to translate a typical german word like "Bundesdatenschutzbeauftragter".

UPDATE:

now even Ilse Aigner jumped the boat

Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner: "Microsoft's Xbox One is a Trojan"

http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwinfuture.de%2Fnews%2C76343.html

Federal Data Protection Commissioner Peter Schaar: "The fact that Microsoft now spying on my living room is merely a twisted nightmare."

spiegel.de is one of the biggest german speaking news-sites in the internet, and Schaar who is this article about works in the german government.

i hope this makes into a proper english article, but here is the rough translation via google translate:

http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fnetzwelt%2Fgames%2Fueberwachung-datenschuetzer-peter-schaar-kritisiert-microsofts-xbox-one-a-901893.html

some quotes:

"The Xbox continuously records all sorts of personal information about me. Reaction rates, my learning or emotional states. The are then processed on an external server, and possibly even passed on to third parties. Whether they will ever deleted, the person can not influence." - Schaar

"A patent application suggests that Microsoft's console might also want to use in other ways - for example, to calculate using the Kinect camera prices for movie downloads then, how many people sit in front of the TV set ." - spiegel.de

"The fact that Microsoft now spying on my living room is merely a twisted nightmare." - Schaar

Your headline is missing the word "surveillance device"

thank you, was being cut off for some reason. "surveillance device" translate it far better than "monitoring device" i had translated, so thank you for that too.

well, he should just look what microsoft did with the first kinect in germany. they ask you for some privacy stuff and you can agree or not. won't change the functionality of it.

 i'm sure it will be the same for kinect 2 and i'm also sure that as example the "how many people watch the movie" won't come to any country.

EU will shit all over this.

MS would not design a device they can't sell in Europe. It's a huge market, and one they know they need to get stronger in.

We don't have all the facts yet. People are jumping the gun

Why does the EU want to stop MS for watching me being pantless?

How can these information be processed to an external server? The One doesn't even need a permenant internet connection?

We have cellphones, laptops, webcams and so on. These devices also have the potential to spy on us. I know it's Schaar's job to complain about this, he has done a terrific job doing so in the past, but why should the new Kinect be any different than the old one or any other devices?

It would help to know how the tech in the Xbox One will operate before jumping the gun and accusing Microsoft of spying on people. For example what audio and video is handled locally and what gets sent out to the cloud to be processed? What privacy options are available on the console? How is any data handled on the other end?

I mean if people jumped the gun and banned anything that could be used as a "surveillance device" we wouldn't have smartphones (actually any kind of telephone for that matter), the Internet, credit and debit cards, etc. There are many devices that could be used for nefarious purposes yet we still use them.

The reason being is that they all have privacy safeguards in place so why should this be any different? This privacy commissioner should be looking at ways to ensure that privacy is respected instead of making claims without even knowing how privacy for the device is even going to be handled.

its a jealousy issue. if they cant see you pantless, then nobody should