[ad_1]
At first glance, it’s one of those things that seems relatively benign: Amazon received federal approval the other day to develop a device to track your sleep patterns.
However, on closer inspection, questions arise.
Will the device’s radar sensors become an even more intrusive threat to our privacy than the microphones and cameras that Amazon, Apple and Google already have in millions of homes?
And what exactly does it mean to have a radar wave transmitter next to your bed? Is it safe?
First the good news. All of the radar technology experts I have consulted have ignored the potential risk of being bathed in low-intensity electromagnetic radiation overnight.
“Even though you might spend a lot of time next to this thing while you sleep, you would have a much more harmful exposure by working outside for a similar amount of time,” said Paul Siqueira, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
In terms of the radiation emitted, he told me, “compare that to something like a light bulb.”
Dustin Schroeder, an assistant professor of geophysics at Stanford University who uses radar to study the planet, said the technology offered by Amazon is not that different from the signals emitted by cell phones and other wireless devices.
“
As for privacy, that is another matter.
I briefly referred to Amazon’s new technology in Tuesday’s column on how the pandemic resulted in what one expert called “a sleep deprivation epidemic.”
A recent study from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found that more than half of all Americans have had trouble sleeping since the arrival of COVID-19.
Sleep monitoring is a growing industry for Silicon Valley. It’s a selling point for wearable devices like the Apple Watch and Fitbit. Now such systems are taking root in the house.
In March, Google unveiled the latest version of its Nest Hub smart display. It incorporates what the company calls Soli sensors, which are very similar to what Amazon apparently now plans to put in Alexa-powered gadgets.
But because Amazon is the much more aggressive retailer, and because it dominates the market for speakers and smart displays, Amazon’s interest in radar-powered devices represents the biggest blow in the arc. privacy policy of Americans.
“Surveillance as a service has become a dormant technology, and it’s as scary as Silicon Valley,” said Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, American University law professor who focuses on privacy issues.
“The privacy of your bedroom is a place that deserves the greatest protection from outside forces, especially from private companies without much regulation or oversight,” he told me. “Companies looking to monetize sleep habits are reporting that there is nowhere beyond their reach.”
In its Federal Communications Commission application for approval, Amazon acknowledged that its radar technology “will operate at higher power levels than currently permitted.” It would be “used for sleep monitoring and could help improve consumer awareness and management of sleep hygiene.”
The company described its radar sensors as “capturing movement in three-dimensional space.” This suggests that instead of recording all the movements of a rough night, as wearable devices now do, the new device would project an electromagnetic bubble on users.
It would then monitor all movement within that bubble throughout the night “with a higher degree of resolution and location accuracy than would otherwise be achievable,” according to the FCC app.
Needless to say, unless you turned it off, it would keep tabs on – and share with Amazon – anything going on in the bubble, sleep-related or, um, otherwise.
“Can sleep tracking data reveal how many people are in bed? Asked Vitaly Shmatikov, professor of computer science at Cornell University.
“Imagine sleep tracking data combined with Fitbit data combined with location data from people’s cell phones,” he told me. “The information gathered by each separate device may seem harmless, but the accumulation and aggregation of data streams from multiple trackers can reveal intimate details about users’ lives. “
Gaia Bernstein, director of the Institute for Privacy Protection at Seton Hall University School of Law, said the speed cameras that monitor you while you sleep are “of particular concern” because “federal privacy laws do not not regulate companies like Amazon ”.
“Amazon will have access to sensitive health information about us that it can use freely,” she warned.
The sleep data would obviously be very valuable for a company that runs an online pharmacy and sells pillows and bedding, which Amazon is doing here.
I asked the company for details on how they planned to use radar technology and what they would do with the data. Nobody answered.
While being tracked by radar while sleeping is one thing, perhaps the most unsettling aspect of it all is the introduction of new technology into the house that allows Big Tech to track your every move.
Theoretically, smart devices equipped with radar would be able to “see” all activity in a room and perhaps even help identify who is present.
“The technology will be used to observe many people through many devices, most of whom have no idea that they are being monitored,” predicted Joshua Fairfield, a professor of law at the University of Washington and Lee who focuses on data confidentiality.
“Beyond the absolute certainty that this technology will be used to observe people who do not know or do not consent to be observed,” he told me, “it erodes our feeling of not being observed. Already our houses are the less private place where we live our life.
Fairfield added: “This kind of innovation is the worst of the Internet of Things – unnecessary except for advertisers and data capitalists, and with the added effect of moving surveillance to the center of the most important spaces and times. vulnerable. “
In short, sleep tracking radars are unlikely to give you cancer or any other health problem. But they represent a significant step forward in Big Tech’s continued efforts to spy on you throughout the day (and, apparently, night).
I asked a simple question about Amazon’s latest breakthrough to the experts I contacted: smart or scary?
The consensus response: both.
[ad_2]
Source link