Amazon products are watching us: company discloses news at event

A TV set that knows when you are in or out of the room. A gadget that monitors your breathing pattern while you sleep. An improved voice assistant tool that highlights just how much you know about your daily routine.

In an exclusive event for press guests last week, the amazon revealed a long list of product updates ahead of the holiday shopping season.

The novelties seem designed to further insert their devices and services into every corner of our homes with the apparent aim of making everything a little easier. But the event was also a reminder of just how much Amazon products are keeping tabs on us.

During past events, Amazon (AMZN) has caused a bit of amazement with alarming examples of surveillance products including drones and Astro, the dog-like robot that patrols the house.

In 2022, however, Amazon’s (AMZN) advances in tracking daily routines were a little more subtle.

The new Halo Rise sleep monitoring device, for example, sits on the nightstand and records a person’s breathing and micro-movements while they sleep without the need to wear a sleep monitor on their wrist, for example. The device is said to work even if the person is facing the other direction, or covered by pillows and blankets.

On the new Echo Show 15 smart display, Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa can present a morning routine for you to do at home, provide calendar updates and highlight traffic reports for your commute to work.

There’s also the option to ask Alexa to turn off the lights up to 24 hours into the future, in case you’re not home.

In addition, Amazon also continues to expand Astro’s functionality. Now, the robot can detect the faces of pets in the house and transmit videos to the owners when they are out of the house.

The robot can also make sure windows and doors are closed and do a deeper scan when the owner is away, simply by subscribing to a virtual surveillance service.

Amazon is far from the only tech company that offers products that track users or collect data with the promise of more convenience, productivity, and security.

But, perhaps more than any of its competitors, it has created a wide range of products and services that possibly even more guard over our daily lives in our homes and surroundings.

In the months leading up to the product launch event, Amazon made two big announcements that could extend its reach into our lives. Last month, the giant closed the deal to buy iRobot, the company behind the popular Roomba automatic vacuum cleaners (which has some models that create maps of the interior of our homes).

It also announced plans to expand its reach in the healthcare market by acquiring One Medical, a primary care service for its members.

In the process, Amazon is testing customers’ comfort level with how much any company should know about our lives. At the same time, it may also be changing our tolerance for the topic.

Jonathan Collins, an analyst at data intelligence consultancy ABI Research, said the scope and breadth of the company’s consumer offerings may be a concern for some, but many may simply accept the switch out of sheer convenience.

“In general, negative consumer attitudes towards collecting data from a smart home and in other areas are greatly mitigated by the services that customers receive in return,” he said.

“Even if it’s not explicit, there is a trade-off between free or lower-priced services and the sharing and collection of data that supports their availability.”

Stephen Beck, founder and managing partner of consultancy cg42, said that customer opinions “will likely remain unchanged after the Amazon event because items such as a television, smart speaker or sleep monitor are familiar and do not pose obvious threats.” and new to privacy”.

Amazon has a history of being caught harvesting user data without consumers knowing. In 2019, reports emerged that the company was recording snippets of conversations from Alexa users that were sometimes reviewed by humans. After the backlash caused by the revelation, Amazon changed its settings so that people could opt out of recording.

For its latest products, the company says on its website that Astro is designed to detect only the chosen wake word and does not store or send audios to the cloud unless the device detects that word.

The website also points out that the sensor data Astro uses to navigate at home is processed on the device itself and not sent to the cloud, and that the robot only transmits video or images to the cloud when using a feature like Live View. (Live view).

Meanwhile, the Halo Rise sleep monitoring device encrypts the collected data and stores it in the cloud, according to the company. Users can download or delete them later.

The issue is deeper. The ongoing rollout of products that can monitor customers to varying degrees comes at a time when many Americans have more reason to pay attention to data collection given the changing legal landscape surrounding abortion legislation.

Digital rights experts have warned that people’s search histories, location data, messages and other digital information could be used by law enforcement officers investigating or prosecuting abortion-related cases.

“The danger of tracking has never been clearer,” trumpeted Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and a fellow at the NYU School of Law. “Very few customers think about how the information they provide to companies could be misused by governments, hackers and many other actors.”

While some of the recently announced functionality (like Astro’s monitoring of doors and windows) may be intended to help people feel safer at home, Cahn worries that such seemingly small updates will also push people further into the ecosystem. from Amazon.

“Fortunately, even if you can teach an old robot dog new tricks, reversing the American saying, you can’t change one fact: it’s still scary.”