The Privacy Project: Amazon wants to surveil your dog

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OCTOBER 1, 2019

By Charlie Warzel

opinion writer at large

Steven Puetzer/Getty Images

We're in the middle of a digital privacy reckoning. Even the tech companies are taking notice. Facebook is reportedly pivoting its social network inward to private groups. Google is tightening privacy restrictions on its Chrome browser and its voice assistants. Apple has started putting privacy front and center in its advertising campaigns. And then there's Amazon, which is, uh, trying to strap the surveillance state to your dog.

Seriously.

Last week in Seattle, the e-commerce giant invited reporters as it rolled out a mind-boggling array of new products. One Zero's Will Oremus aptly described the event as Amazon's quest to become "The Everywhere Store." As far as I can tell, the theme appeared to be: items you might remember from your analog life (ovens, doorbells, rings, lamps, eyeglasses, dog collars) only now with more microphones, sensors and tracking capabilities!

Some of this isn't new. Ever since the runaway success of Amazon's Echo speaker the company has been trying to stuff its poor voice assistant, Alexa, into as many mundane corners of our life as possible. Last week's event marked the furthest realization of this ambition to date.

But Amazon's vision of the future feels increasingly at odds with the ability to be anonymous in public. One concern, according to the tech activist Liz O'Sullivan is Amazon's new product called Sidewalk, which is a wireless mesh Wi-Fi network that will help link connected devices at long range. On Twitter, O'Sullivan suggested that products like Sidewalk (which is in a testing phase) need only a small fraction of the country to opt in to "to create a network with exhaustive coverage of our neighborhoods and streets." Her takeaway: "Amazon is building the infrastructure to monitor us all."

I reached out to O'Sullivan shortly after her tweets to get a better idea of how this might work. Her fear is that Amazon, through Sidewalk as well as other products, like its Ring doorbell cameras, is quietly creating Wi-Fi beacons everywhere. Each time our products come in contact with these devices, they transmit little bits of data. Mostly, this data isn't highly personal (occasionally, it's randomized), but it's still enough to potentially identify and then track users. Again, this already happens with Wi-Fi routers and mobile phones. The big difference here is that Amazon is looking to own a substantial chunk of the network and the devices. That means having access to a lot of data.

O'Sullivan suggests that the ubiquity of devices means you could be surveilled by Amazon even if you don't own its products. "If you have enough Ring doorbell cameras on your block, it doesn't matter if you bought one or not; you're being monitored and, down the road, perhaps your device is pinging them," she said.

O'Sullivan isn't a Luddite. And she believes that connected cities could alter citizens' lives for the better. Using big data, for example, to provide better ambulance routes could save hundreds of lives. The key, she believes, is regulation. "We need to know they're not going to take this data and sell it to law enforcement or other organizations to do better behavioral targeting," she said. "Our vision of a smart city of the future has nothing do with advertising."

In her Twitter thread, O'Sullivan expressed frustration that the sometimes breathless coverage around Amazon's new devices hardly addresses their potential for surveillance. I asked her if she finds it hard to be a critic of new technology, especially when others find it exciting — something I've struggled with as a journalist.

"It makes me sad because it's a powerful moment for humanity and tech, and I want to be on the side of, 'hey, this is cool!'" she said. "But the consequences are too great and abuse of data is too prevalent. They've taken consumer drive and turned it into a tool to monitor and influence us."

Before we hung up, I asked her about Amazon's new dog tracking device and jokingly asked whether surveilling our canine friends was a bridge too far. Her answer was sobering.

"I found that product pretty revealing," she said. "Human beings don't need those collars because we're already on a digital tether."

From the Archives: 'Consumer Groups Criticize Amazon's New Privacy Policy'

This week's pick looks at Amazon's privacy policies from the good old days — the year 2000. Sometimes it's helpful to look at a company's early days — before it became a behemoth — to understand its privacy values. From the piece:

Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc., which sells a wide range of products, including books, toys and hardware, posted a revised privacy policy on its Web site Thursday telling customers the information they give is considered a company asset that can be sold.

The piece quotes the company's old privacy policy and includes a very telling line:

"As we continue to develop our business, we might sell or buy stores or assets," the new policy reads. "In such transactions, customer information generally is one of the transferred business assets."

Always helpful to remember that you, the customer, are always a "transferred business asset."

Tip of the Week: Apple's New Privacy Tools

Apple's latest operating system, iOS 13 (which you should download because it's important to update your phone!), has some spiffy new additions that can help protect your privacy. What I like about these features is that they aren't reinventing the wheel but instead taking third-party privacy protections and making them easy for anyone to install.

Once again, my colleagues in the newsroom have a great primer on these iOS 13 tools. Brian X. Chen wrote this guide last week. Here's one snippet on how to use the iOS 13 to create burner email addresses. I highly suggest you read the whole thing.

When you use it to register for a website or app, iOS 13 will present you with an option to hide your email address that is linked to your Apple ID. If you choose to use it, Apple will create what is essentially a burner email address so that you can sign up for the app or website while hiding your real email address from the third party.

Whenever the website or app then tries to contact you, it will email the burner address and not your real email address. Apple will forward the note to you so you are aware of it. Then if a business starts sending spam to the burner email address, you can easily delete your account and the business won't have your real email address.

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