Digital Rights Watch (DRW) is calling for stricter privacy laws in connection with Amazon’s $2.5 billion (US$1.7 billion) acquisition of iRobot, maker of the popular Roomba device.
Many Roomba vacuums create detailed maps of users’ homes, information that Amazon will now own to combine with data from the company’s other products including Ring security cameras and Echo smart speakers.
DRW said Amazon already collects large amounts of information about its users, raising both privacy and competition concerns. Each dataset Amazon acquires increases the company’s knowledge of customers’ lives and thus increases its power in the market.
The acquisition follows Amazon’s purchase of One Medical for $5.6 billion (US$3.9 billion), which will give it the capacity to combine health data with data from its other products such as Alexa, Ring, Prime and now is Roomba.
DRW said Amazon’s push into medical, insurance and other industries allows the company to gather information at an individual level, which can be used to leverage power. The organization says privacy protections are an important line of defense against this kind of corporate power. James Clark, Executive Director of DRW, said the acquisition was not about selling robot vacuums.
“At its core, Amazon is a surveillance company. Amazon protects its market power and profitability by using its scale to build detailed profiles on millions of people and use that to predict trends in the market and manipulate user behavior,” he said.
With Australia’s Privacy Act currently under review, DRW is calling for measures to prevent big companies from getting more and more of our personal data.
“We should be concerned that any company could have this much information about how we live our lives. Amazon knows a lot about us and we know very little about them; this kind of lack of “Asymmetry of power is very concerning for our rights and democracy,” said Clark.
“Personal information about Australians and their homes should not be treated as an asset to be traded and acquired. This is sensitive and private information. There needs to be real limits on how it can be used, and especially on how it can be shared.”