Privacy concerns around latest Amazon acquisition

Digital Rights Watch (DRW) is calling for tightened privacy laws in light of Amazon’s $2.5 billion (US$1.7 billion) acquisition of iRobot, manufacturer of the popular Roomba device.

Many Roomba vacuums create detailed maps of users’ homes, information that will now belong to Amazon to be combined with data from the company’s other products including Ring security cameras and Echo smart speakers.

DRW says Amazon already collects huge amounts of information about its users, raising both privacy and competition concerns. Each dataset that Amazon acquires increases the company’s knowledge of customers’ lives and thereby increases its market power.

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 like Alexa, Ring, Prime and now Roomba.

DRW says that Amazon’s push into medical, insurance and other industries is enabling the company to amass information at an individual level, which could be used to exert power. The organisation says privacy protections are a vital line of defence against this kind of corporate power. James Clark, Executive Director of DRW, says the acquisition is 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 uses that to predict market trends and manipulate user behaviour,” he said.

With Australia’s Privacy Act currently in review, DRW is calling for measures that would prevent large companies from acquiring more and more of our personal data.

“We should be concerned that any company can have this much information about how we live our lives. Amazon knows a lot about us and we know very little about them; that kind of asymmetry of power is very concerning for our rights and democracy,” Clark said.

“The personal information about Australians and their homes shouldn’t 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.”

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