Amazon announced two new futuristic products at the end of September. The first product is called the autonomous surveillance drone, Ring Always Home Cam. From the name, it’s a small drone that flies around your home, basically a flying surveillance camera. The second product is called “Amazon One”, a palm recognition scanner that the company is currently testing out to make checkout quicker.
It may seem cool, but it also raises massive red flags for consumer privacy. This is Amazon after all, a company that created the Amazon Echo, which has been reported to be recording the voices of its users. It also has a massive security risk if the data from these products get into the wrong hands. Take the Amazon One for example, the palm recognition scanner would likely have to store your prints, and if that biometric data gets leaked or hacked, you’re out of luck because unlike passwords, biometric data can’t be changed so you are out of luck if a hacker steals that information.
Amazon has been trying to put out some of these concerns by stating customers will be able to log into their account and request to delete their data and will keep the encryption of the palm prints on secured cloud storage. Another concern was if the autonomous surveillance drone is hackable or is at risk. Amazon responds to these concerns by claiming that the drone will be loud enough to hear when it’s on so you are never caught off-guard and the dock of the drone will be blocking the camera.
I think that these new products are very cool, but it also seems to be normalizing digital surveillance products. There are a lot of trade-offs for each side, such as having a flying video camera to protect you from home intruders, but on the other hand, that flying video camera can easily be used to watch you as well.
By: Quan Huynh
SOURCE
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-drone-camera-go-palm-data-privacy/
RIT Cyber Security Policy and Law Class Blog 