Testadex Group News: Big Tech Is Acquiring Access to Your Health & Home

Testadex Group News: Big Tech Is Acquiring Access to Your Health & Home: SMART HOMES: THE FINAL FRONTIER It’s no secret that tech giants have long collected, analyzed, and sold users’ data for profit – a strategy ...

Big Tech Is Acquiring Access to Your Health & Home

SMART HOMES: THE FINAL FRONTIER

It’s no secret that tech giants have long collected, analyzed, and sold users’ data for profit – a strategy now commonly referred to as “surveillance capitalism”. As detailed by privacy pioneer, Dr. Shoshana Zuboff, the origins of this phenomenon date back to Google in 2001, where, in an effort to boost profits and survive the dotcom bust, Google began running simulations on private data to predict user behavior and maximize click-through rates.

This was wildly profitable for Google, driving a 3,590% increase in revenue from 2001-2004 and culminating in a $1 (0h 4m).9 billion IPO in 2004. Surveillance capitalism was officially born.

Almost two decades later, unmasking private user data, manipulating user behavior, and profiting at the expense of user privacy is the lifeblood of many corporations. As the world becomes more digital, the amount of data that surveillance capitalists jam into their algorithms is skyrocketing, enabling corporations to know us better than we know ourselves.

According to the EFF, Google controls 62% of mobile browsers, 69% of desktop browsers, and 92% of internet searches worldwide. Google also knows who you email (Gmail), where you go (Maps), what you watch (YouTube), and much more.

All data across all products is then compiled into a new, highly profitable product: “digital profiles” of users, just like you.

Tech giants are now expanding into new industries to supplement these digital profiles with real world data. Information from our at-home lives is a honey pot for surveillance capitalists, who know: if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a recorded conversation is worth a thousand keystrokes.

Smart speakers and security cameras are now the eyes and ears of our smart homes, and Big Tech is watching.

BILLION DOLLAR DATA ACQUISITIONS

Over the past decade, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft made over 500 acquisitions worth trillions of dollars. Although it is common for corporations to acquire companies for new users, four recent acquisitions by Amazon and Google illuminate a new strategy to acquire companies for new data.

In the past two years, Google bought FitBit for $2 (0h 8m).1B along with the health data of its 28 million users, while Amazon spent $1 (0h 4m)B to acquire PillPack, an online pharmacy with medical information of millions of users.

With access to this new trove of health data, including fitness activity, heart rate, and prescriptions, Amazon and Google are taking an inside look into our bodies.

This data acquisition strategy also involves our homes, as evidenced by Amazon and Google’s purchase of Ring and Nest for $1 (0h 4m).2B and $3 (0h 12m).2B, respectively.

Ring and Nest began as camera and thermostat makers, but have now expanded to locks, motion sensors, smoke alarms, and more. Behind the façade of these acquired smart home brands, Amazon and Google have effectively entered the living rooms of millions of people worldwide.

How they will use our health and home data is a black box, but one thing is for sure: it will not remain private. After all, privacy is the single largest existential threat to surveillance capitalists.

PATENT PENDING: SIGNALING THE FUTURE

To complement their new acquisitions, Amazon and Google are also investing heavily in patents. While patents offer insight into a company’s mindset, they are not always indicative of a company’s future plans. In the case of Amazon, let’s hope that is true.

In 2018, Amazon patented a new feature for its virtual assistant Alexa, which is built-in to their vast line of at-home smart speakers and on-the-go wearables.

The patent suggests Alexa will be able to auto-detect your emotions based on your speech patterns and use this information to suggest things to do, watch, or purchase.

The patent shares an example scenario where a woman is sniffling while speaking; after deciphering the user is ill, Alexa suggests a chicken soup recipe for her cold and offers to order cough drops on Amazon. This is not based on what the user said, but how she said it – Alexa really knows you.

What Amazon really wants is not just access to your data, but control of your home.

Several other patents, such as automatic environment sensing and policy enforcement, show Amazon’s desire to control our data, devices, and ultimately our homes.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg; in 2019, Amazon submitted a patent for an “unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that performs surveillance at a property defined by a geofence”. In other words, Amazon’s very own surveillance-as-a-service, which would extend their reach further into our neighborhoods.

We cannot wait until these issues are sufficiently understood by lawmakers to protect our privacy. As history has shown, the capitalistic tendencies of Big Tech will only grow – as they creep slowly into our homes and neighborhoods, we must push back and take control of our data and privacy before it is too late.

About IoTeX

Founded as an open source platform in 2017, IoTeX is building the Internet of Trusted Things, an open ecosystem where all “things” — humans, machines, businesses, and DApps — can interact with trust and privacy. Backed by a global team of 30+ top research scientists and engineers, IoTeX combines blockchain, secure hardware, and confidential computing to enable next-gen IoT devices, networks, and economies. IoTeX will empower the future decentralized economy by “connecting the physical world, block by block”.

Learn more: Website | Twitter | Telegram | Medium | Reddit

Source: https://hackernoon.com/big-tech-is-acquiring-access-to-your-health-and-home-9m163xiz

Testadex Group News: The FCC authorizes Amazon’s satellite internet net...

Testadex Group News: The FCC authorizes Amazon’s satellite internet net...: KEY POINTS The FCC declared on Thursday that Amazon may build its ambitious satellite internet system, which would compete with SpaceX’s Sta...

The FCC authorizes Amazon’s satellite internet network that would compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink

KEY POINTS

• The FCC declared on Thursday that Amazon may build its ambitious satellite internet system, which would compete with SpaceX’s Starlink network.
• Amazon’s project, known as Kuiper, would see the company launch 3,236 satellites into low Earth orbit.
• Morgan Stanley has declared that Kuiper has the potential to be a ”$100 billion opportunity” for Jeff Bezos’ company.
• 
• Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive officer of Amazon, speaks in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 19, 2019.
  Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

• The Federal Communications Commission declared on Thursday that Amazon may build its ambitious satellite internet system, which would compete with SpaceX’s Starlink network.

  Amazon’s project, known as Kuiper, would see the company launch 3,236 satellites into low Earth orbit. Amazon says it will deploy the satellites in five phases, with broadband service beginning once it has 578 satellites in orbit.

  “We conclude that grant of Kuiper’s application would advance the public interest by authorizing a system designed to increase the availability of high-speed broadband service to consumers, government, and businesses,” the FCC secretary Marlene Dortch said in its authorization order.

  The company has not outlined a timeline or cost for Kuiper and the FCC said the company has not finished the satellites’ design. But Morgan Stanley has declared the high-speed internet network has the potential to be a ”$100 billion opportunity” for Jeff Bezos’ company.

  Kuiper is poised to go toe-to-toe with SpaceX’s Starlink network of high-speed internet satellites, which Elon Musk’s company has been steadily launching for the past year. SpaceX has launched more than 500 Starlink satellites and aims to begin offering direct-to-consumer broadband service later this year.

• https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/12/19/amazon-and-elon-musks-spacex-plan-to-launch-more-satellites-than-ever.html

• One issue that SpaceX pushed back on during was Kuiper’s approach to orbital debris. While Amazon emphasized that it would remove its satellites from orbit within 355 days of them completing their missions, SpaceX pointed out that Kuiper “failed to submit a casualty risk analysis” of whether Amazon’s satellite debris might survive reentry. Part of that analysis would be an estimate calculating “the probability of human casualty,” which the FCC said Amazon will have to latter present as a part of a final debris mitigation plan.

  Notably, SpaceX wasn’t the only one to push back during the FCC’s consideration of Amazon’s application. Iridium Communications, Hughes Network Systems, Intelsat, Inmarsat, SES, WorldVu, Telesat and Theia also filed comments about or petitions against Kuiper’s application. 

  Amazon’s space reach

  Amazon has steadily expanded its reach in the space industry, most recently setting up a new unit called Aerospace and Satellite Solutions under its Amazon Web Services division.

• 

• Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, Blue Origin and owner of The Washington Post via Getty Images, introduces their newly developed lunar lander “Blue Moon” and gives an update on Blue Origin and the progress and vision of going to space to benefit Earth at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
  Jonathan Newton | The Washington Post | Getty Images

• While wholly separate from Amazon, Bezos also runs another space venture called Blue Origin that is developing next-generation rockets and spacecraft such as a lunar lander for returning humans to the moon. A team led by Blue Origin recently won a NASA contract worth $579 million as it competes with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and aerospace contractor Dynetics to build spacecraft that help the agency achieve its goal of landing astronauts on the moon by 2024.

  Kuiper is the name of a belt of objects that include asteroids and dwarf planets. It was named for the late Dutch American astronomer Gerard Kuiper.

• Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/30/fcc-authorizes-amazon-to-build-kuiper-satellite-internet-network.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain