Elexa tracking people
“Surveillance as a service has come to sleeping technology, and it’s as creepy as Silicon Valley gets,” said Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at American University who focuses on privacy issues. It incorporates what the company calls Soli sensors, which are very similar to what Amazon is apparently now planning to put into Alexa-powered gadgets.īut because Amazon is the much more aggressive retailer, and because it dominates the market for smart speakers and displays, Amazon’s interest in radar-powered devices represents the bigger shot across Americans’ privacy bow. In March, Google revealed the latest version of its Nest Hub smart display. Now such systems are taking root in the home. It’s a selling point for wearables such as the Apple Watch and Fitbit.
Sleep monitoring is a growth industry for Silicon Valley. I made passing reference to Amazon’s new technology in Tuesday’s column on how the pandemic had resulted in what one expert called “an epidemic of sleep deprivation.”Ī recent study by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found that more than half of all Americans have had problems sleeping since COVID-19 arrived. Business Column: Thanks to the pandemic, we now also have ‘an epidemic of sleep deprivation’Ī majority of Americans say they’ve been having trouble sleeping since the start of the pandemic.