Amazon wants the power to unlock the door to my house now, apparently. According to the website The Verge it works like this;
“The service is called Amazon Key and it relies on a Amazon’s new Cloud Cam and compatible smart lock. The camera is the hub, connected to the internet via your home Wi-Fi. The camera talks to the lock over Zigbee, a wireless protocol utilized by many smart home devices.
When a courier arrives with a package for in-home delivery, they scan the barcode, sending a request to Amazon’s cloud. If everything checks out, the cloud grants permission by sending a message back to the camera, which starts recording. The courier then gets a prompt on their app, swipes the screen, and voilà, your door unlocks. They drop off the package, relock the door with another swipe, and are on their way. The customer will get a notification that their delivery has arrived, along with a short video showing the drop-off to confirm everything was done properly.”
For years big tech companies have become less in tune with basic human desires and needs, such as privacy and safety. It seems like in the name of convenience and profit margins, they are willing to do basically anything that would mitigate any wall between us and technology. The Equifax hack has shown us what an enormous scale they have collected our most personal financial data without us knowing. New features on Instagram search your phone contacts and recommend them as friends. The cloud sometimes syncs private information on devices that you may not want sensitive information on. Your new iPhone X will allow your significant other to unlock your phone while your sleeping through facial recognition.
The point is, to what extent are these big tech firms so out of touch that they think mining our data or violating our privacy on such a blatant level is socially acceptable? Is it because the heads of these companies aren’t actually human but instead an alien species searching to find the meaning of humanity itself as one of my favorite graffiti pieces suggests:
It could be that Zuckerberg does in fact think that “The more of your data I gather, the more I understand what it means to be human.” But even if Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos are in fact a different species, there is a more sinister method behind their madness then simply inquiring about humanity or knowing our habits. It’s that as their monopolies grow and their profits continue to increase, what becomes evermore evident is our safety and privacy are basically meaningless when compared to their bottom line. The fact that they now want access to enter our houses is just another example of their lack of humanity.
