Friday 9 September 2022 04:01 PM Advocates blast Amazon over $1.7B iRobot deal that fuels 'pervasive ... trends now

Privacy advocates blasted Amazon's recently announced purchase of robot vacuum maker iRobot for fueling 'pervasive surveillance' as the Federal Trade Commission opened a probe into the $1.7 billion buyout.

The tech giant's planned acquisition of the maker of Roomba vacuum cleaners will give it access to the appliance's operating system that uses a front-facing camera to create complete maps of the inside of people's homes - all of which can then be fed into Amazon's existing, massive trove of data about hundreds of millions of consumers. 

'There is no more private space than the home. Yet with this acquisition, Amazon stands to gain access to extremely intimate acts in our most private spaces that are not available through other means, or to other competitors,' over twenty privacy and civil rights groups say in a Friday letter to the FTC.

'Information collected by iRobot’s devices goes beyond home floor plans, and includes highly detailed information about the interiors of consumers’ homes and the schedules and lifestyles of the inhabitants,' the letter, shared by digital rights nonprofit Fight for the Future, states. 'Granting Amazon total access to this kind of private information through this acquisition harms consumers.' 

The Seattle-based company's Alexa speaker accounts for about 70% of the entire smart home devices market - and researchers project the total value of that market will hit $537 billion by 2030. Around a quarter of U.S. households have a least one Alexa-powered

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