Patient privacy has been inviolable since the time of Hippocrates, in 400 BC. That may be about to end. Last week Amazon announced it is going to acquire One Medical, a health care provider with over 700,000 patients.
Big Tech has flirted with health care for years. Amazon’s direct entry into primary health care is a turning point. It will increase the perils of surveillance capitalism, with implications for everyone.
Amazon knows our guilty pleasures, what we buy, what pills we buy, and what we watch and read and listen to. Its devices listen in our homes, and peep out of our (Amazon Ring) door bells. Amazon’s “Kuiper” satellites will soon connect our Internet.
Recent scandals revealed that Amazon uses the data collected for supposedly innocent reasons in ways that betray our trust. Amazon staff say there are no limits on how Amazon uses this data internally. According to Amazon’s former head of information security: “We have no idea where our fucking data is.”
One Medical receives health information about children, families, the elderly, and vulnerable. That includes information about substance abuse, mental health issues, and other intimate conditions. We cannot be confident that Amazon will treat this new data any better than it has treated its existing data hoard.
Our secrets are not safe inside Amazon. And it is not just consumers who are at risk. Other companies that compete with or sell through Amazon will almost certainly be harmed. Amazon uses data collected from one part of its business to help other parts. For example, it competes with retailers that sell on its platform by exploiting its insider data about their businesses. More data – especially intimate data – increases Amazon’s market power over consumers and competitors.
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