Move over, Alexa... it’s Amazon’s f lying indoor burglar alarm
AMAZON has unveiled a surveillance drone that flies around your home to keep a watch for burglars.
The Always Home Cam is filming the whole time as it buzzes around.
It gives the owner a complete view of their home, without the need for multiple cameras. But critics have described the drone as ‘orwellian’.
In a promotional video, a burglar shown breaking into a house leaves once he sees the drone – which is providing a live stream to the homeowner on his smartphone. Amazon says you could also use the device to check if you have left the cooker on or a window open when you are out.
The gadget, expected to cost £195 when it goes on sale, is part of a new range of products from Amazon’s Ring smart home security division, which includes doorbell cameras. The drone’s camera is mounted on a short trunk that extends below its propellers, which are housed in a square cage.
The drone can be fully automated or fly to a specific room when commanded to by the owner. once its circle is complete, it returns to its dock to charge. Amazon’s website says: ‘Designed with privacy in mind, the motors even hum when in flight – it’s privacy you can hear.’
Leila Rouhi, president of Ring, said the ‘autonomous indoor security camera’ will only record when the drone is flying and is blocked when it is in the dock.
But online critics said the company was going ‘full orwellian’ with the device. They are concerned about its patchy record with similar devices such as its Echo voice-controlled speaker, which uses Alexa artificial intelligence technology.
one commentator, Taylor Lyles, wrote: ‘So this is what has been chasing me in my nightmares.’
Big Brother Watch described the drone as Amazon’s ‘most chilling home surveillance product yet’. Silkie Carlo, director of the caminquiries paign group, told the BBC: ‘It’s difficult to imagine why Amazon thinks anyone wants flying internet cameras linked up to a data-gathering company in the privacy of their own home.’
Digital rights group Fight for the Future said: ‘People hacked Ring cameras and used them to spy on children in their bedrooms. Do not put an Amazon surveillance drone in your house.’
But Amazon executive Dave Limp said households should not worry about privacy because the device’s recordings were encrypted and could only be viewed using two types of authentication.
The company has been criticised for its approach to privacy before in relation to Echo after it emerged that the device was listening all the time. not only that but Amazon keeps a copy of everything picked up by the device.
In 2018 police in Bentonville, Arkansas, issued a warrant asking for recordings on the Echo in the hope they could solve a murder.
Amazon refused to hand over the recordings of the Echo, which belonged to a suspect accused of strangling a man in his hot tub.
The drone is planned for release in the US only once Amazon gets approval from regulator the Federal Communications Commission.
‘Chasing me in my nightmares’