By Aaron Kesel
Amazon has announced a new product for its Ring subsidiary company, a mail surveillance system. They also went a step beyond and released a new palm scanner point-of-sale system.
Amazon announced its rollout of Amazon One devices that use a customer’s palm prints for identification and payment at physical retail stores. The devices are presently available for use in Seattle locations for Amazon Go stores, and the company wants to expand it to any retailer willing to partner with the mega-giant.
According to an announcement by Dilip Kumar, the vice president of Amazon’s physical retail business, the Amazon One device creates even less payment friction in the company’s cashier-less retail stores. Instead of being identified by an account on their mobile phones, customers can simply walk into the store, scan their palm, shop for products, and the purchases will be automatically charged to a credit card.
A spokesperson for Amazon told Recode it has “no plans to use transaction information from third party locations for Amazon advertising or other purposes.”
However, Amazon says it wants to use the tech to spread to third-party partners, and payments aren’t the only function it has in mind for the system. Other use-cases discussed include a customer entering a location like a stadium, badging into work, and loyalty cards. It brings to mind a dystopian view of society.
If the Amazon One hand scanner wasn’t enough, Amazon Ring just announced that it will be releasing a new in-home drone and mail monitoring system using a sensor. Activist Post reported last week on the in-home drone, noting how the autonomous drone “Always Home Cam” zooms around inside your home to give you a perspective of any room you want when you’re not home. The drone can also be commanded to fly on-demand or programmed to fly when a disturbance is detected by its linked Ring Alarm system. Once it’s done flying, the Always Home Cam returns to its dock to charge its battery like a good robot.
The latter mail system is equally as privacy-invasive as a camera that flies around your home. The $30 Mailbox Sensor is similar to the Ring Motion Sensor accessory for Ring lighting products. The new Mailbox Sensor is a little sensor that relies on Amazon’s Sidewalk technology to extend the range of your Wi-Fi network, reports CNET.
The Ring Mailbox Sensor is designed to send an alert to your phone when the door is opened; and it’s supposed to work with other Ring products, such as using Ring doorbells and outdoor cameras to record footage when the mailbox is opened. This means that the cameras will trigger to record the mailbox when the sensor is tripped.
Ring is really fulfilling its goal of becoming a blanket surveillance system.
Image: ACLU
**By [@An0nkn0wledge](https://hive.blog/@an0nkn0wledge)**
Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post.
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Amazon Announces Mail Surveillance And Palm Scanner For Point Of Sale