Member-only story
The Surveillance State Is Watching Your Pets, Too
Woof
In a new piece on Debugger, OneZero’s consumer tech publication, our columnist Owen Williams writes about his decision to buy a GPS tracker that attaches to his dog’s collar: “Honestly, I felt silly buying a GPS tracker at first, given I’d have reservations about attaching it to a child if I had one. But the peace of mind with a young dog has been worth it.”
It’s a great story that speaks to a very simple trade-off many of us make all the time: privacy for safety and convenience. Owen doesn’t think he’d attach a tracker to a human child — that’s good! — but as he writes in the piece, he is supplying geolocation data to the tracker’s parent company, which sells products and markets against that data. With the Whistle pet tracker around her neck, Owen’s dog Kaya turns into a little beacon, sending valuable location pings as she walks around the city and its environs.
Keep in mind Amazon, which owns the surveillance company Ring, has shown interest in the pet tracking market as well. And why not? No one wants to lose their companion, and many…
