By gathering continuous data about sleep, heart rate, and physical activity, biowearable devices can give individuals more control over their well-being. But they also create a detailed digital record of our daily lives—one that the federal government may soon be able to access readily.
Consider this scenario.
You’ve recently received a government-subsidized biowearable. Accordingly, the authorities now know when you’re sleeping, because the device reports your sleep cycle, location, and daily movements in real time to a cloud server accessible through a legal process. It knows when you’re home. It knows when you leave.
Those data are then obtained by an FBI field office (either through direct purchase or, if necessary, a legal process), because a federal prosecutor has decided that your criticism of immigration enforcement operations and your social media posts supporting Immigration…
