Amazon Is Likely To Integrate Its Delivery Drones With ‘Surveillance As A Service’

Now, we all know that Amazon has its eye on integrating surveillance into its services and products, from the sky, via the Internet, and in homes.

During the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May, investors pressured it to stop selling its facial recognition system to the government if there isn’t a board assessment to make sure that using such technology does not violate human rights. Meanwhile, according to a CNET report earlier June, Amazon is letting law enforcement access videos recorded by its Ring doorbells at households around the US.

Amazon also likely considers integrating its delivery drone fleet with surveillance tech in the future. It filed a patent in 2015, which was approved this month, describing the technology which will enable delivery drones to conduct surveillance activity at an authorized party’s property by creating a “geo-fence” of it and image it to produce surveillance images. During or after this process, the imaging data that is outside the geo-fence would be obscured.

As stated in the patent, the cameras are able to capture night vision, thermal, infrared imaging, and audio. Customers can choose to use this service for one time only, hourly, daily, or weekly. The system can store and send the images to a device with “service alerts.”

The technology is described in the patent using a dystopian-sounding phrase “surveillance as a service.”

Amazon didn’t respond to a comment request about the patent from Gizmodo. However, the company answered about its past patents, saying:

Apparently, Amazon has filed a lot of patents that have become customer-facing products, and the surveillance drone patent proves that the company is, at least, thinking about ways of using delivery drones for purposes beyond shipping, like aerial surveillance. A few weeks ago, the e-commerce giant even revealed a working design for its delivery drone, saying that the drones might go in operation within months.

Amazon unveiled its Prime Air delivery drones at Re:Mars, held on June 5th, just one day after the above-mentioned patent was granted.