My Pacemaker Is Tracking Me From Inside My Body; The Atlantic, January 27, 2018

Neta Alexander, The Atlantic; My Pacemaker Is Tracking Me From Inside My Body: Cloud-connected medical devices save lives, but also raise questions about privacy, security, and oversight. An Object Lesson.

[Kip Currier: Not an overstatement to say that this 1/27/18 first-person piece in The Atlantic is a profoundly thought-provoking, unsettling case study at the intersection of personal health data, privacy, digital networked technologies, and cybersecurity.]

"The idea of a battery-equipped, internet-connected device living forever inside my chest both terrifies and fascinates me. When people say, “I’ll die if I lose my iPhone,” they never mean it literally. But I really might die without this smart gadget. I’m also at risk in other ways. A wireless pacemaker can be hacked, or, as recently happened in Ohio, become legal evidence that incriminates its user.

There is a crucial difference between my device and more ubiquitous digital technologies: I never made the choice to implant the pacemaker in my body. I’m grateful to the hardworking doctors who minimized my pain and helped me get better. At the same time, the device they installed raises questions that now haunt me. It’s not clear who might have access to data about my pulse, my health, and possibly my whereabouts—data generated by a device inside me."