I was at one point head of security and infratructure at Pebble and the only person standing in the way of personally identifiable biometric data being directly accessible on employee workstations. I know such practices end with data leaked or sold.
I believed Pebble users could enjoy rich data-driven features without fear as long as someone like me had their back. That sense of mission was part of why I stayed on to the end.
Once Pebble and I were integrated into Fitbit I got to see up close that they are not a wearables company, but a surveillance capitalism firm that will profit from all available data, even not-technically-hipaa protected medical data in any way legally possible. No one there had any mission but share-price-go-up.
I quit 3 months before my golden handcuffs came off, because I realized I no longer wanted to be part of an organization so deeply negligent with security and unethical with data usage.
I then got to watch from a distance as Pebble user trust and user data was then gobbled up again, this time by Google.
Now firms like Google have fully saturated the adult market and seek to parasitically cause behavior changes in children while extracting highly profitable biometric data from them too.
A ratified-and-strengthened American Privacy Rights Act cannot come soon enough.
We have to convince our legislators to stop these predators.