One way you can tell a technology is becoming mainstream is when it starts to have brushes with the law. We saw it in the 1980s with the first computer hacker trials, more recently with the appearance of Google Glass, and now with fitness trackers — courtesy of a personal injury suit taking place in Canada.
In what is thought to be the first ever case of data from a wearable device being used in court, a female Calgary plaintiff is using information gathered by her Fitbit device to demonstrate that her activity levels have dropped dramatically following an accident.
The data is being analyzed by a third-party analytics firm called Vivametrica, which will make its findings known to the court.
The case is an example of how our personal data will be utilized in the future as personal fitness-trackers become more mainstream. Although we don’t think of devices like Fitbits as establishing evidence about where we were, or what we were doing at a certain time, the reality is that this is exactly the case.
Research firm IHS recently suggested that the Apple Watch could grow the sensor-equipped wearable tech market by up to 7x its present size. If that’s close to accurate, lawsuits like this are going to become a whole lot more common, with the data being used by both plaintiffs and prosecutors.
Even though Apple has taken steps to keep user fitness data private, one would think that it will still be accessible with the right subpoena.
Source: Forbes
Via: The Verge
