Once it would have sounded like the most feverish nightmare of a doom-mongering sci-fi author. A tiny robot in every single home, carefully mapping out the rooms, learning the sound of your voice and saving all the information for unknown purposes.

But when US company iRobot began selling RoombaA robotic hoover that cleans houses independently using motion sensors and cameras. vacuum cleaners in 2002, people flocked to buy them. And Amazon EchoA series of speakers produced by Amazon that are voice-activated and can be asked to carry out tasks. They are powered by Alexa, a personal assistant AI developed by Amazon. speakers have been wildly popular. Given the chance, it seems, people will willingly stock their homes with sinister, spying robots themselves.

Now, Amazon has moved to buy iRobot. Some worry that this is just another way for the megacorporation to invade our lives and expand its own power.

Amazon certainly seems to have few qualms about its use of data. Echo units have been caught recording private conversations and sharing them with Amazon without their owners' knowledge.

The company has also worked with US police departments to get its Ring doorbell installed in target neighbourhoods. The camera-operated doorbells are then used by police to carry out surveillance on the local community.

That is why some fear its acquisition of iRobot is about more than cleaning floors. They believe Amazon wants to use Roombas to harvest still more data on people's voices and preferences, and perhaps even sell information on the layout of their homes to the police.

All in all, it is no wonder people are more and more pessimistic about the future of online privacy. In 2020, a survey found that 80% of people in the UK believe they no longer have any control over their personal data, and 61% think it is too late to take back control.

People are so fatalisticThe idea that all events are due to fate and cannot be changed with action. about data that they overestimate tech companies' power to harvest it. Many believe that Google and Facebook are secretly recording our private conversations. It seems like the only way of explaining the creepy accuracy of targeted advertising.

In reality, this is still technologically impossible. But, some warn, it is in the interests of the tech companies for us to believe it. After all, the more we come to believe that the loss of our data is inevitable, the less we will fight for our privacy.

Yet privacy advocates have actually won a number of important battles in recent years. In 2014, the European Court of JusticeThe supreme court of the European Union, with the final say on all matters of EU law. introduced a "right to be forgottenThe right to have private information removed from internet searches.", meaning we can demand that search engines remove results relating to us. Argentina and South Korea have introduced similar rights.

That is why some think it is time to reassert our right to privacy. They believe the government needs to step in to prevent big tech companies from abusing our data.

But others argue that in truth, we are responsible for our own downfall. Sociologist Max WeberA German thinker of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries who is regarded as one of the founders of sociology. His ideas about the development of modern western society remain highly influential. wrote that modernity seals us in an "iron cageA concept introduced by Max Weber to explain how bureaucracy and rationalisation come to erode people's freedom.", in which we go along with anything that makes our lives easier, even if it costs us our freedoms. We bought the Roombas and the Echoes, they say; we have only ourselves to blame.

Yes: Tech companies are simply moving too quickly for the rest of us to catch up with them. We barely understand their technology. We might as well resign ourselves to a future without privacy.

No: Regulators do have tools to rein in the tech companies. Some in the US are hoping to stop Amazon in its tracks using anti-trust legislationLaws designed to prevent companies from forming monopolies.. We can introduce the right to privacy. The fight is not over.

Or... The state will not protect our data because it stands to gain from what Amazon and others are doing, by buying the data they harvest to keep us under surveillance. We must take action ourselves.