Control for Whom? Keeping an Eye on the Dark Side of America’s New Wearables Campaign.
We are currently observing numerous parallel efforts to integrate data sharing between the US government and different parts of the tech ecosystem.
In July 2025, the White House announced a new plan to empower Americans to “take control of their own health,” involving giving Big Tech unprecedented access to American health data. According to reporting from PBS NEWS, this new “private health tracking system…will make it easier for patients to access their health records and monitor their wellness across health care systems and technologies.” According to the Administration and the companies involved, collaboration between the federal government and Big Tech would enable patients to more efficiently manage and exchange their health data with physicians, hospital systems, and digital applications. The collaboration, however, raises a range of privacy questions.
The new initiative falls under the purview of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as of a new Health Technology Ecosystem Initiative, a data exchange program involving some of the country’s largest health and tech companies, including Amazon, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Microsoft AI. Notably, the providers of some of the most popular wearables and remote health monitoring apps have already pledged to join the Health Technology Ecosystem Initiative as early adopters — such as Fitbits by Google, Apple watches, Oura rings and more — though it remains to be seen whether data collected by these everyday wearables will feed into the CMS’s planned ecosystem’s data exchange.
Related Knowledge Center: Digital privacy and data security
If you’re online, you’re generating a constant stream of information about yourself — sometimes voluntarily, sometimes unwittingly — that is assembled and used to craft your online experience. And generate wealth for data brokers. Meanwhile, designers and managers of the digital infrastructure on which the world depends are engaged in a never-ending effort to thwart attempts, by both criminal enterprises and state actors, to exploit vulnerabilities in those systems.
Signalgate | State surveillance
Related Knowledge Center: State surveillance
While government monitoring of personal digital communications has traditionally been associated with authoritarian regimes such as China, the Trump regime has moved to use citizens’ personal information in unprecedented ways.
Digital privacy and data security | FISA — Section 702