Privacy advocates blasted Amazon's recently announced purchase of robot vacuum maker iRobot for fueling'pervasive surveillance' as the Federal Trade Commission opened a probe into the $1.7 billion buyout. The tech giant's planned acquisition of the maker of Roomba vacuum cleaners will give it access to the appliance's operating system that uses a front-facing camera to create complete maps of the inside of people's homes - all of which can then be fed into Amazon's existing, massive trove of data about hundreds of millions of consumers. 'There is no more private space than the home. Yet with this acquisition, Amazon stands to gain access to extremely intimate acts in our most private spaces that are not available through other means, or to other competitors,' over twenty privacy and civil rights groups say in a Friday letter to the FTC. 'Information collected by iRobot's devices goes beyond home floor plans, and includes highly detailed information about the interiors of consumers' homes and the schedules and lifestyles of the inhabitants,' the letter, shared by digital rights nonprofit Fight for the Future, states.

After decades of creating war machines and home cleaning appliances, iRobot agreed to be acquired by Amazon for $1.7 billion, according to a joint statement by the two companies. If the deal goes through, it would give Amazon access to yet another wellspring of personal data: interior maps of Roomba owners' homes. Those Roombas work in part by using sensors to map the homes they operate in. In a 2017 Reuters interview, iRobot CEO Colin Angle suggested the company might someday share that data with tech companies developing smart home devices and AI assistants. Amazon declined to respond to questions about how it would use that data, but combined with other recent acquisition targets, the company could wind up with a comprehensive look at what's happening inside people's homes.