ABSTRACT

This chapter examines essential medical wearables as a venue for digital aggression in the form of algorithmic data surveillance. Using the Starkey Halo smart hearing aid as a case study, the authors offer a nuanced investigation of bodily surveillance that examines benefits as well as substantial drawbacks for disabled wearers. Wearers of smart hearing aids interact daily with multiple algorithms that automatically adjust sound based on detection of ambient noise, Bluetooth-based media streaming, and satellite-based geolocation settings. The opacity of this network and the ethic of expediency that drives its design and deployment aggressively impose surveillance through banal data collection. The results pose complications for the wearer’s performance of meaningful consent and rhetorical agency, rendering the wearer a technocapitalist product rather than a human who is entitled to their own data. Our study explores the implications this aggression poses not only for wearers of essential medical technologies but also for wearers who opt in to data surveillance through ubiquitous health trackers such as Fitbits and Apple Watches.