An excerpt from Gizmodo -
What Happens When the Computer That Keeps You Alive Can Also Put You In Jail?
By Kristen V. Brown
When Ross Compton’s Ohio home caught fire last September, the story he told police was that he grabbed a few things and rushed out of the house, hurling essentials out a bedroom window he broke open with his cane before scrambling out himself.
Police, though, were suspicious. Compton’s few things had included a computer, a suitcase packed with clothes and the charger for the external heart pump that he needed to survive. It seemed unlikely that a 59-year-old man with a pacemaker and a heart pump would have been able to gather all those things and make it out of a burning house alive. But police were stumped on how exactly to make arson charges stick.
In the end, it was his pacemaker that did him in.
After obtaining a search warrant for all the electronic data stored in Compton’s pacemaker, police determined that his device did not corroborate his story. His heart rate, pacer demand and cardiac rhythms all suggested that Compton had not in fact quickly bundled up all his most prized possessions and left in a hurry as his house went up in flames. Last month, with the help of the pacemaker data, he was indicted on charges of aggravated arson and insurance fraud.
Privacy issues are moving under our skin—now the devices that keep us alive and healthy can also be used against us in the court of law.
https://gizmodo.com/what-happens-when-the-computer-that-keeps-you-alive-can-1792236550
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