ANALPRINT

From Emine Saner's 9-23-21 GUARDIAN article entitled "The Smart Toilet Era Is Here! Are You Ready to Share Your Analprint With Big Tech?":

For the past 10 years, Sonia Grego has been thinking about toilets – and more specifically what we deposit into them. “We are laser-focused on the analysis of stool,” says the Duke University research professor, with all the unselfconsciousness of someone used to talking about bodily functions. “We think there is an incredible untapped opportunity for health data. And this information is not tapped because of the universal aversion to having anything to do with your stool.”

As the co-founder of Coprata, Grego is working on a toilet that uses sensors and artificial intelligence to analyse waste; she hopes to have an early model for a pilot study ready within nine months. “The toilet that you have in your home has not functionally changed in its design since it was first introduced,” she says, in the second half of the 19th century. There are, of course, now loos with genital-washing capabilities, or heated seats, but this is basic compared with what Grego is envisaging. “All other aspects of your life – your electricity, your communication, even your doorbell – have enhanced capabilities.”

The smart toilet’s time has come and it is a potentially huge market – in the developed world, everyone who is able to uses a toilet multiple times a day. Grego adds that she can “certainly envision a world” in which a toilet that does more than flush excreta “is available to every household”. There are numerous companies working on bringing that to market – a race to the bottom, if you will [...].

Researchers at the Stanford School of Medicine have been working on technology that can analyse faeces (including “stool dropping time”) and track the velocity and colour of urine, as well as test it. An article this month in the Wall Street Journal reported that the researchers have partnered with Izen, a Korean toilet manufacturer, and hope to have prototypes by the end of the year. In order to differentiate between users, Izen developed a scanner that can recognise the physical characteristics of whoever is sitting on the toilet – or, in the words of the researchers, “the distinctive features of their anoderm” (the skin of the anal canal). Apparently, your “analprint”, like your fingerprints, is unique [...].

Is all this – your analprint out in the world, the makeup of your bowel movements analysed – a privacy breach too far? “Can it be kept secure?” asks Eerke Boiten, a professor of cybersecurity at De Montfort University in Leicester. “What sort of organisation has this data? Who will they be sharing data with? What data will it get combined with? Will we have any transparency about where the data goes? This is an area where we don’t even know fully what the risks are. We need significant research into this.”

Many people “wouldn’t, for very good reasons, like cameras pointing up their bottoms”, says Phil Booth, the coordinator of MedConfidential, which campaigns for the confidentiality of medical records. That said, under the guidance of a medical professional, “there are not necessarily inherent privacy risks” in using a smart toilet as a medical device, he says. However, it might get interesting if the data created by general consumer use was owned by a company: “You may trust that particular company, but every company is pretty much buyable by Google or Facebook or Amazon. Then, what I thought was something for my own health monitoring has become fodder to business models I really know nothing about” [...].

Information from stool and urine samples could provide all sorts of information – your risk of disease, your diet, your exercise level; how much alcohol you drink and whether you take drugs. Even tracking something as trivial as the time of day you use the loo – regularly in the night, for instance, indicating sleeplessness – could reveal conditions such as depression or anxiety.

Where does it end? Could the police or others involved in surveillance track you by analprint, via the public and home smart lavatories you visit? Might you be asked to provide a print at a police station?

Imagine a world where smart toilets in workplaces were able to tell which employees were pregnant, or taking drugs, or at risk of physical or mental ill-health, with the implication that they were potentially not as productive, or about to be absent from work. “Think about Texas,” says Booth of that state’s recently tightened abortion restrictions. “If you can tell if someone’s pregnant from their poo, then all of a sudden the question is: ‘Are they seeking an abortion?’ That’s Gilead level, that’s science fiction, but it illustrates the risk.”

To read Saner's entire article, click HERE.