At least the micro-position-tracking ability makes sense in high(est)-security environments, be them military or private (Apple's secret labs come to my mind, given the rumors of secrecy?).
The voice analyzation stuff is really, really weird though.
That's not the half of it. The article makes an offhand mention of analyzing stress by way of cortisol production. In order to determine cortisol levels, you need to sample body fluids. Most commonly the fluid in question is blood, although I gather urine and saliva can be used as well.
In entire fairness, I get the impression that was part of a protocol used to develop data to inform the design of this device rather than something the device itself does, but I think it's nonetheless quite a telling example of the degree of invasiveness which the people behind it appear willing to contemplate.
Engineers who help create stuff like this are assholes.
Asshole is s pretty strong word. There's a somewhat different explanation; it posits that engineers are ignorant rather than evil. Cory Doctorow said it better than I ever could:
Engineers are all basically high-functioning
autistics who have no idea how normal people
do stuff.
I got a lot of flack last time I posted that quip; I'll grant that it isn't strictly accurate in a medical sense. But it gets the point across. Engineers simply don't think the same way that muggles think, and in addition they're unable or unwilling to view the world from that different perspective.
No, they are definitely assholes. Additionally, dismissing engineers as "high functioning autistics" or "ignorant" is cheap stereotyping.
Thinking in a less than common way isn't an excuse or reason for doing something evil. To suggest it shows a lack of understanding of engineers, people with autism, and how things are designed and used.
Cory Doctorow says a lot of things. I think he enjoys it. But their correspondence with reality is in my experience questionable. I've worked with many more engineers than he has, and of the lot of them, there's been exactly one who fits that description. And even he'd scruple at designing something like this.
Engineers are able to think that way, but it gets blindsided because the potential of the ideas in front of them are far too powerful and luminescent for anything else to be visible.
The voice analyzation stuff is really, really weird though.