Your Boss Could Monitor Your Heart Rate With Spy Tech

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TThe post-pandemic rise of remote working has led to an explosion in employee monitoring technology, as bosses seek to keep tabs on worker activity, locations and messages. Now, in the latest glimpse into our dystopian future, computer engineers at Rice University have presented a new nightmare scenario for workers: constant biometric surveillance via hidden devices built into our work computers.

In a new study published in Computer communicationsThe researchers explain that the ubiquity of biometric devices such as radar facial recognition systems in our phones and heart and respiratory monitoring systems in wearable devices comes with some pretty significant privacy compromises. For example, it is now possible to build devices, using commercially available components, that can listen to telephone conversations, track our movements, and monitor our heart and breathing rates to determine our emotional state.

To prove this, the team built a heart rate monitor using millimeter wave technology and demonstrated that it could be used to detect the presence of a person in the room, potentially providing a record of employees’ breaks and work activities. The team said the spying device could even be used to get a rough idea if a person was stressed, tired, sleepy, etc.

“We used this scenario to stage a technologically possible use case for a radar-based heart rate monitoring system,” study co-author Dora Zivanovic, a graduate student in the lab of Edward Knightly, the Sheafor-Lindsay Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University, said in a statement.

Oh, good.

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If you’re wondering why Rice researchers would give potentially malicious bosses a technological tool to tighten their grip on unsuspecting workers, fear not. They also built a device capable of fooling spy technologies.

Called MetaHeart, this device was found to be capable of not only camouflaging the user’s heartbeat, but also sending a false signal to spoof the intrusive heart rate monitor. Anyone using such a device would be free to have a panic attack in the next room, while appearing to work regularly on their laptop.

“We are fooling the radar at the level of the electromagnetic signal itself,” Zivanovic explained. “You can program the device with any heart rate you want.”

Although this study focused on same-room biometric spying, future research could expand to potential long-range biometric surveillance from outside offices or homes.

“Sensing technologies are becoming increasingly resolute and ubiquitous, and concerns about what this means for privacy need to be taken seriously,” said Knightly, co-author of the study. “It is important to explore potential vulnerabilities and think about how we might address them. »

Technology continues to advance, but hopefully not on our backs.

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Main image: Alphavector / Shutterstock

• Jake Currie

  Published on February 11, 2026

  Jake Currie is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York.