LONDON — What if your employer made you wear a wristband that tracked your every move, and that even nudged you via vibrations when it judged that you were doing something wrong?

What if your supervisor could identify every time you paused to scratch or fidget, and for how long you took a bathroom break?

What may sound like dystopian fiction could become a reality for Amazon warehouse workers around the world. The company has won two patents for such a wristband, although it was unclear if Amazon planned to manufacture the tracking device and have employees wear it.

The online retail giant, which plans to build a second headquarters and recently shortlisted 20 potential host cities for it, has been known to experiment in-house with new technology before selling it worldwide.

But the patent disclosure goes to the heart about a global debate about privacy and security. Amazon has a reputation for a workplace culture that thrives on a hard-hitting management style.

Privacy advocates, however, note that a lot can go wrong even with everyday tracking technology. On Monday, the tech industry was jolted by the discovery that Strava, a fitness app that allows users to track their activities and compare their performance with people running or cycling in the same places, had unwittingly highlighted the locations of U.S. military bases and the movements of their personnel in Iraq and Syria.

Critics say such wristbands raise concerns about privacy and would add a new layer of surveillance to the workplace, and that the use of the devices could result in employees being treated more like robots than humans.

Current and former Amazon employees said the company uses similar tracking technology in its warehouses.

Max Crawford, a former Amazon warehouse worker in Britain, said, “After a year working on the floor, I felt like I had become a version of the robots I was working with.”