EXPLAINED | Abortion, tech and surveillance
With abortion now or soon to be illegal in over a dozen states and severely restricted in many more, Big Tech companies that vacuum up personal details of their users are facing new calls to limit that tracking and surveillance. With the Supreme Court’s Friday overruling of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, collected location data, text messages, search histories, emails and seemingly innocuous period and ovulation-tracking apps could be used to prosecute people who seek an abortion — or medical care for a miscarriage — as well as those who assist them. “While receiving care from medical staff, she was also immediately treated with suspicion of committing a crime,” civil rights attorney and Ford Foundation fellow Cynthia Conti-Cook wrote in her 2020 paper, “Surveilling the Digital Abortion Diary.” Fisher’s “statements to nurses, the medical records, and the autopsy records of her fetus were turned over to the local police to investigate whether she intentionally killed her fetus,” she wrote. “In this new environment, tech companies must step up and play a crucial role in protecting women’s digital privacy and access to online information,” said Givens, of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said. Clue, which also has a period tracking app, said it keeps users’ health data — particularly related to pregnancies, pregnancy loss or abortion — “private and safe” with data encryption.
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