Google announced late Friday that it would quickly erase location data for abortion site visitors and other medical users following Roe v. Wade’s reversal by the Supreme Court.
Jen Fitzpatrick (Google’s senior vice president for core systems and experiences), wrote in a blog post, “Today we’re announcing, if our systems identify someone has visited one these places, we will delete those entries from Location History soon thereafter they visit,”.
Fitzpatrick pointed out that visits to counseling centers, domestic violence shelters and fertility clinics can be “particularly personal.” Alphabet, Google’s parent company, owns a number of highly-popular devices and data services including Android, Fitbit and Search. Because of the uncertainty around whether sensitive data can be used to target criminal activity, this has become more concerning since the Supreme Court ruling.
Google posted that “Fitbit users can delete their menstrual logs individually if they have chosen to track them in the app. We will soon roll out updates that allow users to delete multiple logs at one time.”
Nearly 50 years of legal precedent were overturned by the decision of the nation’s highest judiciary. It reversed its original opinion that women had a constitutional right for an abortion. Google and other tech companies have resisted answering questions from legislators and the media for weeks about data storage and practices, as well as how to comply with law enforcement requests.
Google sent employees an email with resources to its employees in the wake of the ruling. However, it has been confronted with questions regarding its search results and data privacy.
Before the landmark decision was made, lawmakers urged Google and the Federal Trade Commission for data protection in case the landmark ruling is overturned.
42 Democratic legislators urged Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, to cease collecting or keeping non-aggregated data about locations that could be used to identify individuals seeking abortions.
Google’s Friday post did not include any details about how it would respond to law enforcement requests. The company stated that it will “continue to resist requests that are too broad or otherwise legally objectionable”.
Google stated that many institutions share the responsibility.
