Big Tech companies that track and monitor their users face increasing pressure to reduce the amount of surveillance and tracking they do.
These calls are driven by the fear that anti-abortion vigilantes or law enforcement could use personal data troves to target individuals who seek ways to end unwanted pregnancies.
The history has shown that every time personal data is stored and tracked, there is always the possibility of misuse or abuse. The Supreme Court’s Friday decision to overturn 1973 Roe V. Wade protecting women’s constitutional rights to abortion means that collected data such as location tracking, text messages and search histories as well as emails, and even seemingly innocent period-tracking apps, could be used to prosecute those who seek abortions or medical care for miscarriages.
Alexandra Reeve Givens is the president and CEO at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington.
According to a Vice investigation, anyone could purchase a weekly archive of data about clients at over 600 Planned Parenthood sites across the country for $160. Files typically include approximate patient addresses, income brackets, time spent at clinics, and top places people have visited before and afterwards.
This is possible because, while federal law, specifically HIPAA (the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), protects your medical files at your doctor’s office, it doesn’t protect any information that third party apps or tech companies may collect about you. The same applies to personal data that is collected and shared by apps.
After seeking medical attention for a miscarriage, Latice Fisher, a Black woman from Mississippi was arrested and charged with second-degree killing.
“While she received care from medical personnel, she was also treated immediately with suspicion of committing crime,” Cynthia Conti-Cook, a civil rights attorney and Ford Foundation fellow, wrote in her 2020 paper “Surveilling Digital Abortion Diary.” Fisher’s statements to nurses, her medical records and her autopsy records were given to the police to determine if she had intentionally killed her baby,” she wrote.
In 2018, Fisher was charged with second-degree murder. Although a conviction could have meant life imprisonment, the murder charge was dropped. Her online search history included searches on how to induce miscarriage and how you can buy abortion pills online.
Conti-Cook stated that her digital data provided prosecutors with a “window into her soul” to support their general theory that she didn’t want the fetus’ survival.
Fisher is not the only one. Prosecutors presented the browsing history of a young Ohio mom during a 2019 trial. She was accused of killing her baby and burying it. Brooke Skylar Richardson, defense attorney, claimed that the baby was stillborn.
Prosecutors argued that she had murdered her daughter. They cited Richardson’s internet searches, which included a query about “how to get rid a baby”, as evidence. She was eventually acquitted on murder and manslaughter charges.
Most technology companies have tried to avoid the issue of abortion for their users. They have not indicated how they would cooperate with law enforcement agencies or government agencies to prosecute those seeking abortions that are illegal, or those helping others.
Four Democratic legislators asked federal regulators last week to investigate Apple, Google and other companies for allegedly deceiving millions mobile phone users through the sale and collection of their personal information to third parties.
The lawmakers stated in the letter that “individuals seeking abortions or other reproductive health care will be particularly vulnerable to privacy harms including through the collection, sharing and transmission of their location data.” “Data brokers already sell, license and share the location information of those who visit abortion providers to anyone with credit cards.”
Apple and Google didn’t immediately respond to our requests for comment.
Law enforcement and governments can subpoena companies to obtain data about their users. Big Tech policies generally suggest that companies will comply with requests for data on abortion-related topics unless they consider them too broad. Meta pointed to its online transparency reports, which states that it will comply with requests from the government for user information “only where we have a good faith belief that the law requires.”
Online rights advocates argue that this is not enough.
Givens, of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said that tech companies need to step up and play a critical role in protecting women’s digital privacy and online access. They could, for example, increase privacy-protecting encryption and limit the sharing, sale, and collection of information that could reveal pregnancy status.
Some period-tracking apps attempted to assure their users that their data was safe following Friday’s Supreme Court decision. It is important to review the privacy policies of these apps.
Friday’s tweet from Flo Health, which is behind a popular period tracking app, stated that the company would soon offer an “Anonymous mode” to erase personal information from users accounts. It also pledged to not sell any personal data.
You have the right to data protection pic.twitter.com/uA5HLHItCY
Clue also offers a period tracking app. Clue said that it protects users’ health data, especially those related to pregnancy, loss, or abortion, with data encryption. Clue also stated that it uses auditing software to ensure regulatory compliance. Users are removed before their data is analysed by the scientific researchers with whom it works.
The company also acknowledged that it uses “some carefully chosen service providers to process our data.” It stated that it shares as few data as possible and does so in the most secure manner possible. Clue did not provide any further information.
If your data isn’t encrypted properly, it could be accessed by someone. Even data that is “anonymized”, often isn’t. Researchers found that just four credit cards or three locations are enough to identify the vast majority.
Pro-life activists for abortion rights suggest that those living in states that ban abortion should restrict the creation of such data. They recommend that you turn off your phone’s location services, or leave your phone at home, when you are seeking reproductive health care.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation recommends using privacy-conscious web browsers like Brave, Firefox, and DuckDuckGo. However, it also suggests that users double-check all privacy settings.
You can also disable ad identifiers from both Android and Apple phones to stop advertisers being able track you. In most cases, this is a good idea. Apple will ask you to consent to being tracked every time you download an app. You can turn off tracking for apps that you already own.