SENSITIVE MATERIAL. THIS IMAGE MAY OFFEND OR DISTURB Protesters for abortion rights by participating in nationwide demonstrations following the leaking of the Supreme Court’s opinion suggesting the possibility of overturning the abortion rights decision of Roe v. Wade, New York City, USA, May 14, 2022.
Caitlin Ochs | Reuters
Friday’s Supreme Court decision to revoke the right to receive an abortion raises new questions about whether and how technology companies should protect information from users seeking reproductive health care.
Technology companies may have to deal with user privacy issues related to this healthcare whether they want to or not. This could be the case if a court orders them to provide certain types of data, such as user location information at an abortion clinic, search histories, or text messages.
Even before the decision was made official, lawmakers called on Google and the Federal Trade Commission to ensure the protection of online consumer data seeking attention in the event that the historic Roe v. Wade ruling is overturned. . The letters came in the wake of Politico’s report on a leaked draft decision that would cut protections.
The official decision puts online platforms at a tricky point. While major technology companies have spoken out on political issues that align with their values, including advocating for certain types of privacy laws and immigration reforms that protect their workforce, delving into an issue as controversial as abortion rights can lead to a significant backlash from both. sides of the debate.
Advocates for people who have requested an abortion or are prosecuted after suffering a miscarriage say they have already struggled with privacy issues in states with restrictive abortion statutes.
“We’ve already seen, but we anticipate, that tech companies will receive citations for people’s search histories and search information,” said Dana Sussman, deputy executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a nonprofit organization. which offers legal defense to pregnant women. people.
“The problem is, if you build it, they’ll come,” said Corynne McSherry, legal director of the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “If you create large databases of information, what you’re also creating is a kind of store for law enforcement to reach you, you’re a third party, and try to get that information if they think it’s useful for processing.” .
That’s why a group of Democrats, led by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and California MP Anna Eshoo, wrote to Google last month about concerns that their “current practice of collecting and retaining extensive records of data from Mobile phone location will allow you to become a tool for far-right extremists seeking to repress people seeking reproductive health care – this is why Google stores historical information about the location of hundreds of millions of phone users smart, which he regularly shares with government agencies. “
Data privacy experts concerned about the implications of the court ruling say there are ways in which both technology companies and their users can try to better protect their information in a post-Roe era.
Risk of digital technology in a post-Roe world
Sussman pointed to two cases that could foreshadow the ways prosecutors in a post-Roe era will try to use digital communications as evidence in cases that criminalize abortion.
Thousands of people protest against abortion in Washington, USA, on January 21, 2022.
Yasin Ozturk | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
The first is that of Purvi Patel, who in 2015 was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being accused of fetishizing and neglecting a child after allegedly inducing her own abortion. Patel had told doctors at an Indiana emergency room that she had had a miscarriage that resulted in a fatal death. The prosecution used texts between Patel and a friend, which included a discussion about ordering pharmacy pills intended to cause an abortion, as evidence against her.
In 2016, an appeals court reduced the severity of the charges, finding that the law should not be used against women for their own abortions, and Patel was released from prison when it was also reduced. his conviction.
The second case is that of Latice Fisher, who in 2018 was indicted by a grand Mississippi jury on a second-degree murder charge after giving birth to what her lawyers said was a dead baby. Prosecutors used Fisher’s search history, which included searching for abortion pills and inducing a miscarriage, according to reports at the time, as evidence against her. The district attorney later dropped the charge.
Once the protections offered by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, another case that generally advocated abortion rights, has been undone, “we will see that existing laws will be reinterpreted to extend them to apply to conduct during pregnancy,” including the loss of abortion. pregnancy and the individual. -managed abortion, Sussman said.
While many advocates for abortion laws say they should focus on providers of procedures, Sussman predicts that prosecutors will also inevitably prosecute those who request services.
“I think that’s unrealistic,” Sussman said of the idea that anti-abortion laws would not target pregnant people. “And I think it’s not at all accurate, both because we’ve already seen it and also because when you create laws that state that a fetus is a person, you’re going to criminalize a pregnant person. There’s no doubt about it.”
How technology platforms could protect reproductive health data
For technology platforms, the EFF suggested in a recent blog post that minimizing data collection and storage could better reduce the risk of such data becoming the subject of research. The group suggests that companies reduce behavior tracking, reduce the types of data they collect only to what is needed, and encrypt the default data so that others cannot read it easily.
EFF also urges companies to back down what it says would be inappropriate demands, such as requesting information from a search engine for a search term such as “abortion” or geofence guarantees to order data on all devices in an area, such as an abortion clinic. If they still have to comply with the demands, companies should inform users if they are not prohibited from doing so, the group wrote.
“I think companies are a little quiet, but I’m sure they’re thinking about it,” McSherry said.
“Technology platforms play an important role here,” said Sussman, who said companies should use their vast resources to challenge court orders to obtain information related to abortion or pregnancy loss cases.
“The reality is that prosecutors have a certain amount of resources,” Sussman said. “And if they think the best way to use their resources to improve the quality of life in their community is to fight to get the fingerprint of people who are pregnant, they will have to spend those resources and they don’t have the resources to So if technology companies can make it much, much, much harder for them to access this information, it will play an important role in impeding their ability to present these processes. “
The Meta Platforms logo is seen in Davos, Switzerland, on May 22, 2022.
Arnd Wiegmann Reuters
A spokesman for the Facebook parent company, Meta, said the company is already rejecting requests for information that are too broad, and noted a policy on government petitions that says “it may reject or require greater specificity in requests. tendencies that seem too broad or vague. ” The policy also states that Meta will inform users and advertisers when they receive such requests, unless they are prohibited from doing so.
While many tech companies may tend to be as politically neutral as possible, McSherry said, “companies should always defend their users with privacy regardless of the issue. And this is an opportunity to do so.”
McSherry predicts that if technology companies fail to take steps to protect the information of users seeking abortions, their employees are likely to push them to do more, as they have done on other issues.
How consumers can protect their own data
While companies that minimize their own data collection and retention are the clearest way to reduce the risk of such data being exposed, experts focused on surveillance and digital rights say there are some ways in which consumers they can reduce the risk themselves.
McSherry said it’s important to remember that “privacy is a community activity.” This means that consumers need to think not only about the privacy and security of their own devices and services, but also about those of their friends, family, and the providers they communicate with.
This is because, even under some existing state laws like those in Texas, prosecutors can ask for orders to obtain information from third parties who believe they may have somehow helped a pregnant person seek an abortion. .
“Again, the responsibility for protecting yourself from unfair criminalization rests with the very people who have fewer resources,” Sussman said. “I would also just warn people to make sure they don’t share information with a lot of people, which again is also incredibly difficult if you need the support of your family, friends and community. But that people are very intentional about who they share information with, because not only will the digital footprint be in question, but people who have information could also participate here in one way or another. ”
The EFF does not endorse specific products, but McSherry suggested some basic ways for users to increase data privacy protection.
The first is to use a search engine or browser that minimizes the collection or retention of default data, such as DuckDuckGo, Firefox, or Brave, and use a private browsing window that will not save your search history.
Second, consumers should only communicate sensitive information through encrypted messaging services, such as Signal.
EFF also suggests in a blog post about the protection of sensitive information …