How Abortion Searches Online Can Be Used Against You – By Rae Hodge (CNET) / June 23, 2022
If Roe v. Wade is overturned, police could use your location data as criminal evidence.
As Americans wait for a ruling from the US Supreme Court, longtime bench-watchers predict we’re in the last days of federally protected abortion access. A draft majority opinion leaked last month indicates the court will overturn the 1973 landmark decision in Roe v. Wade. Already, abortion-seekers’ digital trails are being used as criminal evidence against them in states where the pregnant are prosecuted.
Third-party data brokers sell sensitive geolocation data — culled through a vast web of personal tracking tech found in apps, browsers and devices — to law enforcement outfits without oversight. Democrats’ last-ditch effort to pass an abortion-protection act has failed in the Senate, with all Republicans and one Democrat voting against it. The bipartisan data privacy legislation now slowly inching through Congress is widely thought toothless. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission’s enforcement failures have historically allowed privacy-offending corporations to skirt penalties, and the White House has not yet offered an executive order on either privacy or abortion.
And it’s getting worse.
Oklahoma and Texas, which have so-called bounty hunter laws in place, are relying on civilian enforcement of abortion restrictions by promising $10,000 or more to would-be informants who successfully sue abortion providers and those who help abortion seekers. Given the inexpensive cost of readily available stores of personal data and how easily they can be de-anonymized, savvy informants could use the information to identify abortion-seekers and turn a profit.
CONITNUE > https://www.cnet.com/news/politics/how-abortion-searches-online-can-be-used-against-you/
