Nebraska – Facebook gave police their private data. Now, this duo face abortion charges

Experts say it underscores the importance of encryption and minimizing the amount of user data tech companies can store
Johana Bhuiyan
Wed 10 Aug 2022

In the wake of the supreme court’s upheaval of Roe v Wade, tech workers and privacy advocates expressed concerns about how the user data tech companies stored could be used against people seeking abortions.

When a Facebook staffer posed the dilemma to the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, asking how the platform would protect the user data of individuals seeking abortion care, Zuckerberg said the company’s ongoing push to encrypt messaging would help protect people from “bad behavior or over-broad requests for information”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/10/facebook-user-data-abortion-nebraska-police

USA – ‘Lock it down right now’: Abortion rights advocates prepare for a new wave of digital security threats

Advocates and abortion providers are reassessing their digital security practices ahead of an expected rise in cyberattacks and surveillance.

by SAM SABIN
06/17/2022

Abortion rights groups are using software that protects privacy and are honing other strategies to combat digital threats that they expect will worsen in a post-Roe world.

Those efforts are gaining new urgency as a looming Supreme Court ruling threatens to open a new wave of security threats for people seeking abortions and their health care providers.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/17/abortion-rights-advocates-digital-security-threats-00040654

Facebook and Anti-Abortion Clinics Are Collecting Highly Sensitive Info on Would-Be Patients

by Grace Oldham and Dhruv Mehrotra
June 15, 2022

Facebook is collecting ultra-sensitive personal data about abortion seekers and enabling anti-abortion organizations to use that data as a tool to target and influence people online, in violation of its own policies and promises.

In the wake of a leaked Supreme Court opinion signaling the likely end of nationwide abortion protections, privacy experts are sounding alarms about all the ways people’s data trails could be used against them if some states criminalize abortion.

https://revealnews.org/article/facebook-data-abortion-crisis-pregnancy-center/

USA – Looming abortion law changes are pushing clinics to take a look at digital privacy

Some clinic employees say they are embracing encrypted messaging apps and Zoom meetings to leave less of an electronic paper trail.

June 8, 2022
By Kevin Collier

With the Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion nearly 50 years ago, some abortion providers are rushing to take precautions to guard their communications and their patients’ data, fearing that the information could be used in future prosecutions.

Others are already a step ahead of them. Mia Raven, the director of policy at the West Alabama Women’s Center, said her clinic runs almost exclusively on paper. It’s a strategy she said is meant to ensure patient privacy.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/abortion-clinics-providers-digital-privacy-roe-overturn-rcna30654

Enforcing Criminal Abortion Bans Post-Roe: ‘A Massive Escalation of Surveillance’

6/7/2022
by CARRIE N. BAKER, Ms. Magazine

New York-based privacy group Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) released a chilling report last month detailing the digital surveillance threats facing pregnant women who seek abortion information and services, and how these threats could escalate dramatically if the Supreme Court repeals abortion rights and states criminalize abortion.

“Police, prosecutors and private anti-abortion litigants will weaponize existing American surveillance infrastructure to target pregnant people and use their health data against them in a court of law,” according to the report, titled “Pregnancy Panopticon: Abortion Surveillance After Roe.” “This isn’t speculation—it’s already happening.”

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2022/06/07/police-abortion-bans-roe-v-wade-surveillance/

USA – Abortion Pills Will Be Crucial in a Post-Roe World. But They’re Not the Magic Fix Many Think They Are.

Let me repeat: equity, equity, equity.

BECCA ANDREWS
Jun 7, 2022

Ever since it became evident that Roe is likely to fall in the coming weeks, activists and folks who are generally interested in preserving abortion access have heralded medication abortion as the great solution to the end of legal abortion. And it’s true—mifespristone and misoprostol have a lot of advantages that will surely come in handy in our post-Roe future, the main one being that it’s a do-it-yourself, at-home abortion method that is safe and effective.

As Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director at URGE (Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity), said in a media briefing, “As we look at the impact of abortion bans, particularly disproportionately impacting communities such as Black and Brown folks, young people, as well as low-income communities, and immigrants, and trans young people, it is even more important that we consider the potential of self-managed abortion as an essential tool for accessing reproductive health care and autonomy for these marginalized communities.”

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/06/medication-abortion-roe-solution-access/

USA – Your phone and digital data could reveal if you’ve had an abortion

June 5, 2022
6-Minute Listen, with transcript

Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Dina Temple-Raston, host of the "Click Here" podcast and senior correspondent at The Record, about how threats to digital privacy could affect abortion access.

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
If Roe v. Wade is overturned, people seeking abortions will face a different world than those who sought them in previous decades, one in which their digital data could potentially be used as evidence against them.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/05/1103145019/your-phone-and-digital-data-could-reveal-if-youve-had-an-abortion

05.06.2022

digital surveillance and abortion

digital technology and abortion

USA – Anti-abortion activists are collecting the data they’ll need for prosecutions post-Roe

Body cams and license plates are already being used to track people arriving at abortion clinics.

By Abby Ohlheiser
May 31, 2022

The Supreme Court is shortly expected to issue its decision on a challenge to Roe v. Wade that will—if a leaked draft version of the opinion holds—end federal protection for abortion access across the US. If that happens, it will have far-reaching consequences for millions of people. One of those is that it could significantly increase the risk that anti-abortion activists will use surveillance and data collection to track and identify people seeking abortions, sending authorities information that could lead to criminal proceedings.

Opponents of abortion have been using methods like license plate tracking for decades. In front of many clinics around the US, it remains a daily reality.

Continued: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/31/1052901/anti-abortion-activists-are-collecting-the-data-theyll-need-for-prosecutions-post-roe/

USA – ‘Uterus surveillance’: The scramble to keep abortion data from prying eyes

Telemedicine groups are looking to bolster privacy protections ahead of Roe decision.

By BEN LEONARD
05/20/2022

Telemedicine abortion groups, fearful of digital surveillance from states curbing access in a potential post-Roe nation, are shoring up privacy defenses and urging people seeking abortions to take steps to protect their data.

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, telehealth would be crucial to people seeking abortion care, particularly those who live in states that would ban the procedure. Many people are expected to drive across state lines for virtual visits from their cars or have abortion pills mailed to a state where they are allowed, experts said — moves that could create legal risks.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/20/uterus-surveillance-the-scramble-to-keep-abortion-data-from-prying-eyes-00033775

Abortion in the Surveillance State

The digital platforms people rely on to access or learn about abortion are also being wielded to spy on and punish them.

By Kylie Cheung
November 22, 2021

Shortly after Texas enacted Senate Bill 8, a near-total abortion ban that’s primarily enforced by citizens spying on and policing each other, Texas Right to Life launched what can really only be called a snitch hotline, calling on the nosiest of neighbors and worst of people to submit “tips” about people they suspected to be seeking or helping people seek abortions.

Things didn’t go as planned for the hotline, once the teens of TikTok and other Very Online abortion rights advocates caught wind of it. Good Samaritans across the internet joined forces to inundate the hotline with false tips, Shrek memes, furry porn, and other generally ludicrous submissions, rendering the thing useless for anyone but ride-or-die Shrek fans. The hotline — which likely would have been weaponized by abusive ex-partners or anti-abortion activists seeking to make an easy $10,000 by suing people who help others have abortions — has since been dropped by several hosting services.

Continued: https://jezebel.com/abortion-in-the-surveillance-state-1848076906