THE WEEKLY REVEAL

Hello! In this issue:

• How Facebook is collecting ultra-sensitive personal data about abortion seekers.

• The abortion providers in the crosshairs of anti-abortion extremists in the 1990s.

• Why former Attorney General Bill Barr made a big deal about the “2000 Mules” film during his testimony to the Jan. 6 committee.

NEW

Facebook and Anti-Abortion Clinics Are Collecting Highly Sensitive Info on Would-Be Patients
By Grace Oldham and Dhruv Mehrotra

In a joint investigation with The Markup, we found that 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.

Where and how Facebook is collecting the data: When people visit the websites of hundreds of crisis pregnancy centers, Facebook takes in data through a tracking tool called the Meta Pixel that works whether or not a person is logged in to their Facebook account.

Crisis pregnancy centers and other businesses can choose whether to install Pixel on their websites, though many website builders and third-party services automatically embed trackers. Facebook has said millions of Pixels are on websites across the internet, including on 30% of the 80,000 most popular sites, according to The Markup.

What our findings show: We analyzed the sites of nearly 2,500 crisis pregnancy centers and found that at least 294 shared visitor information with Facebook. In many cases, the information was extremely sensitive – for example, whether a person was considering abortion or looking to get a pregnancy test or emergency contraceptives.

More than a third of the websites sent data to Facebook when someone made an appointment for an “abortion consultation” or “pre-termination screening.” And at least 39 sites sent Facebook details such as the person’s name, email address or phone number.

How the data can be used: The centers can deliver targeted advertising, on Facebook or elsewhere, aimed at deterring an individual from getting an abortion. It can be used to build anti-abortion ad campaigns – and spread misinformation about reproductive health – targeted at people with similar demographics and interests. And, in the worst-case scenario now contemplated by privacy experts, that digital trail might even be used as evidence against abortion seekers in states where the procedure is outlawed.

Our analysis found that in states that will ban most or all abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned, at least 120 crisis pregnancy centers sent data to Facebook about their website visitors.

“I think this is going to be a wake-up call for millions of Americans about how much danger this tracking puts them in when laws change and people can weaponize these systems in ways that once seemed impossible,” said Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

RELATED

📄 Facebook Is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information from Hospital Websites (The Markup); Meta Sued Over Claims Patient Data Secretly Sent to Facebook (Bloomberg)

📂 Read more of our reproductive rights coverage

THIS WEEK’S PODCAST

Abortion in the Crosshairs

This year, we’ve been reporting on what could happen if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Just last month, we brought you our investigation into the rising tensions outside abortion clinics in Florida, where we found that police calls related to abortion clinic harassment, disturbance and violence have doubled over the past six years.

Now this week on Reveal, we bring you the story of Dr. Barnett Slepian, an abortion provider who was killed by a sniper who shot him through the window of his kitchen at his home near Buffalo, New York. This episode is part of Someone Knows Something, a CBC podcast that investigated a series of shootings in the U.S. and Canada that targeted abortion providers in the 1990s.

🎧 Other places to listen: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Social

What made former Attorney General Bill Barr laugh during his Jan. 6 testimony? His mention of the “2000 Mules” film and its claim that there is evidence of tide-turning voter fraud in the 2020 election.

In testimony footage shown during the second hearing this week, Barr said, “The election was not stolen by fraud, and I haven’t seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that, including the ‘2000 Mules’ movie.”

We investigated the nonprofit organization behind the film and found it enriches its insiders rather than actually rooting any voter fraud. Read our Twitter explainer here or our full investigation.

For more on the Jan. 6 hearings, here are takeaways by NPR from each day:

• Pence prevented a fall into chaos, and 3 other takeaways from Jan. 6 hearing

• Jan. 6 panel says Trump fleeced his base and 5 other takeaways from the 2nd hearing

• New revelations and 3 other takeaways from the first Jan. 6 committee hearing

In Case You Missed It

Ending on a Good Note

🎧 Reveal reporter Jennifer Gollan was on The Femtastic Podcast to speak about her When Abusers Keep Their Guns series, which exposed how perpetrators often kill their intimate partners with guns they possess unlawfully.

The investigation spurred sweeping provisions in federal law that greatly expanded the power of local and state police and prosecutors to crack down on abusers with illegal firearms. The related documentary film, “Unrelinquished,” also won a 2022 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.

🎧 Reveal reporter Cassandra Jaramillo was on Texas Standard to discuss her investigation into True the Vote, a nonprofit organization that has raised millions in donations on the claim there was widespread voter fraud in the last two presidential election cycles. As Jaramillo told host David Brown, the organization has drummed up “a lot of attention about their lofty claims” but has never released any evidence. Ultimately, True the Vote’s story highlights how exploiting former President Donald Trump’s Big Lie election myth has become a lucrative enterprise.