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Hi,
In a post-Roe America, your cell phone could be used against you to let law enforcement know if you've visited an abortion care provider and even where you went afterward.
That's because Google not just collects and retains a huge amount of cell phone location data – they also give that data over to law enforcement agencies.1
Pro-choice and pro-privacy lawmakers in Congress are pressuring Google to stop collecting this data and stop providing law enforcement with location-based "geofencing warrants." Will you join them too?
The internet was still in its infancy when the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v Wade, but now it's an ever-present part of our lives. Which means that privacy and reproductive justice are now even bigger technology issues.
Just days after the Supreme Court draft opinion that could potentially overturn Roe v Wade was leaked, a data broker called SafeGraph was caught selling location data of people who visited a Planned Parenthood for as little as $160!2
Make no mistake: this intimate level of cell phone location data should never be collected in the first place. But it gets worse, because federal law enforcement agencies like the Secret Service and Customs Border Patrol have also been known to buy cell phone location data.
Right now, police use geofence warrants to harvest data about every person in a given location at a specific time. These warrants – and the individual location data they harvest – put people seeking abortions at risk of policing and prosecution.
Without Roe, we're a hop, skip, and a jump away from right-wing government officials tracking anyone who steps foot in an abortion clinic, and weaponizing laws like the one passed in Texas to prosecute them.
Big Tech companies have a responsibility to act and protect users privacy instead of serving users up like a platter to hostile anti-abortion activists.
Thanks for taking action,
Tihi and the team at Demand Progress
Sources:
1. NBC, "Cellphone dragnet used to find bank robbery suspect was unconstitutional, judge says," March 7, 2022.
2. Vice, "Data Broker Is Selling Location Data of People Who Visit Abortion Clinics," May 3, 2022.
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