The often obscure companies collecting our health history and geolocation data may know more about us than we know ourselves. In a post-Roe world, that information may make women more vulnerable.
“The value of these tools for law enforcement is for how they really get to peek into the soul,” said Cynthia Conti-Cook, a lawyer and technology fellow at the Ford Foundation. “It gives the mental chatter inside our heads.”The digital trail only becomes clearer when we leave home, as location apps, security cameras, license plate readers and facial recognition software track our movements.
It’s all possible because HIPAA, the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, protects medical files at your doctor’s office but not the information that third-party apps and tech companies collect about you. Nor does HIPAA cover the health histories collected by non-medical “” which are run by anti-abortion groups. That means the information can be shared with, or sold to, almost anyone.
While the data did not identify patients by name, experts say that can often be pieced together, or de-anonymized, with a little sleuthing.seeking an abortion to first call a state hotline and hear about abortion alternatives. The hotline, set to debut next year, will cost the state nearly $5 million a year to operate. Critics fear it will be another way to track pregnant women, either by name or through an identifier number. Other states are considering similar legislation.
“The penalties are for the doctor, not for the woman,” Republican state Rep. Jim Olsen of Oklahoma said last month of a new law that makes performing an abortion a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.“When abortion is criminalized, pregnancy outcomes are investigated,” said Tara Murtha, the communications director at the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia, who recently co-authored a report on digital surveillance in the abortion sphere.
The concerns are mounting, and have forced Apple, Google and other tech giants to begin taking steps to rein in the sale of consumer data. That includes Apple’sfeature, which lets iPhone and iPad users block apps from tracking them.
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