Our data is a curse with or without Roe

The almost unlimited collection of our personal information has always led to this moment.

A few days after the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade case. Wade had a bunch of public documents and warnings from privacy advocates that digital bread crumbs could put women seeking abortion at potential legal risk by eliminating their constitutional rights to abortion. ..

Whatever your view of abortion, this is the moment we look back on the hungry fuss of America’s free data-gathering economy.

It is almost impossible to be truly anonymous in modern American life. There is so much digital information about who we are, where we go, what we buy, and what we are interested in, so we have no control over everything. This data is primarily used to market shoes and donuts more efficiently, but rarely stops there.

And now we’re seeing what happens when a digital intrusion in the 21st century collides with people who are worried that information may be misused in ways they never imagined.

I don’t want people to be unnecessarily afraid. My colleagues report that about half of the states are expected to allow abortion bans or other restrictions to come into effect, but even in those states law enforcement is not for the general public but for healthcare providers. Focuses on. My colleague also reports that there is no abortion ban attempting to prosecute women seeking abortion across state boundaries, but the state may attempt abortion in the future.

But now that access to abortion is no longer considered a fundamental right, it is astounding to consider the breadth and depth of information that is leaked into the void.

Credit cards and surveillance video cameras snoop on us. Sure, Google knows what we searched for and where we went, but many on mobile providers, home internet companies, and networks of phones and intermediaries we haven’t dealt with directly. I also know the app. Using the app to look up weather forecasts or make sure the shelves are level can reach military contractors and employment data brokers.

You can take a few steps to minimize the amount of data you send, but it’s virtually impossible to eliminate them. Federal law rarely regulates the collection and sale of all this information about us, but Congress is up to date on many efforts to pass broad national digital privacy laws. I’m discussing.

We don’t just share digital information. We talk to friends, family and strangers. In some cases where authorities try to prosecute a woman for inducing an abortion, it may be relatives or health care providers who upset law enforcement. (This is a useful summary from Consumer Reports on when and without medical privacy laws protect us.)

Some readers of this newsletter may believe that if abortion is a crime, it is a fair game to use the digital data of those seeking abortion for criminal prosecution. not. A few years ago, I served as a jury trial in a man’s trial accused of continuously harassing a former girlfriend. His phone records, emails, online posts and other information extracted from his smartphone. (We pleaded guilty to the man in most of his accusations.)

Authorities may use this information in the manner we agree to. However, the vast amount of information in so many hands with few legal restrictions creates opportunities for misuse.

A colleague of mine has shown that data sent from a smartphone can track the President of the United States. Stalkers tricked mobile phone providers into passing people’s personal information. The church digs up information about people at stake and sells them to them. Some US schools buy equipment to hack children’s phones and dump data. Automatic license plate scanners have made it difficult for law enforcement agencies to drive anywhere without reaching a database that may be accessible without a warrant.

Since Roe’s overthrow, most major US tech companies haven’t publicly shared how to deal with potential law enforcement demands in future abortion-related criminal cases. Companies typically cooperate with legal requests such as warrants and subpoenas from US authorities, but they may also try to push back the amount of information they pass on to negotiate.

In situations where one company refuses to cooperate, similar digital information may be available from another company. (Although attention has been paid to the possibility that the menstrual tracking app may blame the authorities, there are more direct sources of similar information.)

Also, companies built to get as much information as possible cannot easily make transformations that minimize the data.

Google, Facebook and Verizon have no intention of protecting the right to abortion if the Supreme Court states that the right to abortion does not exist. They and the myriad of other companies with endless desires for our information have created a situation where privacy doesn’t really exist.

Relationship from my colleague: Payment data can be evidence of abortion..

  • No need to worry about Cryptographic Brothers: The crypto market is a crater, but my colleague David Yaffe-Bellany reported that the pain of loss is never equal. While a few industry executives appeared relatively intact, some amateurs lost most of their savings.

  • Flashbacks to human labor involved in the creation of AI: The new layoffs at Tesla included staff who labeled the data in the driving assistance software. 2019 for all the humans needed to teach a computer, including those who select pedestrian images from stop signs and car sensors so that the software can more easily identify what they “see” It’s worth reading the article by my colleague Cade Metz.

  • Why did everyone have a flash drive with so much personal information? Technicians with access to data on the entire population of Japanese cities quit their jobs using USB sticks containing sensitive information for about 460,000 people. He lost a small storage device while he was out at night, my colleagues Makiko Inoue and Tiffany May reported. (I found it later.)

Nothing is more adorable than this Rather than a lemuriformes pushing his face against a flower..

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