Analysis | Law enforcement may fully unleash its data collection tools on abortion - The Washington Post
A draft opinion showing the Supreme Court may be on the verge of overturning the long-standing constitutional right to abortion could soon turn a routine activity for women across the country into a potent legal tool for law enforcement agencies: going online.
If finalized, the leaked opinion, published by Politico on Monday, is expected to trigger a wave of expanded abortion restrictions across the country, which in turn could embolden authorities to step up legal demands for women’s personal data.
One major likely target is the information collected by Internet service providers, which privacy and civil liberties advocates say has historically been used by agencies to identify individuals, verify their location and connect them to relevant groups.
For women who may still seek abortions amid an expected wave of crackdowns later this year, that could mean that logging onto a health-care clinic’s WiFi or browsing related sites from your cellphone or desktop may create an opening for agencies to seize their data and mount a case.
“There's a long history of ISPs working relatively closely with law enforcement,” said Justin Brookman, director of privacy and technology policy at Consumer Reports.
Hayley Tsukayama, a senior legislative activist at the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said law enforcement agencies are no strangers to these practices, but may find additional ways to deploy them as states impose greater restrictions on abortions.
“It's probably less about them specifically gaining more access to some of these private companies or to be able to compel companies to turn over information,” said Tsukayama, a former technology reporter for The Washington Post. Since they already can access user data more broadly, they may use those tactics to obtain abortion data, she added.
The new rules will put a microscope on decisions by telecom giants, including AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, who may find themselves in a political minefield if pressed to fork over data from their customers to build an antiabortion case.
That could put telecom giants squarely into the crosshairs of lawmakers in Washington who have typically focused more of their fury on technology giants like Google and Apple who will likely be facing their own data demands.
Cynthia Conti-Cook, a technology fellow at the Ford Foundation, said law enforcement agencies in the past have often used warrants for geofencing data — which can be used to link individuals to a specific location — to connect people to cases. It’s even been used commercially, she noted, including by advertisers targeting people at Planned Parenthood.
Another way in which law enforcement has used data from Internet service providers to build their cases, Conti-Cook said, is to collect information that can link an individual to a specific computer or IP address.
There are broad sources law enforcement agencies tap into to get data from suspects, including phone carriers, social media platforms, search engines and third-party data brokers. Privacy advocates said they are all likely to see more demands if Roe v. Wade is indeed overturned.
But Conti-Cook said connecting to the Internet through a personal device can pose unique risks because it can connect a web of people to an activity.
That could create heightened legal risks in states that seek to criminalize not only those who get abortions, but also those who provide them or facilitate the process, as Texas’s restrictive law has done.
“The level of risk that digital devices enter into any network that is supporting people, assisting people in seeking abortions, is that once one piece of the puzzle is in the hands of law enforcement … the potential to expose the network is there,” she said.
The bill takes effect in July 2023 and will let state residents opt out of targeted advertising and profiling, the Record’s Jonathan Greig reports. Connecticut is just the fifth state to enact its own privacy law in lieu of action from Congress.
The bill also has a slew of other requirements, including a 15-day deadline for organizations to stop processing data after someone has opted out.
Republican senators hammered Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about the department’s planned Disinformation Governance Board during a Wednesday hearing, charging that it would be a government “thought police” that would police the truth and could impact Americans.
Mayorkas defended the board, saying it has limited powers and important priorities:
- DHS has explained that it would focus on disinformation threatening critical organizations in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and by human smugglers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
- Mayorkas has said the board won’t have “operational authority.”
- Mayorkas also reiterated that DHS has long focused on disinformation, and the board would “establish what should have been established years ago: standards, definitions, guidelines and policies.”
Yet, the department has struggled to answer criticism or to answer basic questions about the board.
On Friday, DHS held a call with congressional staffers and Nina Jankowicz, the board’s executive director. Jankowicz didn’t give specific answers to some questions, the AP reported. Some staffers on Capitol Hill “say they know little about the board or how it’s being funded beyond the spare public announcements made by the department’s leadership,” the outlet wrote.
DHS has faced criticism for how it rolled out the board, which was first reported in a three-sentence write-up in a Politico newsletter. The board “quietly began work two months ago,” the New York Times’s Steven Lee Myers and Zolan Kanno-Youngs wrote this week.
The company’s current situation is a far cry from the past few years for the e-commerce giant, which struggled to hire quickly enough for its fast-growing network of warehouses, Rachel Lerman reports. Amazon is the country’s second largest private employer.
The issue comes amid a push to unionize Amazon facilities. Workers at one Amazon warehouse, in New York, have voted to unionize that facility.
Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said the company isn’t considering warehouse layoffs. The company’s warehouses “typically experience more than 100 percent turnover in a given year due in part to the strenuous working conditions, experts say, and attrition could solve the issue,” Rachel writes. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Data broker SafeGraph stopped selling location data of visitors to Planned Parenthood locations, Motherboard's Joseph Cox reports. Electronic Privacy Information Center global privacy counsel Calli Schroeder:
Obviously the much bigger questions include (i) why were they ever selling this in the first place, (ii) was no one on staff capable of thinking a single step ahead about where this would lead, and (iii) how many other companies are doing this.
Check My Ads co-founder Nandini Jammi:
NEW: @safegraph CEO @auren announces that they will no longer collect and sell family planning data.
— Nandini Jammi is on vacation 🏖 (@nandoodles) May 4, 2022
What this means: Safegraph won’t sell out women inside @PPFA centers, but will continue to track & sell data of every woman who gets NEAR one.
We are still in deep danger. https://t.co/myVqMqfeQs pic.twitter.com/Un2gta9Qmd
Coming back to this, and the way I think about adtech— what's the exchange?
— Ryan Barwick️ (@Ryanbarwick) May 4, 2022
In exchange for more efficient billboards, SafeGraph sold sensitive location data about people who need abortion services. Is that a fair exchange? https://t.co/TxRe8XN9kM
source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/05/law-enforcement-may-fully-unleash-its-data-collection-tools-abortion/
Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.