*Your phone could reveal if you’ve had an abortion*
/Internet searches, visits to clinics and period-tracking apps leave
digital trails./
By Geoffrey A. Fowler and Tatum Hunter
May 4 2022
When someone gets an abortion, they may decide not to share information
with friends and family members. But chances are their smartphone knows.
The leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion proposing to overturn Roe v.
Waderaises a data privacy flash point: If abortion becomes criminal in
some states, might a person’s data trail be treated as evidence?
There is precedent for it, and privacy advocates say data collection
could become a major liability for people seeking abortions in secret.
Phones can record communications, search histories, body health data and
other information. Just Tuesday, there was new evidence that commercial
data brokers sell location information gathered from the phones of
people who visit abortion clinics.
“It is absolutely something to be concerned about — and something to
learn about, hopefully before being in a crisis mode, where learning on
the fly might be more difficult,” said Cynthia Conti-Cook, a technology
fellow at the Ford Foundation.
It is now common for law enforcement to make use of the contents of
people’s phones, including location and browsing information. One case
against an alleged Jan. 6 insurrectionist drew upon thousands of pages
of data from the suspect’s phone as well as Facebook records,
prosecutors said.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/04/abortion-digital-privacy/>
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