If abortion becomes illegal, digital surveillance could take a darker turn. Data from apps that track reproductive health could be used against you.
Apps for tracking reproductive health are convenient, but the data they collect could be used against you. Tarik Kizilkaya/iStock via Getty Images
As a researcher who studies online privacy, I’ve known for some time how Google, social media and internet data generally can be used for surveillance by law enforcement to cast digital dragnets. Women would be at risk not just from what they reveal about their reproductive status on social media, but also by data from their health applications, which could incriminate them if it were subpoenaed.
Before, women had to worry only that Target or Amazon might learn of their pregnancies. Based on what’s already known about privacy incursions by law enforcement against marginalized people, it’s likely that in a post-Roe world women will be more squarely in the crosshairs of digital forensics. For example, law enforcement agencies routinely use forensic tools to search people’s cellphones when investigating a wide range of crimes, sometimes without a search warrant.
The risk is especially acute in places that foster bounty-hunting. In a state like Texas where there is a potential for citizens to have standing to sue people who help others access abortion services, everything you say or do in any context becomes relevant because there’s no probable cause hurdle to accessing your data.
The lack of action on privacy vulnerability is due in part to a failure of imagination, which frequently blinkers people who see their own position as largely safe in a social and political system. With the general public cast as indifferent, it is easy to assume that people generally don’t want or need protection, and that all groups are at equal risk. Neither is true.
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