For Immediate Release
S.T.O.P. Releases Report On Abortion Surveillance After Roe
Report details how the surveillance tools that are already targeted at abortion, including search history, location data, and social media content, will rapidly expand in the coming months and years.
(New York, NY, 5/24/2024) - Today, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.), a New York-based privacy group, released The Handmaid’s Trail: Abortion Surveillance After Roe, detailing the threat digital surveillance will pose to abortion seekers after the repeal of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The report finds that pregnant people and abortion seekers are already being prosecuted using electronic surveillance, including their search history, location data, and social media content. But the report warns that this threat is likely to dramatically accelerate in the months and years following Roe’s repeal, targeting abortion care nationwide.
SEE: Report – The Handmaid’s Trail: Abortion Surveillance After Roe
www.stopspying.org/handmaids-trail
WIRED - The Surveillance State Is Primed for Criminalized Abortion
https://www.wired.com/story/surveillance-police-roe-v-wade-abortion/
Salon - High-tech surveillance in post-Roe America: Chilling new report outlines possible future
https://www.salon.com/2022/05/24/high-tech-surveillance-in-post-roe-america-chilling-new-report-outlines-possible-future/
“It will be truly dystopian when police can use modern surveillance to enforce these backwards abortion bans,” said Surveillance Technology Oversight Project Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn. “The Supreme Court may be turning back the clock 50 years on civil rights, but anti-abortion policing will bring us an even darker future. In 1973, police couldn’t use the surveillance tools that have become commonplace today. Suddenly, every phone, laptop, and smart device will become a potential policing tool, with pregnant people’s location data and search histories mined for evidence. Even when abortion bans stop at the state line, the surveillance will be national, giving anti-abortion police a way to track abortion care coast to coast. Even if the laws are the same as pre-Roe, the way they’re enforced will be starkly different.”
“As it stands, abortion activists already surveil pregnant people to intimidate them out of exercising their legal reproductive rights. Police and prosecutors already surveil pregnant people digitally to pursue cases against them,” said Surveillance Technology Oversight Project Research Director Eleni Manis. “If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, we expect a massive escalation of surveillance targeting pregnant people, their reproductive healthcare providers, and anyone helping pregnant people access care, including care for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. Our report lays out the steps that states, abortion providers and tech companies must take to improve privacy protections for pregnant people, while also describing the steps pregnant people can take to protect themselves from digital surveillance.”
SEE: Wired - An EU Law Could Let US Prosecutors Scan Phones for Abortion Texts
https://www.wired.com/story/eu-law-scan-phones-abortion-texts/
Politico - Digital surveillance in a post-Roe world
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2022/05/05/digital-surveillance-in-a-post-roe-world-00030459
Wired - The Fall of Roe Would Put Big Tech in a Bind
https://www.wired.com/story/big-tech-roe-abortion/
Key Findings Include:
- Police and prosecutors will expand existing surveillance of pregnant peoples’ search histories, online purchases, messages, and cellphone location data.
- Healthcare providers will likely be forced to expand medical surveillance of pregnant people, particularly those suffering miscarriages.
- Police are likely to broadly use geofence warrants to target pregnant people, forcing Google and other companies to identify everyone who came into a designated area (such as an abortion clinic) during a designated time.
- Police are likely to purchase data from commercial data brokers, which they can currently do without any court oversight. This practice will leverage commercial databases that already use big data and machine learning to predictively identify pregnant people.
- Anti-abortion police are likely to track abortion seekers who travel out of state, prosecuting them for obtaining an abortion upon their return.
- The report details steps that abortion providers and pro-choice institutions can take to communicate with pregnant people more securely. The report notes that many leading abortion care providers currently allow third party tracking of their web traffic.
- The report details steps that pregnant people can take to minimize their digital footprint while seeking abortion care. However, the authors note that these measures are (at most) a harm reduction strategy, and no steps can fully protect the public from anticipated abortion surveillance.
The report comes as state and federal lawmakers consider steps to protect pregnant people’s privacy. In Congress, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has called for greater privacy protections in response, including the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, banning police purchases of data. In New York, lawmakers have pushed their own ban on data purchases, along with bans on geofence warrants, keyword warrants, and facial recognition.
SEE: Time - How a Digital Abortion Footprint Could Lead to Criminal Charges—And What Congress Can Do About It
https://time.com/6175194/digital-data-abortion-congress/
NBC - Cellphone dragnet used to find bank robbery suspect was unconstitutional, judge says
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/geofence-warrants-help-police-find-suspects-using-google-ruling-could-n1291098
Politico - Adams eyes expansion of highly controversial police surveillance technology
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/08/adams-police-surveillance-technology-00006230
The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project is a non-profit advocacy organization and legal services provider. S.T.O.P. litigates and advocates for privacy, fighting excessive local and state-level surveillance. Our work highlights the discriminatory impact of surveillance on Muslim Americans, immigrants, and communities of color.
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CONTACT: S.T.O.P. Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn
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