Roe v Wade: Silicon Valley braces for pregnancy data requests

The American tech industry might soon find itself saddled with the uncomfortable responsibility of handing over pregnancy-related data should they be subpoenaed or issued a warrant by government agencies. 

Multiple states already have pre-existing legislation that are beginning to kick in after the Roe v. Wade ruling. Tech insiders told Reuters that they feared having to hand over information on a users search history, geolocation or any data that could point towards them attempting to get an abortion. 

Companies like Meta, Google and Amazon who have become known for their data collection practices now have the potential to become data troves for state government’s to use to clamp down on abortions, something which many in left-leaning Silicon Valley take issue with. 

As early as 2015, opponents of abortion in Massachusetts were revealed to be using technology to advertise help for their pregnancy or provide alternatives to the procedure. Geofencing, as the technology is called, provides users targeted ads once they enter a certain territory. In this case, the state prohibited the company from using the technology.

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More recently, in 2019, a woman from Starkville, Mississippi was charged with second degree murder after records from her smartphone revealed that she had been searching for abortion medication, according to Starkville Daily News. She was in her third trimester. Cynthia Conti-Cook, a senior technology fellow at the Ford Foundation told Reuters that it was “very likely” that tech companies would be asked for search information history and website history. 

It isn’t like companies haven’t complied with government requests however. For three years until 2020, Amazon partially complied with 75% of  data requests made of them. In a Twitter post, Eva Galperin, cybersecurity director at the Electronic Frontier Foundatio, said that the difference between when abortion was illegal then and now was that “we live in an era of digital surveillance.”