Short Wave - It's Been A Minute: Digital Privacy In A Possible Post-Roe World

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

Today, we're passing the mic to our friends at It's Been A Minute. Recently, they dug into how the anticipated repeal of Roe v. Wade will affect broader privacy issues. Will tech platforms continue to provide the same information, in states where the procedure is outlawed? What risk does your digital footprint create, if you seek information about abortion or other reproductive health care? Guest host Elise Hu talks it out with Rachel Cohen, senior policy reporter at Vox News, and Lil Kalish from CalMatters.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hi, you shortwavers, Aaron Scott here. With the recent Supreme Court draft leak, a lot of people have been wondering what overturning Roe v. Wade would mean for privacy protections, especially data privacy, because our devices often hold so much intimate information. Well, it's a question our friends over it. It's been a minute, dug into recently. So today, we're going to pass the mic so they can share the answers they've

You're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Elise Hume. All right, we live so much of our lives on the internet. And information is always only a search away. We track our health, whether it's exercise or sleep or heart rate, on our apps. And increasingly we're seeing our doctors online or getting medications delivered to us straight to our homes. But if a federal protection for abortion ends nationally, and we have to reckon with individual states getting more involved, with our intimate lives, it kicks up a lot of questions about the information we store and the information we can get.

Whether you're searching on Google or whether you download, you know, an app, even your Fitbit, we're constantly sort of entering questions about our health or we're tracking various things. And I think it is not made clear to people sort of who gets access to that data, who are they selling it to, even when you delete the app, that doesn't mean that you've deleted the data. That's journalist Rachel Cohen, as the senior policy reporter at Vossohn. she's been reporting on how tech companies control our access to information on reproductive health. The likely end to legal abortion nationwide has also sparked concerns over how law enforcement might use our data to prosecute patients. What we've seen so far is that tech companies are kind of reluctant to draw a hard line in the sand about where they stand on how they're going to protect or not access to information about abortion.

That's journalist Lil Kalish, who's a reporter at Cal Matters, who's examined questions. about privacy and a post-row America. Lil and Rachel join me to talk through these questions because if there is one major difference between now and the last time abortion was illegal in America, which was some 50 years ago, it's telemedicine, the internet, and the availability of safe abortion pills.

Just to be clear, as things stand now, can the abortion medications, can they be acquired by every American in every state? Well, right now, how you can, get it can vary by states. I mean, they've been long approved. So they're very safe and we've gotten, you know, even further studies over time on their safety. But the ability to access them is being restricted by states. So now, you know, conservative states are making it harder and adding more restrictions on how you can get it. But they are sort of legal, mass-produced drugs that are

available in the U.S. and around the world. So what happens then, Lil, if Roe versus Wade is overturned and there is no longer a federal protection for abortion. Basically, in light of this leak, there's been greater awareness on how we get information on reproductive health and abortion. And what we've seen already is, you know, tech platforms will flag or take down information relating to reproductive health or women's health. There's an organization called the Center for Intimacy Justice, and they ran a report that looks at advertising for sexual and reproductive health. and they've seen that ads that use keywords like abortion or pregnancy or pelvic pain, those ads get taken down way more often than, for example, ads that say erectile dysfunction. Or, for example, there's a telehealth company that I spoke to that provides abortion medication,

and they saw at the end of March that their ads on Google were taken down for 10 days, and they're still trying to figure out what exactly happened. even though they have the two certifications that they need to be an online retailer of abortion medication. Rachel, your reporting has focused on the nonprofit aid access, which has been delivering abortion medication to Americans in every state, including the 19 that currently banned telemedicine abortion. Can you briefly explain how these services work? Essentially how it works is you fill out an online consultation form. if you are living in the states in the U.S. where medication abortion is not restricted,

they refer you to a provider who will ship you the pills in one to two days. If you are in one of the more restrictive states, then they refer you to Dr. Rebecca Gomberts, who is based in Austria, and then she will fill your prescriptions from a pharmacy she trusts in India. One of the things about 8Axis that I think is really notable is it is cheaper to get medication abortion from them right now than even the person. providers in the U.S. So the drawback is that shipping from India can take two to three weeks. So for something that it's safest to take within 10 weeks of pregnancy, like there is a time

element to this. But the upside is you don't have to raise as much money necessarily to get the pills. So that is sort of the model and how it's worked since 2018. They've delivered over 30,000 pills to over 30,000 people since then, you know, Republicans have struggled to figure out how to shut them down so far. Why don't we break up the concerns? Because there are kind of two main threads to this, right? There's the worry about information in, just access to information about reproductive health and fertility that we seek just this week, right?

Aid Access's Instagram was taken down briefly? Yeah, Eighth Access's Instagram was taken down for two days with like no explanation other than being told that something they did, quote, violated community guidelines. You're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Elise Hughes, speaking with journalists, Rachel Cohen, and Lil Kalish, about digital security risks for our more sensitive searches. And let's just bring back home why AdaX's Instagram or any of these other groups is Instagram or ability to reach out via social platforms matter and the timing matters. Yeah, I mean, this is where a lot of people are. I always, I search like every question I have and I'm, I'm,

rarely giving thought to how these searches can be used against me. I think the articles that have been coming out recently have been extremely important reminders about the urgent need to pass more of these data privacy, consumer protection laws. I think if this doesn't give legislators the kick in the butt, we're really in trouble. There's also the concerns about our information out and surveillance or data tracking. Yes, there's a case that researchers often point to of a black pregnant woman. In Mississippi, in 2017, she became pregnant and had mentioned to nurses that she was thinking about terminating her pregnancy, and she experienced some complications and went to the hospital because she had a stillbirth at home.

The nurses previously, because she never followed up for her ultrasound, they had handed over her records to the police. So by the time she got to the hospital, she was already under suspicion. And police asked her for her phone. She gave it to them, and investigators were very easily able to download her search history, which showed that she was researching terms like by abortion pills, Mifrapristone, and Misoprostol online, the two pills used in medication abortion. And they found that she had purchased those pills online, and she was charged with second-degree murder, though that charge was eventually dropped.

And, you know, keywords warrant is just one of the ways that police and prosecutors can get that data from folks. They can also use a geoffence warrant, which basically, with a geoffence warrant, police can basically identify the device history of everyone in a certain location. So everyone who's visited an abortion clinic, for example. It starts out with a low-tech way of just nurses and doctors maybe being suspicious of a patient, but the tech part and the data extraction comes in later to help secure those convictions. This is Rachel. If there's suspected criminal activity, law enforcement right now can be.

basically get everything. Like there's very, very, very little that they cannot get of your social media or internet searches. And they can just go to Google. They can go to social media companies. And they have broad authority to do that kind of thing. And right now there's very little rules on any of these companies or apps to delete your data. Even if you're using private searches, you're deleting your apps from your phone. There are bills that exist that would require companies to delete that data that would limit

how much they collect in the first place. And other countries, like Europe has a much stronger data privacy law. Other countries have been much more proactive than the U.S. And so there is, like, hope and hopefully these conversations will move pressure in that direction. But right now, we are in a bad spot. To both of you, considering how much of our data we are freely offering up to tech platforms and the real complexity of our reproductive and our intimate lives that now, the government is getting more involved in.

What can people do to protect themselves? I want to emphasize that it's really hard to be rock solid, but there are things that you can do to protect yourself and those that are helping you with your abortion. Never really bring your phone to a clinic. And if you're going to search about how to self-manage an abortion or get an abortion, don't do it on your personal device or your own Wi-Fi network. A lot of advocates I've spoken to have said things like go to your local library

or, you know, use an encrypted search engine. And similarly, if you're looking to purchase medication online, don't use your credit card. You can always go out and get a prepaid debit card. It's often people ratting each other out what kind of kicks off investigation. So be careful about who you're talking to about this and work with people that you feel like you can trust. There are robust abortion doula networks and abortion funds that help folks and, you know, can teach them about how to stay safe. I really recommend getting in touch with the Digital Defense Fund, which is an organization that provides abortion providers and individuals with the knowledge of how to beef up their own cybersecurity. Yeah, Lil, this is such a fantastic list of resources, but it does sound really complex and requiring a lot of background information or tools that maybe we don't have the time or the bandwidth to do.

It's a lot, it seems like. It is. As one privacy researcher told me, you know, it's a nightmare scenario. Nobody wants to have to do all of those things. It's kind of impossible. And if you are under stress, as you might be, if you want to terminate your pregnancy, it's kind of impossible to get all of those things done and ensure that you're rock solid. Yeah, just to add briefly to what it was like, because I think those were really great suggestions. I think raising the pressure on getting some of these. laws because it is so immensely difficult to expect us as individuals living in the society to not like search on the internet the questions that we have that's just the world that we live in and it feels so to be like oh well you gave your information to Google well that feels like a really unfair expectation I think like there are there are steps we can take to mitigate things but as it's really hard to be 100% consistent and I think our the best hope is kind of elevating these

as like not political needs to deal with so that we're not not in this position where we have to feel guilty for Googling our health care questions. Thanks again to journalists, Rachel Cohen and Lil Kalish. All right, that's it for us. This week, it's been a minute. It was produced by Andrea Gutierrez, Liam McBain, Barton Girdwood, Chloe Weiner, Janet Ujong Lee, and Asia Drain. Our editor is Kitty Isley.

Our director of programming is Yolanda Sanguini. Our big boss, NPR's senior VP of programming, is Anya Grunman. I'm Elise Hugh. Take care y'all, and we'll talk soon.