The Rise of Digital Dangers Post-Roe

Anti-abortion activists are buying & tracking your location

Earlier this week, a Senate investigation revealed that an extremist anti-abortion group used location data to target people who visited 600 Planned Parenthood clinics in 48 states with misinformation. One expert told POLITICO it was the largest anti-abortion ad campaign using purchased data to date. (In 2020, just in Wisconsin alone, they delivered 14.3 million ads to people who visited abortion clinics.)

The broader concern, obviously, is that data like this—which was obtained without users’ consent—could be used in anti-choice states to prosecute abortion patients and anyone who helps them. From Sen. Ron Wyden, who launched the investigation: 

“If a data broker could track Americans’ cell phones to help extremists target misinformation to people at hundreds of Planned Parenthood locations across the United States, a right-wing prosecutor could use that same information to put women in jail. Federal watchdogs should hold the data broker accountable for abusing Americans’ private information. And Congress needs to step up as soon as possible to ensure extremist politicians can’t buy this kind of sensitive data without a warrant.”

Sen. Wyden took up the investigation after the Wall Street Journal covered the Veritas Society’s strategy in an article last May. What his office found, though, showed that the campaign was much larger than originally reported. 

Not only did the Veritas Society purchase cell phone location data to obtain patient info from hundreds of Planned Parenthood clinics across the country—targeting them with social media ads about abortion ‘reversal’ and other nonsense—the data company who sold the information was also investigated for peddling geolocation data to government agencies. (Terrifying.)

What’s more, the data brokerage company, Near, is going through bankruptcy; they’re selling the business and its assets. As such, Sen. Wyden is asking the Federal Trade Commission to ensure that all of Near’s data isn’t sold off, but destroyed. 

Pro-choice states have been passing laws to prevent this type of data collection for just this reason—the anti-abortion movement will do anything to target women they think might end their pregnancies. Remember this huge network of anti-abortion centers that collected data on any woman who visited their website? Or how Senate Republicans wanted to create a government website that would collect data on pregnant women? 

We’ve already seen how digital data can be used by law enforcement to criminalize abortion and pregnancy. A teenager jailed in Nebraska for self-managing an abortion, for example, was arrested after police read her Facebook messages. And when an Idaho teen was taken out of state for an abortion by her boyfriend and his mother, the pair were arrested after police used geolocation data to place the girl at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Oregon.

The truth is that there’s all sorts of data that could be used by anti-choice states to prosecute abortion patients and the people who help them. A report put out this summer by STOP (Surveillance Technology Oversight Project), for example, raised the alarm on automated license plate readers (ALPR), street camera footage, and the data within cars themselves—which are retained for long periods of time and can be accessible without a warrant. 

Then there are period and pregnancy tracking apps—most of which collect and sell data. Mozilla researcher Jen Caltrider told The Guardian in 2022,  “Most of these apps share data with a large number of third parties, and that includes everyone from advertisers and Facebook to research partners and law enforcement.”

What’s just as disturbing is that large companies and agencies—places that absolutely know better—are also falling short when protecting people’s privacy. Google, for example, is still not deleting user location data for abortion clinic visits despite repeated promises to do so. (Accountable Tech and the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over the privacy breaches.)

Even in states like California, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU found that police agencies were sharing automated license plate reader data with anti-choice states, despite a rule prohibiting them from doing so. 

All of this aligns with how Republicans are working to access women’s health data more broadly. Remember, it wasn’t so long ago that 19 Republican attorneys general argued that they have the right to access the records of women who leave their states for abortion care. Add that to the laws requiring doctors report women’s health conditions as abortion ‘complications’ to the state (regardless if they’re actually complications), and a plan to increase “abortion surveillance” if Trump is elected in November—and you have an absolute fucking mess. 

The good news is that Americans aren’t unaware of the dangers here—and the link between data privacy and reproductive rights. An October report from the ACLU, for example, found that students in the U.S. are concerned that the surveillance technology used by their schools could identify students who are looking for abortions or birth control. Digital civil rights groups are on the case, as are Democratic legislators.  

But using policies and pressure campaigns on tech companies aren’t enough. Digital safety experts continually point out that the primary way law enforcement obtains private health information is through good old fashioned means like “consent searches”—where people willingly turn over their devices or records to police. (How truly ‘willing’ someone can be when questioned by law enforcement is up for debate.)

That means we need a combination of accountability and safety measures—and that in the same way we teach digital safety, Americans capable of pregnancy must learn about their rights more broadly, and how to (not) talk to cops.

To learn more about how to protect yourself online, check out guides from the Digital Defense Fund, the Washington Post, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

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AED researcher Grace Haley contributed to this report.