Two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, reproductive rights and data privacy advocates have come together to launch a new kind of VPN: the Vagina Privacy Network.
The campaign offers a how-to guide for protecting digital privacy for people who worry their personal information will be used against them after an abortion, especially those who live in the 14 states that ban abortion. The seven tips range from using encrypted messaging apps to communicating on disposable phones, and MSI Reproductive Choices, the campaign’s creator, is distributing the tips at reproductive rights demonstrations around the country, said Whitney Chinogwenya, the group’s global marketing manager.
“Confidentiality is a pretty important factor when searching for health information, so we want to protect that,” Chinogwenya said.
The Vagina Privacy Network is just one of several new tools launched to help people proactively reduce their digital footprint as the legal landscape around abortion and data privacy continues to evolve.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers a guide on how digital surveillance works and how to protect yourself. Surveillance self-defense. The Digital Defense Fund has a guide Help abortion seekers protect their privacy by browsing safely without being tracked, sending private messages, and protecting their devices with a strong password.
Advocates say instant messages, search histories, location information and even menstrual cycle trackers are easily accessible not only by police but also by anti-abortion groups, friends and family. Authorities have been using digital footprints to investigate abortion-related cases long before the Dobbs decision. In Indiana, a woman was convicted of murdering her unborn child in 2015 using evidence including private text messages and emails.
“We have people who are being targeted and have their information posted online, including the routes they take to and from home and the routes they take to work,” said Cynthia Conti-Cook, director of research and policy at the Surveillance Resistance Institute. “Access to digital information is likely to be used for interpersonal violence, whether that be from within their own family or from within their own community if they disagree with someone.”
How data is used against abortion seekers
Advice to delete period-tracking apps has become a hot topic ahead of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, but Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says simply deleting such apps will give you a false sense of security.
“This is bad advice because this is not the data that is currently being used in these prosecutions,” Galperin said.
Galperin said communications on platforms like Facebook Messenger, queries on search engines like Google, and location data collected by apps of all kinds are some of the digital evidence that concerns her most urgently.
In 2023, a Nebraska woman was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to ordering abortion pills online for her teenage daughter and helping her dispose of the fetus. The Associated Press reported.Norfolk police used a search warrant to access the couple’s Facebook messages and were able to charge Jessica Burgess with performing an illegal abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, the outlet reported.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, Blog Post The warrant in that case did not mention abortion and came with a non-disclosure order, but it has since been lifted.
Conti Cook said: 2020 Papers Digital evidence used in abortion prosecutions found that abortion-related prosecutions often target people “who are already targets of police and prosecutors,” such as those on parole or probation or under surveillance for immigration proceedings.
“This is being used against people who are already being targeted and criminalized,” she said, “which is to say, people who are in communities that are already being criminalized or who rely on an economy that is already being criminalized.”
While law enforcement agencies have the most sophisticated tools to extract and interpret our personal data, Kontik-Cook said this type of information can also be accessed by other third parties, noting that reproductive health providers are increasingly being targeted for online harassment and sexual abuse. Personal information leak.
Last year, a Texas man filed a wrongful death lawsuit against three women for allegedly helping his ex-wife get an abortion over text messages, and in February, an investigation by U.S. senators and The Wall Street Journal found that anti-abortion groups had used location data to target women who visited 600 Planned Parenthood locations with anti-abortion ads on social media.
“There are tremendous threats coming from many directions,” Kontikook said.
“It’s important that you know and communicate to your friend that they have the right to refuse a search,” Conti-Cook said. “They have the right to not consent to a search of their person, their belongings, their car, their home or their phone.”
What tech companies can do to keep abortion seekers’ data private
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a guide on steps companies can take to ensure they aren’t collecting sensitive data on abortion seekers “so that when the government comes looking for that data, they don’t have it,” Galperin said. Some companies have taken steps to strengthen privacy protections, but the results have been mixed, Galperin said. Washington Post survey of 2023 It was found that Google had not consistently deleted the location data of people who visited “particularly private” places, including abortion clinics, as the company had promised.
The company disputes these allegations and says it is following through on its promises to delete this data. Announced The company said that because the update encrypts location data stored on users’ devices and backed up to the cloud, once the update is rolled out, it will no longer be able to serve police geofencing warrants, which allow police to cast a virtual net around a crime scene and pinpoint people’s cell phones to within about 10 feet of each other.
Cold cases solved by cell phone:How police are using geofencing warrants to solve crimes
That same month, Meta introduced end-to-end encryption for Messenger, making data completely private between sender and recipient. Meta and Google The company reports that it complies with the majority of government requests for user data.
“Meta responds to government data requests in accordance with applicable law and our Terms of Use,” the company said. Transparency Website“Every request we receive is carefully reviewed for legal validity and we may reject or ask for more specificity in requests that appear to be overly broad or vague.”
Conti Cook said there are other things the big tech companies can do to resist broad requests from law enforcement. When asked what Crew, a period- and ovulation-tracking app, would do if it received a request for user data from US law enforcement, CEO Audrey Tsang told USA Today simply, “We’re not going to give it up.”
“We would never want our users’ data to be used against them,” she said.
Tsang said that because the company is based in Germany, it must comply with data privacy laws set out by the European Union, which he called “some of the strictest in the world.” Given that high standard, Tsang said the company has not changed how it handles the sensitive data of its more than 10 million users around the world, even after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
“I think people all over the world reacted with a fear that their data might somehow be used for reproductive surveillance,” she says. “I think that fear is understandable, and I have a lot of sympathy for it, but we’ve always been very careful about that.”
State lawmakers step up efforts to protect abortion seekers’ privacy
Meanwhile, states including Washington, Nevada, Connecticut, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey and California have recently passed or introduced bills aimed at protecting sensitive health information, said Amy Stepanovich, vice president of U.S. policy at the Future of Privacy Forum. In Illinois, a new law went into effect in January that bans abortion in the state from providing government license plate reader data to law enforcement. APAssociated Press report.
Idaho and Alabama Residents travelling out of state of abortionsStepanovich pointed to recent federal regulations related to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA. Has been updated To prevent health care providers from disclosing confidential information in criminal, civil, or administrative investigations of people seeking reproductive health care in states where such services are legal.
Washington state Rep. Vandana Slatter said after hearing concerns from constituents about period-tracking apps, she researched the issue and learned that HIPAA doesn’t apply to all apps and websites. After meeting with dozens of stakeholders, Slatter said My Health, My Data Act, Among them full Last month’s effect.
“What this bill does is, first of all, make sure that very personal information about our personal health care decisions isn’t collected or shared without our consent and then prevent that data from being sold to third parties,” Slatter said.
Slatter said the bill would ban companies from using geofencing to track people who visit locations like clinics or hospitals and then use that data to serve ads or collect health data. Given the popularity of medication abortion, those protections may need to be extended to other vulnerable locations like pharmacies and clinics, Slatter said.
Slatter said she has heard from several other lawmakers who want to enact similar legislation and hopes it will result in stronger federal protections for reproductive health data. Stepanovich noted that Congress recently canceled hearings on privacy bills. US Privacy Rights Act.
“Ultimately, I think federal action may be necessary given the need to protect individuals across the country and make sure privacy protections are in place for everyone,” Stepanovich said. “I’m not sure that will happen anytime soon.”
Contributors: Ryan AutroAustin American-Statesman; Kinsey Crowley, Ramon PadillaJavier Saracena Brett Molina, USA Today; Reuters
