16 ms·

Tech Companies Won't Say If They’ll Give Cops Abortion Data

77 points by grej 4y ago

ainiriand 4y ago
If they don't say then it is safe to assume they'll do. It is just how law works.
- Anunayj 4y ago
  I mean there is little recourse they have either way, they have to comply, even if they wanted to not hand over the data, they'd have to change the app in ways that leaves them no way to provide cops with the data.
wffurr 4y ago
Not complying with lawful requests likely isn't a palatable option for these companies. But they could change their data collection practices in order to not have the data in the first place. Too bad they are also strongly incentivized not do do that either.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
JohnDeHope 4y ago
Tech companies also won't say if the sun will rise tomorrow. Hint #1: it will. Hint #2: they will.
- red_trumpet 4y ago
  Actually, asking google "will the sun rise tomorrow?" gives me the time of the next sunrise ;-)
LatteLazy 4y ago
They cannot simply decline a lawful request. Not if they don't want their servers seized and all the staff put in jail then prison. The US has a very disfunctional political system. But that doesn't mean it's viable to just try and shame big companies into overriding the law...
- SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
  Sure they can! In 2016, Apple famously declined multiple requests and even court orders to help unlock some iPhones. I don't blame them in the slightest for declining to publicly answer a hypothetical question about it on the spur of the moment (and a pretty poorly framed question too - how is a tech company gonna know if a particular law enforcement request is abortion-related?), but it's reasonable to hope they're developing a strategy here.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    And the fbi dropped the case before the last appeal could go against apple. What happens when they don't drop the case?
    - spacemanmatt 4y ago
      Sounds like the FBI didn't want to find out.
      - kabdib 4y ago
        Well, not with that supreme court. The current one, on the other hand, might work great for the FBI. In 1868, Vigenère was considered unbreakable. If it was good enough then...
      - LatteLazy 4y ago
        I think at the time they just found another way in. Since they'd won all the cases and appeals so far, and since the law is clear (even if I disagree with it) I don't think they were afraid. Remember, that was the court that refused to hear privacy cases around the NSA, warrent-less wiretapping etc. And since then the court has taken a hard right swing...
        spacemanmatt 4y ago
        I recall the general assumption was they bought Pegasus or something and mooted the need to sue.
black_puppydog 4y ago
Kinda grim, if the implied best case in the current US situation is to hope that corporations like Apple and Google and AWS will finally step up to completely ignore the law. I mean... all the other PR those companies doesn't exactly imply they'll be the best shepherds of the people's best interest...
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  At the risk of Godwin-ing myself, history is a relevant teacher here. Many companies were more than happy to provide services to Nazi Germany in the lead up to WWII. Most notably, IBM and their punch card machines[1]. Or, more recently, consider how many American companies have conceded to giving Chinese authorities special access to their Chinese users[2]. Corporate morality rarely extends beyond its value as PR. Once the financial cost of doing the right thing exceeds the PR value, it's probable that the financial considerations will prevail. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_World_War_II#Critics_of_IBM's_actions_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_World_War_II#Critics_o... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insight-idUSKCN1G8060 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    > Corporate morality rarely extends beyond its value as PR. Once the financial cost of doing the right thing exceeds the PR value, it's probable that the financial considerations will prevail. Make that the morality of most individuals. Few people in the world are bleeding hearts. Most will pay lip service to a cause and then go back to work on Monday to pay taxes to the very government they condemned as oppressive. If every Tom, Dick, and Harry are each fickle enough to preserve themselves when their livelihoods and investments become threatened, why expect a group of them under the banner of ABC, inc. to be any more self-sacrificial?
  - xsmasher 4y ago
    > Corporate morality rarely extends beyond its value as PR. Once the financial cost of doing the right thing exceeds the PR value, it's probable that the financial considerations will prevail. Money interprets ethics as damage and routes around it.
giantg2 4y ago
What did they actually ask? There could be multiple ways to interpret complying with requests for information, especially since there's nothing specific to abortion information in cutrent law and no case law to look at. Why would a company provide a statement around a poorly defined hypothetical?
telesilla 4y ago
I am horrified that the day has arrived that as a person, as a woman, I might have to actually think twice what I look up on Google or what I store on my emails or WhatsApp chats because until now I haven't ever worried for a moment. [Edit] most relevant reply here from Krapp: If you're using a period tracker, you may want to consider deleting it
- sshine 4y ago
  There are lots of countries where it's been like that for two decades. But this certainly brings USA one step closer to Iran and Saudi Arabia in terms of religious extremism and your individual rights as a woman.
  - snarf21 4y ago
    Yeah, I saw a post that said the US has become "Chrisitian" Saudi Arabia and it is hard to argue that it hasn't (or won't be very very soon). Just look at the $2B payoff from one Saudi country to another.
- gruez 4y ago
  Really? Only now? Not 9 years ago when the snowden/NSA revelations came out? I mean, it's great that people are realizing the dangers of the surveillance state, but it's sad that they didn't care until it personally affected them. That does not bode well for the other 50% of the population where the hot button political issue isn't really applicable to them.
  - karpierz 4y ago
    > Not 9 years ago when the snowden/NSA revelations came out? What were you worried about looking up/messaging when those revelations came out?
    - belorn 4y ago
      Any information that if taken out of context could cause damage in an unfair but technical legal court case, or the court of public opinion.
CountSessine 4y ago
Tech companies are US corporations which are legal entities created under US laws and run by US citizens who are human beings who can be handcuffed and put in prison. Asking them to break US laws, even bad ones, is unrealistic. What we should be asking them is whether they’re now doing everything they can to scrub their datasets of information that could be requested by police and could be used in abortion cases.
- gruez 4y ago
  >What we should be asking them is whether they’re now doing everything they can to scrub their datasets of information that could be requested by police and could be used in abortion cases. That sound illegal in and of itself.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    Why? Most of this stuff is personal information from their users and abortion is not (yet) illegal in most states. By this logic no user data can ever be deleted, just in case it becomes relevant to enforcing a future law.
    - gruez 4y ago
      >Most of this stuff is personal information from their users and abortion is not (yet) illegal in most states. That's cold comfort when the AG of those minority states decide to prosecute the company or their executives. >By this logic no user data can ever be deleted, just in case it becomes relevant to enforcing a future law. But it's illegal in 13 states right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_law
      - giantg2 4y ago
        "But it's illegal in 13 states right now." You have to define what is actually illegal and how the data would be used. Most of the laws are about performing an abortion in the state. I'm not up to date on everything, but generally state jurisdiction ends at the state line. For example, someone in CA can look up high capacity magazines and buy them in another state without ever bringing them back into CA. They can't prosecute you for touching a 30rd mag in a different state.
salawat 4y ago
Of course they will. Welcome to the sting all the "crazies" in the anti-data hoovering camp were on about. Geofence warrants around known abortion clinics, financial purchase/search query surveillance, you name it. If a State Attorney General decides it's worth pursuing, I guarantee the datasets that have been hoovered are more than enough to spill the beans on anyone. This is why data, in particular geospatial location history data, is toxic as all hell just by existing.
rvz 4y ago
> None of them answered the question. It means they will comply and give the data away. The tech bros at these FAANG companies will give into law enforcement with your privacy destroyed and violated, something the Free Software Foundation (FSF) had been fighting to prevent and to totally remove such surveillance capitalist products made by these companies. That fight has been lost and is a complete failure. Now these data barons will comply, happily give your data away and they do not care and won't change.
rjsw 4y ago
Doesn't have to be tech companies, Target can work out if a woman is pregnent.
- monkeybutton 4y ago
  For anyone interested: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
- pc86 4y ago
  Large national retailers are mostly software companies that happen to have a decently-sized logistics and supply chain component.
de6u99er 4y ago
I consider health data amongst the most protected data category. If my company did this with my female co-workers data, I'd quit. Curious how well those companies, purely staffed with right-wing open carry fundamentalist Christians, will do.

77 points by grej 4y ago

ainiriand 4y ago

If they don't say then it is safe to assume they'll do. It is just how law works.

Anunayj 4y ago
I mean there is little recourse they have either way, they have to comply, even if they wanted to not hand over the data, they'd have to change the app in ways that leaves them no way to provide cops with the data.

wffurr 4y ago

Not complying with lawful requests likely isn't a palatable option for these companies. But they could change their data collection practices in order to not have the data in the first place. Too bad they are also strongly incentivized not do do that either.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

JohnDeHope 4y ago

Tech companies also won't say if the sun will rise tomorrow. Hint #1: it will. Hint #2: they will.

red_trumpet 4y ago
Actually, asking google "will the sun rise tomorrow?" gives me the time of the next sunrise ;-)

LatteLazy 4y ago

They cannot simply decline a lawful request. Not if they don't want their servers seized and all the staff put in jail then prison. The US has a very disfunctional political system. But that doesn't mean it's viable to just try and shame big companies into overriding the law...

SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
Sure they can! In 2016, Apple famously declined multiple requests and even court orders to help unlock some iPhones. I don't blame them in the slightest for declining to publicly answer a hypothetical question about it on the spur of the moment (and a pretty poorly framed question too - how is a tech company gonna know if a particular law enforcement request is abortion-related?), but it's reasonable to hope they're developing a strategy here.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  And the fbi dropped the case before the last appeal could go against apple. What happens when they don't drop the case?
  - spacemanmatt 4y ago
    Sounds like the FBI didn't want to find out.
    - kabdib 4y ago
      Well, not with that supreme court. The current one, on the other hand, might work great for the FBI. In 1868, Vigenère was considered unbreakable. If it was good enough then...
    - LatteLazy 4y ago
      I think at the time they just found another way in. Since they'd won all the cases and appeals so far, and since the law is clear (even if I disagree with it) I don't think they were afraid. Remember, that was the court that refused to hear privacy cases around the NSA, warrent-less wiretapping etc. And since then the court has taken a hard right swing...
      - spacemanmatt 4y ago
        I recall the general assumption was they bought Pegasus or something and mooted the need to sue.

black_puppydog 4y ago

Kinda grim, if the implied best case in the current US situation is to hope that corporations like Apple and Google and AWS will finally step up to completely ignore the law. I mean... all the other PR those companies doesn't exactly imply they'll be the best shepherds of the people's best interest...

AlexandrB 4y ago
At the risk of Godwin-ing myself, history is a relevant teacher here. Many companies were more than happy to provide services to Nazi Germany in the lead up to WWII. Most notably, IBM and their punch card machines[1]. Or, more recently, consider how many American companies have conceded to giving Chinese authorities special access to their Chinese users[2]. Corporate morality rarely extends beyond its value as PR. Once the financial cost of doing the right thing exceeds the PR value, it's probable that the financial considerations will prevail. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_World_War_II#Critics_of_IBM's_actions_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_World_War_II#Critics_o... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insight-idUSKCN1G8060 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  > Corporate morality rarely extends beyond its value as PR. Once the financial cost of doing the right thing exceeds the PR value, it's probable that the financial considerations will prevail. Make that the morality of most individuals. Few people in the world are bleeding hearts. Most will pay lip service to a cause and then go back to work on Monday to pay taxes to the very government they condemned as oppressive. If every Tom, Dick, and Harry are each fickle enough to preserve themselves when their livelihoods and investments become threatened, why expect a group of them under the banner of ABC, inc. to be any more self-sacrificial?
- xsmasher 4y ago
  > Corporate morality rarely extends beyond its value as PR. Once the financial cost of doing the right thing exceeds the PR value, it's probable that the financial considerations will prevail. Money interprets ethics as damage and routes around it.

giantg2 4y ago

What did they actually ask? There could be multiple ways to interpret complying with requests for information, especially since there's nothing specific to abortion information in cutrent law and no case law to look at. Why would a company provide a statement around a poorly defined hypothetical?

telesilla 4y ago

I am horrified that the day has arrived that as a person, as a woman, I might have to actually think twice what I look up on Google or what I store on my emails or WhatsApp chats because until now I haven't ever worried for a moment. [Edit] most relevant reply here from Krapp: If you're using a period tracker, you may want to consider deleting it

sshine 4y ago
There are lots of countries where it's been like that for two decades. But this certainly brings USA one step closer to Iran and Saudi Arabia in terms of religious extremism and your individual rights as a woman.
- snarf21 4y ago
  Yeah, I saw a post that said the US has become "Chrisitian" Saudi Arabia and it is hard to argue that it hasn't (or won't be very very soon). Just look at the $2B payoff from one Saudi country to another.
gruez 4y ago
Really? Only now? Not 9 years ago when the snowden/NSA revelations came out? I mean, it's great that people are realizing the dangers of the surveillance state, but it's sad that they didn't care until it personally affected them. That does not bode well for the other 50% of the population where the hot button political issue isn't really applicable to them.
- karpierz 4y ago
  > Not 9 years ago when the snowden/NSA revelations came out? What were you worried about looking up/messaging when those revelations came out?
  - belorn 4y ago
    Any information that if taken out of context could cause damage in an unfair but technical legal court case, or the court of public opinion.

CountSessine 4y ago

Tech companies are US corporations which are legal entities created under US laws and run by US citizens who are human beings who can be handcuffed and put in prison. Asking them to break US laws, even bad ones, is unrealistic. What we should be asking them is whether they’re now doing everything they can to scrub their datasets of information that could be requested by police and could be used in abortion cases.

gruez 4y ago
>What we should be asking them is whether they’re now doing everything they can to scrub their datasets of information that could be requested by police and could be used in abortion cases. That sound illegal in and of itself.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  Why? Most of this stuff is personal information from their users and abortion is not (yet) illegal in most states. By this logic no user data can ever be deleted, just in case it becomes relevant to enforcing a future law.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >Most of this stuff is personal information from their users and abortion is not (yet) illegal in most states. That's cold comfort when the AG of those minority states decide to prosecute the company or their executives. >By this logic no user data can ever be deleted, just in case it becomes relevant to enforcing a future law. But it's illegal in 13 states right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_law
    - giantg2 4y ago
      "But it's illegal in 13 states right now." You have to define what is actually illegal and how the data would be used. Most of the laws are about performing an abortion in the state. I'm not up to date on everything, but generally state jurisdiction ends at the state line. For example, someone in CA can look up high capacity magazines and buy them in another state without ever bringing them back into CA. They can't prosecute you for touching a 30rd mag in a different state.

salawat 4y ago

Of course they will. Welcome to the sting all the "crazies" in the anti-data hoovering camp were on about. Geofence warrants around known abortion clinics, financial purchase/search query surveillance, you name it. If a State Attorney General decides it's worth pursuing, I guarantee the datasets that have been hoovered are more than enough to spill the beans on anyone. This is why data, in particular geospatial location history data, is toxic as all hell just by existing.

rvz 4y ago

> None of them answered the question. It means they will comply and give the data away. The tech bros at these FAANG companies will give into law enforcement with your privacy destroyed and violated, something the Free Software Foundation (FSF) had been fighting to prevent and to totally remove such surveillance capitalist products made by these companies. That fight has been lost and is a complete failure. Now these data barons will comply, happily give your data away and they do not care and won't change.

rjsw 4y ago

Doesn't have to be tech companies, Target can work out if a woman is pregnent.

monkeybutton 4y ago
For anyone interested: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
pc86 4y ago
Large national retailers are mostly software companies that happen to have a decently-sized logistics and supply chain component.

de6u99er 4y ago

I consider health data amongst the most protected data category. If my company did this with my female co-workers data, I'd quit. Curious how well those companies, purely staffed with right-wing open carry fundamentalist Christians, will do.