9 ms·
My Body, My Data Act Tackles Online Privacy in Wake of Roe vs. Wade Decision
- RobertRoberts 4y agoToday's innocuous data is tomorrow's political target. I don't want law enforcement having _any_ of my health/medical data. Without an even playing field this can turn into another "privacy for me but not for thee" situation.
- nerdponx 4y agoIt's clear that Congress doesn't want to solve the bigger problems here. This is token legislation that will not be passed anyway, so the fact that it's only limited to reproductive rights and not all data (not to mention, like, federally legalizing abortion?) indicates that they aren't even interested in token gestures beyond the absolute bare minimum to grab a headline.
- jstarfish 4y agoMy wife had a (legal at the time, medically-administered) abortion as a teenager, which effectively put her on a List of Fetal Murderers. She is now terrified that abortion will be made retroactively illegal and she will be captured by bounty hunters. Her family's generational experiences with other Lists didn't end so well for them. I'd tell her the retroactive thing is silly and has never happened before, but precedent no longer seems to be a factor in Supreme Court decisions so I can't help but feel I'm telling a German Jew in 1935 that she's being silly and there's nothing to worry about.
- rgbrenner 4y agoretroactive legislation is unconstitutional... article 1: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C3-2/ALDE_00001089/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C3-2/... Here's a pdf by the congressional research service discussing the nuances: https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF11293.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF11293.pdf
- rootusrootus 4y agoJust make it a civil matter instead of criminal, where the state itself is not one of the litigants. Ta-da! What Constitution?
- jstarfish 4y agoI slept through political science, but I'm awake enough to notice that what's been going on in other contexts lately is that a state will pass a law (constitutional or not) and just start acting on it. For its constitutionality to be challenged, it has to be escalated all the way to the Supreme Court. This can take years, does not happen for free, and in the end, the trolls who sit on the Supreme Court retain the right to refuse to hear it. The system appears to be very broken.
- civilized 4y agoRoe vs Wade has been in legal conservative crosshairs since it was decided. There is no movement by anyone to undermine the prohibition on ex post facto laws. These two things are very, very different in how legally well-founded they are in the eyes of conservatives. I know this decision is awful for many people and has created justified anger, but this isn't the Anschluss. The people who did this aren't trying to destroy every venerated legal structure in the country to impose their will. Not saying it's 100% impossible for some crazy thing to happen, your wife's anxiety is understandable, but I think a bit of perspective could help avoid needless panic. I would also remember that Trump's bid to disregard the election was shut down in part by judges he appointed. Legal conservatives do actually want to conserve the legal traditions of the country, for the most part.
- roflyear 4y agoHave you been following other insane SCOTUS decisions?
- civilized 4y agoI haven't seen any that would suggest I should see the current SCOTUS as an arbitrary monster with no respect for any legal structure. Are we able to draw a distinction between people who have a perspective we profoundly disagree with - even despise - and utterly ruthless, insane monsters?
- mminer237 4y agoCongress is prohibited from passing ex post facto laws by clause 3 of Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution. The states are prohibited from passing ex post facto laws by clause 1 of Article I, Section 10. Precedence has never been binding on the Supreme Court: https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overruled/ https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overru... If it was, we'd still be under Plessy v. Ferguson. But unlike abortion, protection from ex post facto laws wasn't determined by a judge to be a right. It's written very plainly in the Constitution itself, and I'm very confident that won't change within my lifetime.
- rootusrootus 4y agoTexas recently showed us how to make a law that gets around the Constitution. I don't think I'd feel safe quoting phrases from the Constitution and assuming they actually protect anyone.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- stuff4ben 4y agoI wonder why this data can't just be stored locally on the device? Unless you want to share it with other devices you own, it should be trivial to do so. Perhaps Apple and Google with their walled gardens can enact a data privacy and storage requirement for apps? Any personal data that is being collected should remain local to the app in encrypted storage. Furthermore it should be able to be viewable by the end-user and also deleted at anytime. Remote access to this data should also be limited if not prohibited.
- danuker 4y ago> can enact a data privacy and storage requirement for apps? Sure they can. But they're probably making money from the arrangement somehow. At least the app publishing fee, but possibly also all data going through their APIs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebase#User_privacy_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebase#User_privacy_controve... https://www.jurist.org/news/2022/01/us-federal-judge-dismisses-breach-of-contract-claims-in-privacy-class-action-against-google/ https://www.jurist.org/news/2022/01/us-federal-judge-dismiss...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sshine 4y ago> I wonder why this data can't just be stored locally on the device? Period trackers can achieve better prediction by training a model on massive data. Fitness trackers in general have all sorts of reason to upload data. The most legitimate reasons are that the dashboards and backups are online. Fundamentally, the predominant business model is to take people's data as payment. This continues to be the norm that numbs people into giving it without question or concern. --- How accurate would Apple or Facebook be at predicting someone's period without asking?
- danuker 4y ago> the dashboards This is what I call a Service as a Software Substitute, or SaaSS. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s... Volunteers reverse-engineered Bluetooth scales and created all the dashboard you could ever want, and it can export CSV. A company can make the app have a dashboard. Rather than let unnamed third parties target ads through my weight, I would have returned my scale had this not existed: https://github.com/oliexdev/openScale https://github.com/oliexdev/openScale
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoI think the way they are going about it is counterproductive to actual privacy reform. Basically they are associating privacy rights with abortion which will make this bill a dead end in the Senate. No Republican can sign onto this bill without being accused of supporting abortion. Given the filibuster in the Senate, this bill is more about messaging and fundraising than actually trying to pass a bill.
- MisterBastahrd 4y agoAbortion rights are privacy rights. If you don't have a right to bodily autonomy, then the rest of them are just vigorous handwaving.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoGun rights are privacy rights. If you don't have a right to self defense, then the rest of them are just vigorous handwaving. This technique of taking something controversial and pretending it is not, doesn’t actually win over anybody.
- MisterBastahrd 4y agoI'm not trying to win anyone over. The Supreme Court didn't strike down just a woman's right to bodily autonomy. They argued that people do not have the fundamental right to privacy, and state governments who want to know every single little thing that you do online are going to use this decision to argue that they should have access to your data without a subpoena or your consent, so I do hope that you are aligned with your political betters.
- the_only_law 4y agoHere I was thinking the NSA showed us this years ago.
- trasz 4y agoBodily autonomy is a fundamental human right. "Gun rights" aren't human rights, and in most of the western culture are considered a rather silly idea.
- tablespoon 4y agoOh great, another hyper-focused privacy law. They should just pass a law legally defining "reproductive health data" as a kind of video tape.
- googlryas 4y agoWe need to drop the "my body my choice" cliche. The entire crux of the disagreement is whether it is really just your body, or whether it is two bodies.
- anigbrowl 4y agoI don't see why people who adhere to the first interpretation should stop articulating their position.
- cartesius13 4y agoIf two parties are in disagreement, it's useless if they just keep yelling at each other forever and get nowhere. In any debate, people should at the very least be talking about the same thing
- phkahler 4y agoThey shouldn't, but they need to stop acting like it's a rebuttal of the other position. This is a huge part of the "debate". The two sides aren't even talking about the same issue because they haven't agreed on common language defining what the issue even is.
- anigbrowl 4y agoWhy? Conservatives use the word 'life' in exactly the same way. It's not reasoned debate (which has been had ad nauseam) but argumentum ad baculum. Slogans exist for people to assert what they stand for in a recognizable way, without getting drawn into dead-end arguments by bad faith debaters. There isn't a 'correct' answer you can just reason your way to when conflicts of values are involved, because people with different value systems have different initial premises.
- googlryas 4y agoFair enough - I guess my comment was based on my experience that I usually see it used as an attempt to convince others, not as an attempt to describe their own viewpoints.
- cm42 4y ago
- giantg2 4y agoSo why aren't they just regulating abortion at the federal level? If they have the votes for this, they should be able to put something together that allows regulated abortion similar to the level prior to the ruling. They had the votes on gun control recently. I assume some of those supporters are along similar social policies lines for this.
- JulianChastain 4y agoAt the most basic level, its because they don't a filibuster proof number of votes for it. Additionally, any attempt to regulate abortion at the federal level may be struck down in the supreme court, as the ruling suggests abortion rights are a state level decision.
- giantg2 4y agoI thought the ruling suggested that it just return to the legislative branch, not specifically the states. I have a hard time seeing how they can regulate stuff like the affordable care act and everything else but not this. At the very least they could put a modest tax on it and then use that tax for medical related grants. BTW that is filibuster proof if using their remaining budget reconciliation passage for this (a hack, but it seems hacks are how everything gets done).
- Shank 4y ago> I assume some of those supporters are along similar social policies lines for this. There's only 100 senators, and of those senators, the majority is just "50" (because the vice president is a tie breaker), and in that majority, at least one senator, if not two, live in heavily red states and don't always agree with their democratic colleagues. But, even barring that, the filibuster rules make it difficult to pass anything, even with a majority, because you actually need enough votes for a cloture vote to stop debate. Technically speaking yes, we could just pass legislation at the federal level to solve a lot of issues. Practically speaking, passing legislation at the federal level has been a complete challenge for both parties in recent times. When Trump was president, a coordinated effort called SwingLeft systematically secured a majority in the House specifically to win legislative control, for example. It is likely that in the next election cycle, a similar effort will occur due to redistricting, which will likely give the house to the republican party, thus making legislation equally difficult (because the president is a democrat, congress will be republican or deadlocked). If you go back far enough, this is the type of thing that stymied Obama. I don't know if it happened with Bush, but it's relatively easy to, for lack of a better term, deadlock congress because of its unique election rules and vote distributions. Were it so easy.
- mikece 4y agoAcross the country there are data privacy advocates who are shaking their heads that, despite their best efforts to raise awareness of why privacy and digital security affects EVERYONE, it takes the abortion debate and questions about whether law enforcement will look at your period tracker app's data to determine if you're looking to get an abortion... I guess better late then never. Hopefully this will really encourage people to take privacy and data security seriously.