Tech companies in spotlight as US abortion ruling sparks privacy threat

Among other changes is an update to Fitbit software on wearable devices that allows users to track their periods. Users will now have an ability to delete those logs.

Google did not say the policy change was in response to the decision to reverse the supreme court landmark Roe v Wade ruling, which in 1973 established nationwide abortion rights. But privacy experts have warned that should some states seek to criminalize abortion procedures, it could lead to patients and providers having their search, location, email and cloud data used against them in prosecutions.

Caitlin Chin, a fellow with the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, said there was an implicit challenge to privacy in the overturning of Roe, highlighted by the absence of a comprehensive federal data privacy law in the US.

In an interview with the Guardian on Saturday, Chin pointed out that it is not just period or fitness apps that could be targeted by law enforcement. Many popular devices and mobile apps collect personal information, including geolocation, browsing activity, search history, private communications, social media posts, photos, videos and financial transactions, which are then used by developers, data aggregators, advertisers and other third parties.

Law enforcement agencies frequently access data held by private companies through a variety of mechanisms, including legal requests. From January to June 2020 alone, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft received more than 112,000 legal requests to access data from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. They fulfilled approximately 85% of those requests.

From January to June 2021, Google received more than 149,000 requests, of which about 78% were fulfilled, according to its transparency report.

Google said on Friday that it would continue to resist improper or overly broad demands for data by the government. In another update, it said it would designate US advertisers as providing abortions even if they dispense pills by mail after a virtual consultation, but lack their own facilities.

But while Google has acted over its location history software, if prosecutions begin to flow from the states enforcing abortion bans, the question over data brokers may only become more pressing.

Reuters contributed reporting