Democrats: Google must protect privacy of abortion patients
Source: Associated Press
Democrats: Google must protect privacy of abortion patients
By BARBARA ORTUTAY
May 24, 2022
More than 40 Democratic members of Congress are asking Google to stop what they see as the unnecessary collection and retention of people’s location data, arguing the information could be used to identify women seeking abortions.
In a letter sent Tuesday to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google parent Alphabet Inc., the lawmakers express concern that if abortion were to become illegal in the U.S., the company’s “current practice of collecting and retaining extensive records of cell phone location data will allow it to become a tool for far-right extremists looking to crack down on people seeking reproductive health care.”
If the Supreme Court upends the 1973 decision that legalized abortion — as a draft opinion suggests it may in the coming weeks — pregnancies could be surveilled and the data shared with police or sold to vigilantes, privacy experts fear.
Google, specifically, stores “historical location information about hundreds of millions of smartphone users,” the letter notes, “which it routinely shares with government agencies.”
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-technology-health-patient-privacy-f5d03037cec832160c450d24b026701d