Is the Government Tracking Your Abortion?

If you live in a state where abortions have been banned since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, accessing abortion is a huge challenge. But unfortunately, access is not the only challenge — pursuing an abortion without leaving a trace poses another huge hurdle. If you search for resources online, if you get in your car and travel, who you text, if you ship pills to your house — will the state find out? In our daily lives, many of our actions are tracked for consumption and utilization by various companies and organizations. That data could now be used against you if you seek an abortion. We are used to hearing people shrug off data surveillance concerns. The saying from digital privacy naysayers goes: if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. But now, we maybe have something new to hide, and therefore maybe something new to fear.

Today we are digging into data privacy in a post-Roe world and learning both what we individually can do to best keep our data safe and what we can ask of data collectors and government officials to help us in our pursuit of privacy. Joining us is Jennifer Granick, Surveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel, for the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

Additional Resources:

From the Digital Defense Fund, How to Keep Your Abortion Private & Secure: https://digitaldefensefund.org/ddf-guides/abortion-privacy

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Surveillance Self-Defense: https://ssd.eff.org/en

https://www.aclu.org/podcast/is-the-government-tracking-your-abortion