Abortion Bans Are Going to Make Stalkerware Even More Dangerous

[Nevilledog]

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The Progress Network
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"The law’s response to intimate privacy violations is inadequate, lacking a clear conception of what intimate privacy is, why its violation is wrongful, & how it inflicts serious harm upon individuals, groups & society," writes TPN member @daniellecitron.

slate.com
Abortion Bans Are Going to Make Stalkerware Even More Dangerous
Abusers will use intimate data obtained from stalkerware to terrorize, manipulate, control, and—yes—incriminate victims.
12:02 PM · Jul 5, 2022
[bdiv]

https://slate.com/technology/2022/07/stalkerware-abortion-bans-privacy.html


“Jolie,” a middle school teacher in her 20s, had no idea how her ex knew where she would be after work. He confronted her at the supermarket, public library, and doctor’s office. It turned out that without her knowledge or permission, Jolie’s ex had gained real-time access to her phone.

This happened in 2014. But what if this was late June 2022, and Jolie, an Alabama resident, had searched for and obtained an abortion in violation of state law? Jolie’s ex would have had incriminating evidence to pass on to law enforcement.

All too frequently, people monitor our intimate lives in betrayal of our trust—and it’s often those we know and love. They don’t even need to be near us to capture our data and to record our activities. Surveillance accomplished by individual privacy invaders will be a gold mine for prosecutors targeting both medical workers and pregnant people seeking abortions.

Intimate partners and exes download cyberstalking apps to personal devices that give them real-time access to everything that we do and say with our phones. To do this, they only need our phones (and passwords) for a few minutes. Once installed, cyberstalking apps silently record and upload phones’ activities to their servers. They enable privacy invaders to see our photos, videos, texts, calls, voice mails, searches, social media activities, locations—nothing is out of reach. From anywhere, individuals can activate a phone’s mic to listen to conversations within 15 feet of the phone.

*snip*

[Mad_Machine76]

1. The future we're looking down the barrel at right now

if f**king terrifying

[Tetrachloride]

2. Slate story doesn't say anything if Android or iPhone.

i conclude the story pulled its punches, a lot. Kind of reminds me a Texas school incident.

[MontanaMama]

3. I actually dealt with a real stalker from 1990 to 1995.

It is terrifying to know someone is watching your every move. I’m no gun nut, believe me, but I bought a hand gun and took combat training lessons for three years to become proficient because local law enforcement told me there was nothing they could do until I was physically injured or attacked by this man or he broke some other law. I take this stuff very seriously. I was a hostage to my stalker and women are slowly becoming hostages of the state. We are headed for very very dark times.

[Thtwudbeme]

4. I have a flip phone and an old Subaru without GPS and all that mess on it

The attitude that people always need to be connected to the internet has always bothered me.