'A uniquely dangerous tool': How Google's data can help states track abortions

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10 states where abortion is now illegal have sent Google more than 5,700 demands for location tracking data since 2018.

There's growing alarm about how police or prosecutors could use that data to target abortion providers or people seeking the procedure.

politico.com
‘A uniquely dangerous tool’: How Google's data can help states track abortions
Ten states where ending a pregnancy is now illegal have sent the search giant more than 5,700 demands for location tracking data since 2018 — showing the data's potential usefulness to authorities...
6:36 AM · Jul 18, 2022

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/18/google-data-states-track-abortions-00045906

Many of the states rushing to ban abortion are also the biggest users of a surveillance tool that authorities could use to track women ending their pregnancies — the location data from people’s phones.

Supporters of abortion rights are expressing growing alarm about the potential uses that police or prosecutors could find for this data after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, including to target abortion providers or the people seeking the procedure.

It wouldn’t be hard to do, because states across the country are already using this kind of data for other investigations. And a POLITICO analysis found that many of the states that have criminalized abortion have relied increasingly on location data in recent years to probe crimes including robbery and sexual assault.

Figures from Google, one of the most prolific collectors of location data, show that the company received 5,764 “geofence” warrants between 2018 and 2020 from police in the 10 states that have banned abortion as of July 5. These warrants demand GPS data showing which mobile devices were present in a specified area during a particular time period, and can help investigate individuals who were present at crime scenes or other locations of interest.

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