Online privacy becomes critical if Roe v. Wade is overturned

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About 10 years ago, a story about Target Corp.'s uncanny ability to detect a customer's pregnancy made waves. An angry man had gone into a Target store near Minneapolis, demanding to speak to a manager and flashing coupons that his teenage daughter had received in the mail for baby clothes and cribs. "Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?" he asked.

It turned out his daughter was already pregnant, and Target had figured this out before he had.

Data mining by companies has only improved since then, but fortunately so have our tools for protecting privacy. A leaked draft ruling reported by Politico suggests the U.S. Supreme Court is in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that gave women the right to abortion. This would make online privacy more critical than ever for women and health care providers, as secrecy around abortion would become integral not just for personal reasons but to avoid potential legal ramifications or blowback from vigilantes.

It's unclear who would be legally liable for an abortion in close to a dozen or more U.S. states that would like to ban it. But many women will want to hide their online activity out of caution. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., warned on Tuesday that "every digital record — from web searches, to phone records and app data — will be weaponized in Republican states as a way to control women's bodies."

One of the first things many women do when they find themselves needing an abortion is seek advice online. That won't change no matter what the Supreme Court rules. But if they happen to live in one of 22 states that would probably outlaw abortion in the absence of Roe v. Wade, they'd be wise to hide their browsing history and use encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal to talk to others about their plans. Should abortion pills also be outlawed, women may turn to the Dark Web to procure them — something they already do, according to a study from the University of Texas.

Such tools, normally associated with political dissidents in autocratic regimes, could become far more important for American women in a post-Roe v. Wade world. Tech news site Motherboard reported on Monday that a location-data firm has already been selling information related to people's visits to abortion clinics, including where visitors had come from and how long they stayed, by tracking apps on groups of phones.

The internet presents risk, but also help, such as telemedicine services that offer abortion medication. Many women in the U.S. have flocked to services like Aid Access to acquire such medication; the website "Women on Web" offers services to women around the world. Depending on the location, pills can cost approximately $90, compared with $600 or more to get the procedure done in a clinic, prohibitively expensive for many of the women who need abortions (most of whom live on or below the poverty line).

Online collectives like the "Auntie Networks" of Facebook will also become increasingly important. These are pages run by people offering a spare room in U.S. states where abortion is legal, for women who need the procedure. A 2019 report in the Washington Post described how some Auntie Network pages suggested taking selfies at local landmarks as "proof" that the trip was just a vacation. One host in Iowa said they'd be "happy to mail you a birthday card," which contained birth control, a Plan B pill or a pregnancy test.

Well-meaning as these initiatives are, this is sensitive information being hosted by a social media company that's already being used by third parties, in this case advertisers.

In the meantime, a forthcoming law in the European Union that reins in the power of large technology companies may have the unintended consequence of making people's data in the U.S. more vulnerable to surveillance.

Social media and search platforms have for years been exploited by the surveillance advertising industry. How much will they resist future government efforts to enforce abortion bans? What happens if state prosecutors order Facebook or Google to identify women who are breaking the rules?

Given the libertarian ethos of many Silicon Valley billionaire founders and the legal fallout from whistleblower Edward Snowden, it's hard to see such firms giving in to government demands to break their encryption and hand over such details. But put enough financial pressure on a business and anything can happen.

For now, encryption and online privacy tools are a sacred right for women seeking an abortion. They mustn't turn into a luxury.