According to several sets of data purchased by motherboard, a location-based data company is selling information related to visits to clinics providing abortion services, including family planning facilities, showing where the people visiting these locations came from, how long they stayed there, and where they went later**
In the leaked draft supreme court opinion, Judge Alito said that the court was ready to repeal the ruling in Roy v. Wade, which is a precedent for decades to provide federal protection for abortion seekers. In this context, data sales are obviously more important. If the draft does become a formal decision, it will immediately ban the right to abortion in whole or in part in at least 13 states.
How data collection intersects with or lacks the right to abortion may attract more attention after the draft. There may also be an increase in lynching or forms of surveillance and harassment against those seeking or providing abortion. Since anyone can obtain these aggregated location data on the open market, customers may also include anti abortion people. Anti abortion groups are already quite adept at using new technologies to achieve their goals. In 2016, an advertising CEO working with anti abortion and Christian groups sent targeted advertisements to women sitting in family planning clinics in an attempt to change their abortion decision. The sale of location data raises questions about why companies specifically sell data based on abortion clinics and whether they should introduce more safeguards when buying this information, if so.
Zach Edwards, a cyber security researcher who closely tracks the data sales market, told motherboard in an online chat after reviewing the data: "it's too dangerous to have an abortion clinic, then have people buy a census and track where people come to visit the abortion clinic. That's how you leak secrets to people who have abortions across state boundaries - how you leak secrets to clinics that provide such services."
For example, after Texas banned abortion almost completely, people seeking abortion in Texas increasingly had to go to other states, where abortion services had easier access to the care they needed. With the failure of Roy's case, those who live in conservative states and have the ability may start traveling for abortion. Location data may affect whether and how to identify such travel, which makes it more urgent for regulators and legislators to consider how to collect, use and sell location data.
It is reported that the company selling these data is safegraph. Safegraph was eventually installed on people's mobile phones Get location data from a normal application on. Typically, application developers install code in their applications, called software development kits (SDKs), and send the user's location data to the company in exchange for the developer's payment. Sometimes, APP users do not know that their phones are collecting and sending location data to third parties, not to mention some of the more dangerous uses reported by motherboard, including transmitting data to U.S. military contractors. The family planning association is not an organization for data collection, nor does it derive economic benefits from it.
Safegraph classifies "planned parenthood" as a traceable "brand", and motherboard's purchase data includes the locations of more than 600 family planning institutions in the United States. These data include a week's location data for these locations in mid April. Safegraph calls this location data product "mode". Overall, the cost of these data is just over $160. Not all family planning institutions provide abortion services. However, motherboard verified that some facilities included in the purchased data set were indeed provided.
Motherboard also searched for "family planning" on safegraph, and the relevant result was "family planning center", and then people can buy relevant data.
According to safegraph's website, safegraph's pattern data aims to answer questions such as "how often people go, how long they stay, where they come from and where they go". Safegraph calculates where it thinks visitors to a location live up to the census district level. According to the company's documents, safegraph achieves this goal by analyzing where phones usually spend the night.
Safegraph's data is aggregated, which means it doesn't clearly indicate where a device is moving. Instead, it focuses on the movement of device groups. However, researchers have repeatedly warned that individuals may be exposed in so-called anonymous data sets.
In some parts of the safegraph dataset purchased by motherboard, the number of devices per record is very small, which theoretically makes it easier to anonymize these people. Some people have only four or five devices to access the location, and safegraph filters the data by whether they use Android or IOS devices.
"Safegraph will be the preferred weapon for anti selection activists trying to provide medical services to 'out of state clinics'," Edwards said of data showing that people may cross state boundaries based on their census area to a clinic Missouri is considering enacting a law to make it illegal to "help or abet" abortion in other states.
Tracking visitors to abortion clinics has long been a major part of the threat posed by displaying location data. In a survey in 2018, the New York Times tracked many people with location data. One of the people followed visited a family planning facility, the report said.
Recently, the pillar, a Christian focused media, published an article using location data to track the whereabouts of a specific priest, and then publicly revealed that he might be gay without his consent.
The family planning association did not respond to requests for comment. Safegraph also did not respond to requests for comment, including the specific question of whether the company would continue to sell location data related to abortion clinics.