The U.S. Home Oversight Committee is probing a group of interval monitoring apps and information brokers in gentle of rising issues about how non-public well being information is likely to be weaponized within the dawning post-Roe v. Wade period.
The committee issued letters right this moment to information brokers SafeGraph, Babel Avenue, Digital Envoy, Placer.ai and Gravy Analytics and app makers Flo Well being, Glow, GP Worldwide, Clue developer BioWink, and Digitalchemy Ventures.
Within the letters, the representatives requested data on the businesses’ information assortment and retention insurance policies “together with paperwork and communications regarding the precise or potential manufacturing of such information to exterior entities voluntarily or topic to authorized obligation, reminiscent of a subpoena.” The lawmakers additionally requested for data explaining every firm’s information sharing practices and the way a lot income and revenue these firms have made off that information going again 5 years.
“The gathering of delicate information might pose critical threats to these looking for reproductive care in addition to to suppliers of such care, not solely by facilitating intrusive authorities surveillance, but in addition by placing folks susceptible to harassment, intimidation, and even violence,” the committee wrote.
“Geographic information collected by cell phones could also be used to find folks looking for care at clinics, and search and chat historical past referring to clinics or medicine create digital bread crumbs revealing curiosity in an abortion.”
The probe is spearheaded by Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Subcommittee on Financial and Client Coverage Chairman Raja Krishnamoorthi and Rep. Sara Jacobs. The lawmakers have set a July 22 deadline for the businesses to adjust to the requests.
With Roe repealed and abortion now not a protected federal proper within the U.S., privateness advocates, lawmakers and customers alike have raised issues that location and health-tracking information could also be turned towards folks looking for abortions within the U.S.
Each varieties of knowledge paint a really personalised image of a person’s habits. Well being and period-focused apps can monitor missed intervals and fertility cycles, whereas consumer location information purchased and bought by shadowy information firms can present exact location data that might implicate anybody who visits an abortion supplier.
The White Home talked about its personal issues about digital surveillance and corporations that gather or promote “delicate health-related information” Friday in a brand new govt order centered on defending entry to abortion.
Final week Google introduced that it will erase location monitoring information for “notably private” locations, together with abortion and fertility facilities. In Could, Congressional Democrats wrote a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai urging the corporate to increase new privateness measures in gentle of the looming reversal of Roe v. Wade.
Customers are additionally taking issues into their very own palms, swapping their present interval trackers for various apps that they understand to be safer, although in some circumstances they is likely to be leaping out of the frying pan and into the hearth.