IT’S THE LAW (05/10/2022)
The privacy implications and risks to individuals, should the US Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade abortion rights protection (as a document leaked this week indicates), could be huge according to legal experts – particularly since there’s no national privacy law. Not only would it put women looking to get abortions and clinicians performing abortions on the wrong side of the law, but it opens up a rat’s nest of opportunity for legal as well as backdoor data sharing and tracking of information on people and services. It would also grant law enforcement the right to collect the data as evidence of committing a crime. This and laws being prepared in a number of states to allow cross-border cooperation to locate individuals whose rights are no longer protected by Roe, would also set the stage for other constraints on individual privacy should the party in power want to use this precedent.