More than 40 Democratic members of the US Congress are asking Google to cease what they see because the pointless assortment and retention of individuals’s location information, arguing the knowledge might be used to determine girls looking for abortions.
In a letter despatched Tuesday to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google father or mother Alphabet, the lawmakers categorical concern that if abortion have been to grow to be unlawful within the US, the corporate’s “current practice of collecting and retaining extensive records of cell phone location data will allow it to become a tool for far-right extremists looking to crack down on people seeking reproductive health care.”
If the US Supreme Court upends the 1973 decision that legalized abortion — as a draft opinion suggests it may in the coming weeks — pregnancies could be surveilled and the data shared with police or sold to vigilantes, privacy experts fear.
Google, specifically, stores “historic location details about a whole lot of thousands and thousands of smartphone customers,” the letter notes, “which it routinely shares with authorities businesses.”
Representatives for Alphabet did not immediately respond to a message for comment. Tech companies have largely tried to stay out of the abortion debate. Meta, which owns Facebook, has reportedly reminded employees that they are prohibited from discussing abortion in workplace communication channels. Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
In their letter, the Democrats, who were led by Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon, asks Google to stop collecting and keeping records of their customers’ every movement.
Law enforcement officials routinely obtain court orders forcing Google to turn over its customers’ location information, the letter notes. This includes “geofence” orders, which are requests for Google to provide data about everyone who was near a specific location at a specific time.
Google received 11,554 geofence warrants in 2020, according to the company. It has not said how many of those it complied with.
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