Your Phone Could Be Used to Prosecute for Getting an Abortion: Here's How

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Scientific American

Science

4.3 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2022

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

Technology editor Sophie Bushwick breaks down the precedent for using your phone to monitor personal health data.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Picture this, static cars, idling engines, angry horns, now picture you, zooming past
0:12.4	it all, light and breezy, ah, the sweet feeling of whizzing past traffic, book your train
0:21.6	journey via AvantiWestcoast.co.uk, AvantiWestcoast, feel good travel.
0:30.9	This is 60 Second Science, I'm Tilly Cabose. You might know that Elite's memo recently revealed
0:44.5	that row versus wave could be overturned, which could have massive implications for women's health.
0:50.2	What you might not know is how your trusty smartphone could be used to enforce that.
0:55.7	I'm here with Sophie Bushwick, our tech editor who is going to go a little bit more into depth
1:00.4	about the ramifications of this. Hey Sophie. Hi. So tell me about this, what's going on?
1:07.2	So in the wake of news about the potential fall of Roe v Wade, it came to light that, you know,
1:14.0	about 13 states have what are called trigger laws on the books. So these are laws that would kick
1:19.1	in as soon as Roe v Wade would be overturned and would immediately make abortion partially or
1:26.6	entirely illegal in those states. Some people were worrying online about the potential need to
1:33.1	delete data from their period tracking apps. I decided to look more into this question, can your
1:38.5	period tracking app reveal information that could later land you, you know, land you in court?
1:46.0	And what I found was period tracking apps were really the tip of the iceberg. The real issue
1:51.1	is that your phone gathers a huge amount of data about you every single day. And yes,
1:56.9	that data can be used to reveal if you're pregnant and if you plan to or do obtain an abortion.
2:03.6	Tell me a little bit more about your phone being this like major tracker of information. I know
2:08.4	it records a huge volume of data, but what are some of the things that your phone could be recording
2:13.1	that could then be used against you in court? Most people carry their phones with them wherever
2:17.2	they go and your phone tracks your location. Every time you look something up on the internet or
2:22.4	you use an online browser to make a search, that can be recorded by the companies whose apps you
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