The Supreme Court Accidentally Spurred a Data Privacy Push

Hi, folks. The winner of the week is Reed Hastings, who lost a million subscribers but saw Netflix’s stock skyrocket because he didn’t lose more. What a showman! I got an email from Google the other day.

“Dear Steven,” went the text, “This is a reminder that any existing Location History data you have in your Google Account will be deleted on September 1, 2022. ” That was a surprise to me, because I thought I had long ago turned off the voluntary feature that let Google log my whereabouts, as if I had my own personal Mossad agent trailing me, 24/7. I checked my account and discovered that while I had indeed informed my silent shadow to stand down, I hadn’t wiped clean my location history from before then, which included my whereabouts between June 2013 and January 2019.

Should the government subpoena me, they’d know all. I appreciated Google’s promise to proactively wipe this clean. Considering the timing, I wondered whether the email came as a reaction to the Supreme Court Dobbs v.

Jackson decision, denying the right to abortion. It hadn’t; I had forgotten that Google periodically sends out such notices in cases like mine, where the location data is just hanging around. But Google does understand that the Dobbs decision has made the handling of personal data a more urgent subject .

Not just Google, but all of big tech —and a lot of smaller app developers—might find themselves routinely asked to hand over information that could lead to prosecutions of abortion seekers and those who aid them. Meanwhile, people are deleting apps that track their menstrual cycles, in fear that the data could be used against those suspected of having an abortion. So it’s no surprise that within a week of the Supreme Court’s bizarre reading of the Constitution, Google did adopt a new policy : From now on, when people visit certain medical facilities—“counseling centers, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, and cosmetic surgery clinics”—Google will promptly delete those stops from the user’s location history.

That’s a welcome step, but hardly a solution to the steady erosion of our privacy in the digital age. The big companies insist that they’re on the case. Google, like almost all of the large technology companies, has a giant privacy effort with well-meaning people trying to protect its users from dystopian abuses of its technology.

Apple has made privacy protection a marketing focus, using end-to-end encryption for critical data. (Also, Apple doesn’t have an equivalent to Google’s location history, even for those who might want it. ) But we are still miles away from adequate privacy.

In the aggregate, it’s nearly impossible to take full advantage of today’s wondrous technology without making our personal information vulnerable—from governments, hackers, or, all too often, advertisers. We’ve built an entire infrastructure based on sucking up data. So it’s no wonder that when state governments are contemplating a cosplay of The Handmaid’s Tale , we have to worry that pregnant people will be ratted out by their phones and their apps.

Well intentioned or not, tech companies alone can’t fix this. “Only Congress can provide strong privacy protections for all Americans. ” That’s a quote from Apple CEO Tim Cook in a letter he sent last June to Senator Maria Cantwell and Representative Frank Pallone, both of whom head committees that are developing privacy legislation.

In fact, there’s been an abundance of bills introduced of late to address long-standing privacy concerns. A sweeping bill called the American Data Privacy and Protection Act underwent markup by Pallone’s House committee just this week—but Cantwell has said she has issues with it . Another bill called the My Body My Data Act specifically protects private reproductive data, like period-tracking apps.

It is considered unlikely to get the sixty votes required for Senate passage. (Can you imagine Republican senators helping people who seek to avoid state abortion bans?) Still, activists I’ve spoken with are hoping that Dobbs might have changed the equation. Journalists, lawyers, doctors, and financial dealmakers have all had to come to terms with the challenges of protecting their data.

Now that cohort has dramatically expanded. As abortion-banning states try to use personal data to track down those seeking abortions out of state or importing medication, pressure on legislators to pass privacy laws might well increase. “The circle of people who have to act like they’re in a spy movie is getting bigger and bigger,” says Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“With the Dobbs decision, 52 percent of the population became implicated. ” That sounds hopeful. But if those privacy bills had location tracking turned on, we’d find that they lead to one place: the chamber of the United States Senate.

And lately, that’s where majority opinions go to die. While researching my 2011 book about Google , I actually sat in on a meeting of the company’s privacy council. They were pondering the safeguards for a tracking feature, then part of a product called Google Latitude.

Pressures often came to a head in the regular meetings of Google’s Privacy Council, a group including policy lawyers and a smattering of executives who met regularly to discuss the privacy implications of products under development at Google. In October 2009, the discussion centered around a set of features to be added to Google Latitude, a product based on Google Maps that let users share their physical location with friends. Latitude itself was controversial, not so much because of its nature—several companies offered similar products, most with fewer safeguards than Google offered—but because it was Google doing the tracking.

The new features upped the ante. Turning on the feature would provide a complete visual log of everywhere you went. When Steve Lee, the Latitude product manager, gave a demo, there was a collective sucking in of breath: overlaid on a Google Map were his peregrinations on October 5, just two days earlier.

There was a thick red line from Mountain View to Berkeley, with balloon-shaped “bread crumbs” showing the check-in points when his GPS-equipped phone had pinged Google’s servers every five minutes to report his location. . The program had a handful of key privacy safeguards.

The product was strictly opt-in: Latitude users had to sign up for the program. When they did, they would receive regular email warnings specifying exactly what would happen if they signed up. Even after that, their computer screens would regularly sprout dialog boxes warning that location information was being stored.

Lee explained that people, particularly younger users, like the ability to use metrics to track their location. The idea was to keep a virtual diary of where you had been, maybe retaining it for a lifetime. Young citizens of the digital age understood this.

“People who are going to sign up for this are people who are comfortable to have their information shared and stored,” he said. Nicole Wong didn’t get it. “If I’m a normal user, what am I using my location for?” “It’s cool,” said Lee.

“I’m not into cool,” she replied. Nikki asks, “If I include in my will that I want my ashes scattered on the moon, can I make it legally binding?” Thanks for asking, Nikki. I am not an attorney so I’m not going to offer a definitive legal ruling.

But before I offer my nonprofessional advice, I do have some questions. Like, why do you want your ashes scattered on the moon? The whole place is practically one big ash can! OK, maybe you’re thinking that when loved ones gaze up at the sky and see that big ol’ orb, they’ll say, “There’s Nikki. ” But if you want to make that plan work, keep in mind that demands made from the grave have to be realistic.

To have any chance of your posthumous dream coming to fruition, you’ll certainly need a resourceful executor of your estate and plenty of money set aside. Ideally, commercial travel to the moon will commence and at that point your executor will spend that money and hire someone to transport your remains and flip them around on a moonwalk. Rather than trying to bind that executor with legalistic language, my advice is to recruit someone who is as passionate as you are in this posthumous lunar adventure.

Whether or not your ashes make it skyward, you’ll pass on knowing that your dream is still alive. You can submit questions to mail@wired. com .

Write ASK LEVY in the subject line. Paris is burning . And so is the UK .

And China . And Texas … Guess who’s buying tons of private location data? The Department of Homeland Security! There ought to be a law. If you are using an app to track your period, here’s a rating of the most secure options.

The story behind the MoonSwatch , which is cooler than the high-priced Omega timepiece that inspired it. Comic-Con is back !.