Law enforcement may fully unleash its data collection tools on abortion

For women who may still seek abortions amid an expected wave of crackdowns later this year, that could mean that logging onto a health-care clinic’s WiFi or browsing related sites from your cellphone or desktop may create an opening for agencies to seize their data and mount a case.

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“There’s a long history of ISPs working relatively closely with law enforcement,” said Justin Brookman, director of privacy and technology policy at Consumer Reports.

Hayley Tsukayama, a senior legislative activist at the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said law enforcement agencies are no strangers to these practices, but may find additional ways to deploy them as states impose greater restrictions on abortions.

“It’s probably less about them specifically gaining more access to some of these private companies or to be able to compel companies to turn over information,” said Tsukayama, a former technology reporter for The Washington Post. Since they already can access user data more broadly, they may use those tactics to obtain abortion data, she added.

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