June 28, 2022
With state laws restricting abortion coming into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Friday, the technology industry is bracing for a tough time as law enforcement may require tech companies to provide pregnancy-related data.
Technology trade officials fear that police will get warrants for search history, location and other information that points to plans to have an abortion, and prosecutors could use a subpoena to access the data.
“It is very likely that there’s going to be requests made to those tech companies for information related to search histories, to websites visited,” said Cynthia Conti-Cook, a technology fellow at the Ford Foundation.
For experts, technology companies are fertile ground for data collection, and law enforcement agencies will seize this opportunity.
On providing law enforcement with data, Amazon has at least partially complied with 75% of search warrants, subpoenas, and other court orders that require data on U.S. customers. For Amazon, it is important to comply with “valid and binding orders,” but its goal is to deliver “the minimum” that the law requires.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.
