Democrats ‘Exploring’ Legislation to Protect Data in Reproductive Health Apps ⇥ techcrunch.com

Ivan Mehta, TechCrunch:

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that Democrats are considering the introduction of legislation that could protect the abortion rights of citizens. Notably, her letter addressed to Democrats pointed out that the legislation would also work on securing user data of reproductive apps.

This sounds both necessary and narrow. News coverage has been overwhelmingly focused on period-tracking apps and the risks of such private information having basically no legal protections. But there are so many avenues for leaking data to extremist prosecutors in more theocratic U.S. states. Such limited protections are welcome, but not nearly enough.

It is not a good reflection of either public policy or privacy rights when people have to access healthcare with the kinds of precautions used by spies and dissidents dealing with classified information.