People prepare to overturn the groundbreaking Roe v. Wade abortion decision in New York City, USA, on May 3, 2022, after a draft majority opinion written by Judge Samuel Alito was leaked. Protest that you are.
Yana Pascova | Reuters
Online data location broker SafeGraph Said so Information sales have stopped About a visit to an abortion clinic After the report from the deputy It revealed how easy it is to buy data and raised concerns that “anti-abortion vigilants” could use the data to target providers and their clients.
Sub-report Tuesday Purchased a week’s worth of location data from SafeGraph for over $ 160 for over 600 Planned Parenthood locations across the United States.
According to the report, some of these locations offer abortion services.
According to the article on the secondary motherboard, the data showed where the group of people who visited these facilities came from, the duration of their visit, and where they traveled afterwards.
SafeGraph, which allegedly includes investors Billionaire Technology Investor Peter Thiel When Former Head of Intelligence Agency in Saudi ArabiaGets and aggregates location data from apps installed on people’s mobile phones.
The company says it The type of “pattern” data purchased by ViceShows how a group of people interacts with a particular location and is anonymized to protect the privacy of individual visitors.
But cybersecurity researcher Zack Edwards told Vice:
“This is a way to” dock “someone who travels across state boundaries for an abortion. It’s a way to dock a clinic that offers this service, “Edwards said.
The secondary article was published the next day Politico Report Leaked draft Supreme Court opinionThis shows that the majority of judges voted to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision half a century ago that they had a constitutional right to abortion.
If it were to be an official decision of the High Court this summer, the ruling is expected to soon lead to a ban on abortion or severe restrictions on procedures, In up to 20 states..
As a result, more and more people are traveling from their home states to have an abortion at a state clinic where the procedure is still legal, as recently since Texas adopted a new restrictive abortion law. Is expected.
When CNBC asked about a sub-article on Wednesday, a SafeGraph spokesman emailed a link to an online post titled “I’ll explain the facts of SafeGraph in an easy-to-understand manner.”
In this post, the company states that it “sells facts only” and “sells only data about physical locations, not individuals.”
“As far as we know, we have never used the SafeGraph pattern data for malicious purposes,” the post said. “In fact, the Patterns dataset is mostly Over 15,000 researchers, scholars and local governments to fight COVID-19.. “
“But there are always extreme virtual corner cases, and in some cases it’s worth the proactive prevention,” the post said.
“During the potential for federal changes in access to family planning, we removed pattern data for locations classified as NAICS Code 621410 (” Family Planning Center “) from the self-service” shops “and APIs. Reduce potential misuse of data. , ”Posts have been added.
SafeGraph said the deletion of this data would affect many academic researchers who want to study this topic, such as “understanding the impact of the law on family planning visits.”
“We acknowledge that our decision to remove the Family Planning Center pattern could adversely affect this valuable study, but given the current climate, I think this is the right decision.” Said the company.
SafeGraph said it will continue to sell data on the location and opening hours of the Family Planning Center.
“Family planning centers like Planned Parenthood want to serve their members, so they publish their location data,” says Safe Graph.
Planned Parenthood did not immediately comment on CNBC about SafeGraph data.
