'Scandal-plagued' data broker tracked visits to '600 Planned Parenthood locations' A pro-life group was able to specifically target visitors to nearly 600 Planned Parenthood facilities in 48 states in America with anti-abortion ads using location data from a broker called Near Intelligence, according to US Senator Ron Wyden. In a letter [PDF] making this allegation to the FTC and SEC, Wyden (D-OR) urged the …
I don't think those advertisements were about buying things. For example, this paper and others have frequently described how they intentionally put in ads claiming to offer services they oppose so that people seeking those services get confused and go to them. What happens after that may depend on the group, but at the very least, they have the name of the person and they've wasted the person's time. There are worse options available.
“enshrine Roe vs Wade in legislation for good measure”
Are you saying Federal law? My understanding is that there are laws on the books in each state and the fed court simply pushed it back to the citizens in each state to decide.
If the people want it in their state, elect politicians that will change the law. Many have.
If you want to change a county law, it takes less people. It gets exponentially more difficult if it is a federal law. Seems to me the fed court has given you more access to decide to enshrine it or not into law.
"If the people want it in their state"
Yes. But that's not how civil rights are granted. We shouldn't have to wait for the tyranny of the majority to grant them to us. The US Supreme Court found that abortion was such a right when they handed down Roe vs Wade. A later court reversed this and handed the decision back to the states or Congress, effectively wiping out what some considered to be a right, based on the right to privacy. Whether that's correct jurisprudence or not is one argument to be settled.
But generally, it has turned out to be bad policy to grant civil rights on a state by state basis. That's how we got our Civil War. Implementation of rights granted to the states is one thing. There, the possibility of differences had been (or should have been) considered. But absent a clause granting states the right to establish abortion law, the Constitution defaults rights to the people.
Row vs Wade effectively granted states the right to regulate abortions by pregnancy trimester. Whether they had the power to grant a right that the Constitution never assigned is a question for legal scholars.
Ladies make up, at most, 50% of the population.
After 50 years of telling men that they have zero input on reproductive decisions, and should shut up, this is a fight for women to fight alone.
This is a significant numerical reason why they have had trouble "winning" a lasting result in 50 years of trying: 50% of the population are uninvolved because they have been told to butt out. Of the remaining 50%, only somewhat more than half (lets be generous and say 75%) actually support it. That is not a majority. It is not a number that is compelling to drive political change.
Ladies are reaping what they have sown in this case.
Well I used to agree whole heartedly with Art, but of late I have been reflecting on what becomes of a society when people don't have to sit through a hour of sermonising every week.
Pivoting society to worshipping upon the altars of greed and pridefulness has been at best, unseemly.
Of course they do. At a basic level, who you're supposed to pray to and what kinds of praying are really bad. The Greek gods said that killing a cow in their name was a great thing to do. Hindu gods take that very differently. If you're going to interact with cattle, figure out which if either of those sets you're dealing with, or more likely which set of believers are watching you, because if either set of gods exist, they don't seem to be doing anything about the issue.
Many people manage to worship neither a God nor greed, nor pridefulness. They just get on with life by not telling everyone else what to do, and generally not being a twat to anyone.
Weekly prostration is not a requirement to have a decent moral compass. An upbringing where one is taught right from wrong and not force your views onto everyone else, is.
It's the upbringing part that is lacking these days, not the lack of religous worship.
"Weekly prostration is not a requirement to have a decent moral compass"
The fact that some people only present a "decent moral compass" on the basis of eternal damnation if they don't is rather worrying
I've repeatedly see such people imply that without such restraint they'd be mass murderers
You can't sanitize it by blocking out certain "sensitive" locations, because you won't think of them all. Given how fraught abortion is in the US these days that's a rather obvious option, but what about visiting a gun range or a gun store? Visiting the campaign headquarters of a democrat running in a red state? Visiting a bar or liquor store would be a problem for some people, especially those in Utah. Visiting a strip club, or a business listed as a "massage parlor" that's a front for prostitution. The list is endless.
Even places that wouldn't seem to be a problem could be - if someone with access to this information (especially if it is freely made available to law enforcement, who have had issues when given this type of info) could use it for stalking ex wives. Someone who wants to shoot up a school might use it to figure out when the school resource officer (i.e. the one cop with a gun who's supposed to protect a school of 1000 kids) typically leaves for lunch or walks off school grounds to where he's allowed to take a smoke break.
Collecting this information should be illegal and result in a company going under. Selling this information should further lead to the executives of the company facing jail time.
And don't forget the risk of guilt by association.
My wife told me about an ex-colleague of hers, a local newspaper journalist who a number of years ago now found out he was being investigated by the police for his connections to a neo-Nazi organization. The colleague himself leaned quite far left on the political spectrum, so he was quite shocked about being brought in for questioning. The reason, it turned out, was that when he was on call or working weekends, he would park his private car in the newspaper's reserved spot in a public car park. That parking spot was apparently right next to a building that was used by the organization in question, and they'd just assumed that since he regularly parked there in evenings and weekends, he must be some kind of leader for the group.
And this was BEFORE Internet tracking.
It's called experience, Plods first impressions will be 'mostly' correct after a year or two on the job, so it's just human nature for Plod to move from 'Innocent until proven otherwise' to guilty by association or any other circumstance that fits their thinking - because it saves time. Once that mindset has settled into place it's going to take a lot of effort to revert.
And if collecting and selling it is illegal, then the buyers can be charged with receiving stolen property (and perhaps conspiracy to commit wire fraud, always good for a few more years) as well. Two birds with one stone.
Yep, this is true.
From the article:
"sold US citizens' location data to Uncle Sam – including the Pentagon, its intelligence agencies, and defense contractor AELIUS Exploitation Technologies.
As recently as late last year, Near was still selling US residents' location data without their consent,
This makes the Government criminal in that they are buying data without carrying out due diligence that it was collected legally so any cases prosecuted using this data is contaminated with "fruit of the poisoned tree"
1. It's not just "collecting" which should be illegal, it also is "misappropriating", or "using information collected (ostensibly) for one purpose, for another purpose."
I might want to (no, I would not! -- but I'm creating an example here) wear a GPSed sports watch and have the locations and times of my runs, bicycle rides, etc. stored in a cloud service, such as Strava, or Map My Ride, so I could share-and-compare them with chosen-by-me friends and associates. But it should be illegal for that cloud service to sell, trade, give away, etc., that data. It also should be illegal for my chosen-by-me friends and associates to sell, trade, give away, etc., that data, or to use it for a purpose I did not specifically permit.
2. Here's a hard part: a company's collected data has to-date been deemed one of the company's "assets". If a company goes out of business, or is bought by another company, or spins off a division, that other company or newly-spawned company now has access to data about me, even though I may not want them to.
----There are some acceptable reasons for that to happen. For example, if I bought a computer from Dell on time payments, and Dell spins out its consumer line to a new company, SuperDellatronImation, then SuperDellatronImation has a legitimate need for at least some of the personal data they were given by Dell: to send me a letter saying, "Hey, Mr. Customer, that 500 quid you owed to Dell, you now owe to us, the SuperDellatronImation Company. So pay up!"
----There are also un-acceptable reasons for that to happen. One is that Dell wants to sell your info for hard cash, so they create a spin-off company whose primary, or near-only asset, is the data Dell has collected from you for other purposes.
3. Here's an even-harder part: effectively writing laws or rules that are not over-broad, with clarity on what is and is not permitted, and proving-in-court violations have happened, when they have happened.
Madness. Presumably there are some restrictions on the US government obtaining this data directly - can't see any other reason why they couldn't have got the info themselves if they wanted it - but apparently some dodgy company in India could freely slurp vast amounts of it at will, and then sell it back to them....
The article starts out with:
A pro-life group was able [...]
Enough with the marketing bullshit. These people are anti-abortionists, they are most assuredly not "pro-life". If they were truly "pro-life", they would be in favor of:
* Social services and a safety net for those born to poorer (or homeless) mothers.
* Gun reform, so that it's harder to do mass killings. (Are you listening, Kansas? Missouri? Florida?)
* Making adoption easier, especially for same sex couples, or even singles.
* An end to the death penalty.
None of which these anti-abortionists are in favor of. Enough of the feel-good euphemisms; let's start calling a spade a spade, OK?
George Carlin, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age, had these people pegged over a decade ago. It's amazing, in a depressing sort of way, just how little has changed since then. Below is a video of his HBO special from over 10-years ago where he talks about "pro-life" and "sanctity of life" beliefs and people. It's a 12 minute video that is absolutely worth viewing -- again if you have already.
https://youtu.be/K98TQJ5ldW0?si=msk6c2yBP3KJ6Nne
Planned Parenthood Has A Shocking Not-So Secret Agenda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMlSxey2DBI
• fertility reduction agents in water
• encourage women to work
• provide few child caring facilities
• encourage increased homosexuality
• compulsory abortions/sterilisation
• postpone or avoid marriage
• alter image of ideal family size
• discouragement of private home ownership
• various financial obstacles for parents
• abortion and sterilisation on demand
• improve contraceptive technology
• make contraception truly available
etc.
I can't tell if this is intended to be a joke or you're serious. I mean, you start off with a truly tinfoil hat worthy item, then immediately move on to something that seems perfectly reasonable, then it's back to tinfoil hat land, then a couple more reasonable sounding things...
Funny how the people who post this kind of crap are usually ACs.
Several things on that list are perfectly reasonable to any person who doesn't want to force their world view on everyone else. The others just make you sound like an absolute nutjob.
The egregious exploitation of personal data by pro-life groups through data brokers like Near Intelligence is not only an assault on privacy but also a reprehensible intrusion into the lives of individuals making deeply personal healthcare decisions. The revelation that nearly 600 Planned Parenthood facilities across 48 states were targeted with anti-abortion ads based on location data is deeply troubling. This practice not only violates the fundamental right to privacy but also undermines the autonomy of individuals seeking reproductive healthcare services.
The implications of this invasive surveillance extend far beyond mere advertising tactics. It creates a culture of fear and intimidation around accessing essential healthcare services, particularly for those facing difficult decisions regarding pregnancy. No individual should be subjected to such targeted harassment while exercising their right to make informed healthcare choices.
Furthermore, the sale of sensitive location data to various entities, including government agencies and defense contractors, raises serious concerns about the misuse of personal information for surveillance purposes. The fact that Near Intelligence reportedly sold US citizens' location data, including visits to reproductive health clinics, to entities like the Pentagon and defense contractor AELIUS Exploitation Technologies is alarming.
Senator Ron Wyden's call for an investigation into Near Intelligence and his advocacy for robust consumer data privacy legislation are crucial steps towards holding data brokers accountable for their unethical practices. We must demand comprehensive regulations that protect individuals' privacy rights and prevent the exploitation of personal data for commercial or ideological purposes.
In conclusion, the use of personal data to target individuals accessing abortion clinics represents a blatant violation of privacy and autonomy. It is imperative that we take a stand against such intrusive practices and work towards enacting meaningful reforms to safeguard individuals' privacy and dignity.
Unfortunately this once again goes to underpin the need for people to become much more aware of their data security. Opt out of every single bit of Google tracking, the very minor "inconvenience" if you use their products is worth it, always keep your GPS, bluetooth and wifi off unless you're actively using it. When doing something very privacy data sensitive (like getting an abortion when living in an anti-abortion state) leave your own phone at home. Bring a dumb phone with some emergency contacts if you have to. Don't navigate directly to the location of the clinic but to something close by if you need GPS route instructions. Consider having a cheap "burner" smartphone (can be second hand) without a sim card for such occasions using an app that supports offline navigation (and not made by google). Always be conscious of what data you're giving away.
Remember, you're not paranoid if they ARE out to get you. And data brokers like Near (with support of companies like Google/Alphabet) are out to get you.
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