The U.S. Government Can Track Abortion Travel Through Your Cell Phone

Photo: Robin Marty, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the United States has fallen into a patchwork of access to medical care — some states allow it, others restrict it, and some ban it entirely. This has forced pregnant people across state lines to get the care they need, but a new system purchased by the U.S. government could make that far more difficult.

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The system, called Locate X, tracks the movement of individuals through the United States — all without any of that pesky “warrant” stuff. Given the amount of data it has access to, including locations visited before the clinic as well as likely home addresses, means it’s likely mass data aggregation. Your phone may well be included. 404 Media got to see the software in action:

The demonstration, performed by a group of privacy advocates that gained access to the tool and leaked videos of it to 404 Media and other journalists, shows in the starkest terms yet how Locate X and other tools based on smartphone location data sold to various U.S. government law enforcement agencies, including state entities, could be used to monitor abortion clinic patients. This comes as more states contemplate stricter or outright bans on abortion. Alabama wants to prosecute people who help others get abortions out of state, Idaho and Tennessee have passed “abortion trafficking” laws that have been blocked by courts from going into effect but which anti-abortion politicians want revived, and cities in Texas have considered an unconstitutional law that would ban people from using city roads for traveling to get an abortion. Last month, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton sued to block federal privacy rules that stop investigators from accessing the medical records of people who travel out of the state to seek an abortion.

While abortion access is a primary use case for Locate X, it’s not the only one. 404 Media saw demos of the software identifying jurors from court parking lots, picking up devices from houses of worship, and even tracking the phones of children at school — Locate X has location information on everyone, all the time.

If you’re traveling interstate for an abortion, leave your smartphone at home. It’s currently legal to cross state lines for medical care, but we don’t know how long that’ll last — protecting your privacy is paramount. Hopefully no one taps into all that data from your car next.