The abortion surveillance state

Ever heard of Babel Street? Unless you’re a data and analytics enthusiast, it’s likely you haven’t. The Virginia-based technology company isn’t a household name the way that Google and Facebook are. And yet the company most likely knows a hell of a lot about you and everyone else in your household.

Babel Street, you see, has a people-tracking service called Locate X, that allows customers to track individual mobile users by their Mobile Advertising ID: a string of characters that uniquely identifies your phone or other smart device. Where it gets really creepy is that, according to recent reporting from Krebs on Security and other outlets, Babel Street allows its customers, which include government agencies, to “draw a digital polygon around nearly any location on a map of the world, and view a slightly dated (by a few days) time-lapse history of the mobile devices seen coming in and out of the specified area”.

What does this mean? Well, among many other disturbing things, it means that you could use Locate X to zoom in on an abortion clinic and see exactly who is going in and out of it. In fact, this is exactly what a group of privacy advocates recently did. They looked at an abortion clinic in Florida and tracked one individual leaving it. Then they leaked a video of the demonstration to media outlets including 404 Media.

“This phone started at a residence in Alabama in mid-June,” 404 Media says in a description of the demonstration. “It then went by a Lowe’s Home Improvement store, traveled along a highway, went past a gas station, visited a church, crossed over into Florida, and then stopped at the abortion clinic for approximately two hours.”

It wasn’t immediately obvious who the individual being tracked was. However, 404 Media notes that “it would be trivial for US authorities, some of which already have access to this tool, to go one step further and unmask this or other abortion clinic visitors”.

Locate X’s location-tracking capabilities aren’t new news: the service has popped up in various headlines over the years. In 2020, for example, it was reported that the US Secret Service (USSS) had signed a contract to use Locate X. And last year Guardian reported that Australia’s Home Affairs had had access to Locate X since at least 2021.

While details of Locate X’s capabilities aren’t entirely new, what is new is the political and legal climate in which the platform operates. A number of states, including Alabama (which has effectively banned abortion), are trying to criminalize anyone who helps a woman leave the state to get an abortion elsewhere. The terms of service for Locate X state the product “may not be used as the basis for any legal process in any country, including as the basis for a warrant, subpoena, or any other legal or administrative action”, but you can very easily see how the technology could be misused.

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,” Jeff Hammerbacher, one of Facebook’s first employees, lamented back in 2011. “That sucks.” It certainly does. But what is far more depressing is the fact that the technology used to make people click on ads has grown into a vast, and largely unregulated, web of surveillance. All around the world, authoritarianism is on the rise. And thanks to technology originally designed to encourage you to buy more cereal, authoritarian leaders have never had so much power.

Infant death rates in the US increased after Roe was overturned

A new study, published by JAMA Pediatrics, found hundreds more babies died than expected after Roe v Wade was overturned and more than a dozen states implemented near-total abortion bans. The increase was particularly pronounced among infants with congenital anomalies, the study notes: “[P]otentially owing to frail fetuses more often being carried to term following the implementation of abortion restrictions.”

Judge strikes down Ohio abortion ban as unconstitutional

Judge Christian Jenkins said last year’s voter-approved amendment “unequivocally protects the right to abortion”.

Stevie Nicks thinks we should all get off the internet

Rolling Stone has a very entertaining interview with Stevie Nicks. It’s full of gems but I particularly enjoyed this quote: “About 10 years ago, Katy Perry was talking to me about the internet armies of all the girl singers, and how cruel and rancid they were. I said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t know because I’m not on the internet.’ She said, ‘So, who are your rivals?’… I said, ‘Katy, I don’t have rivals. I have friends. All the other women singers that I know are friends. Nobody’s competing. Get off the internet and you won’t have rivals either.’” Evergreen advice.

Texas pastor suggests executing ‘a few women’ to end false rape accusations

Joel Webbon, a Texas pastor and Christian nationalist, has a history of misogynistic, racist and downright disturbing statements. As well as fantasizing about executing women he reckons God doesn’t want women to vote and has said he needs to approve every book his wife reads. Rather than being an isolated extremist, Webbon is part of a group of extremely online young Christian men that have been termed the TheoBros. “The TheoBros’ strategy is bottom-up: They aim to convert small American towns into Christian enclaves,” Kiera Butler recently wrote for Mother Jones. “But it is also top-down: Some are working to position themselves close to the locus of federal power.”

Pregnancy is now a death sentence in Gaza

“The targeting of maternity hospitals and the blockade that limits essential medical supplies, such as anaesthetics and maternity kits, from entering Gaza have turned pregnancy into a life-threatening condition for thousands of women,” a letter in the Lancet notes. Innocent babies in Gaza are being ‘born into hell’, as Unicef puts it, and deprived of any hope of a future. All with the help of our tax dollars.

Did Jeff Bezos order the Washington Post not to endorse a candidate in the presidential race?

The Washington Post editorial page has decided not to make a presidential endorsement for the first time in 36 years. According to NPR’s media correspondent, it is not clear whether Bezos, who owns the Post, or whether CEO Will Lewis made the call. However, there are rumours that “Bezos ordered the decision and Lewis carried it out”.

Tucker Carlson is fantasizing about ‘daddy’ Donald Trump spanking teenage girls

It’s even more gross than it sounds.

The week in porktriarchy

Thanks to the climate crisis and various other man-made issues, boars are invading the beach resorts of southern Spain and other areas with increasing frequency, the Guardian reports. (Although some may say they are not invading, they are conducting targeted ground operations.) This is causing all manner of problems, but is also providing some very memorable photos. None as great as this classic photo of a nudist bather who chased a wild boar near a Berlin lake after it stole his laptop. The nudist managed to recover it, by the way: in the end, all was swine.