"Roe v Wade"

[robkelk]

I still can't understand why anyone would put that kind of personal data into a cloud-connected app in the first place. Tracking it themselves on a spreadsheet or database to feed into a chart and apply some pattern recognition, sure, but even as nominally anonymized user data? Especially with all the times data breaches of one sort or another are in the news, not to mention when it breaks that coverups of other data breaches were in place for various lengths of time with no solid information on how many never even get reported on.

In some cases, they don't even realize that they're doing it.

Unless there are laws against cross-correlating data, it's trivially easy to add to a fertility-planning app a subroutine that says something along the lines of "if the phone that this app is installed on enters a geobounded area previously identified as an abortion clinic, then send a notification to the local police".

This is why North America needs data privacy laws that are at least as strong as the EU's GDPR - to make it flat-out illegal do do such a thing. But I'll bet dollars to donuts that the GOP and the Conservative Party of Canada would do everything in their power to make sure we never get such laws.