Project 2025 If abortion restrictions become a reality during a second Trump term, there are a number of ways to further restrict and monitor access to abortion nationwide, including making it illegal to mail abortion pills and forcing states to submit abortion data to the federal government.
Many of these proposals received extensive media coverage, thanks to aggressive efforts by Democrats. There has been a campaign for Project 2025, but there has been far less attention paid to how major tech companies could play a role in helping people across state lines access abortion in the wake of the nationwide ban. In fact, some warn that technology could be key to implementing Project 2025’s anti-abortion goals.
Advocates are now trying to block such collaboration in advance. Last week, 15 civil liberties groups sent letters to the CEOs of eight major tech companies, including Meta, Apple, TikTok, and Google, demanding that they explain how they would protect user data and privacy and combat abortion-related misinformation on their platforms if Project 2025’s anti-abortion recommendations were implemented. “As written, Project 2025 would rely heavily on your company to advance its extreme agenda,” the letter reads. Mother Jones First to report: The signatories, including Accountable Tech, GLAAD, and The Tech Oversight Project, warn that Project 2025’s anti-abortion policies will lead to “increased surveillance and law enforcement’s use of criminal subpoenas to weaponize the consumer data companies collect and store.”
Many of these concerns have already been realized. Last year, a Nebraska woman was sentenced to two years in prison after Mehta provided law enforcement with Facebook messages from her and her pregnant teenage daughter (who was reportedly past the state’s 20-week gestation limit at the time, but has since been capped at 12 weeks) discussing obtaining abortion pills and destroying “evidence.” In February, Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) office accused data brokers of tracking visits to about 600 Planned Parenthood locations across the country and then selling that information to anti-abortion advertisers. Meanwhile, abortion rights advocates say tech platforms have censored their initiatives.
All of this, advocates say, makes it important to be prepared for the ways tech companies could criminalize people seeking abortions if Trump is re-elected in November. “These companies are already machine-machined to be the administrators of nightmare schemes like Project 2025,” Daly Barnett, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that focuses on digital rights, told me.
I spoke with Barnett via Zoom this week to discuss how abortion rights advocates can better protect themselves and their privacy online, and how tech platforms can protect users in the Trump era.
This interview has been lightly condensed and edited.
What kind of failures or shortcomings have you seen in some of these technology platforms when it comes to protecting users’ personal information and abortion-related data?
There are many passive surveillance technologies that can be used against people, such as ad tracking technologies, by collecting people’s browsing data and combining it with other personally identifiable information. There have been instances where commercial platforms such as Google Search and Facebook Messenger have actually been used to criminalize women in various cases, whether because of the results of their own pregnancies or, in the case of Facebook Messenger logs, when a woman helped her daughter have a self-managed abortion.
So suddenly the messaging features on these communication platforms or social media apps that don’t adopt good privacy and security practices are becoming dangerous to people, and I don’t think the tech industry as a whole has yet to realize how wrong this is.
Until yesterday, we needed a comprehensive federal data privacy law.
Even if the 2025 Project had not been implemented, could you elaborate on what digital threats or barriers people currently face in seeking abortions?
I divide the threat models that people need to be aware of into three: people who use health care and seek abortions, their allies and supporters, and health care workers.
As digital evidence is being used in abortion cases, these (social media companies) that don’t think they’re responsible for accessing abortion can still be used against people who lack privacy. I also think about privacy breaches. Healthcare workers, especially those whose information is subject to public records requests and Freedom of Information Acts (FOIA), can have their information used against them if they’re working in reproductive health care. There’s this unregulated, vampire-like nightmare industry of data brokers that should have been curbed yesterday and are constantly being weaponized against people. This contributes significantly to the amount of data that can be collected, organized, and used against people, creating a very sophisticated portrait of who you are and what you do online.
One example I think of with data brokers is (Senator Wyden’s investigation). That’s just an example of what happens when you have an unregulated industry that all the tech companies contribute to because they make money.
If there were a federal ban on abortion and abortion pills were suddenly made illegal, surveillance of the postal service and other services that distribute such drugs would be threatened with new, intensive surveillance. Basically, every aspect of our lives. Depending on where we stand in the fight for abortion access, it could potentially be used against us.
Tech companies need to realize that they are guilty because our lives are connected online, and the entire industry is already geared towards linking everything about us into one profile and selling that data to anyone who wants it, even law enforcement.
If Project 2025 were to be implemented during Trump’s term, how would some of the platforms actually be leveraged to further their anti-abortion goals?
As long as these tech companies are messing up their privacy and security policies (especially their privacy policies) around user data, ad tracking and collection, and behavioral tracking of user data, they are already mechanized to create truly dystopian outcomes. Project 2025 or not. We need a comprehensive federal data privacy law, even if it’s only yesterday.
In the meantime, users must fight for their own protection of their information, dignity, and safety.
As long as social media apps have communication platforms and messaging features, that is, unless they have good data retention or end-to-end encryption, all of these records will be subject to subpoenas from law enforcement, which will have implications for user safety. We already have cases of this literally in criminal evidence, so it will only increase in that potential environment.
What are some specific ways that tech companies can and should strengthen privacy and data protections for people seeking abortions, both now and under the Trump administration?
Thank you for asking this question. This is the most important question. I think the tech companies need to realize that they are guilty because our lives are connected online, and the entire industry is already geared towards linking everything about us into one profile and selling that data to anyone who wants it, including law enforcement.
Everyone needs to take their position in the tech industry seriously. That starts with better data retention policies. When law enforcement comes to you, if you have to hand over something, you need to have robust encryption so that you can comply with regulations without handing over anything that would be useful for a criminal investigation. You also need to be able to delete old data. Having good encryption is great, but having a really good deletion policy that deletes everything that is not absolutely essential to your operations will keep you safe from law enforcement requests, subpoenas, and data breaches. That’s a huge deal.
Another important thing is to stop tracking users on web and mobile platforms. The advertising industry is corrupt, and users are realizing it. People are more likely to choose platforms that respect their privacy because they have a general understanding of privacy, and fortunately, we are also more aware of how dangerous the data brokering industry is, so it is essential that tech companies do better for people.
Finally, I would say that all of these policies, data retention, no ad tracking, users, etc., need to be transparent. (Companies) need to be transparent about these things. You need to make it known that this is a privacy-first alternative to the otherwise dangerous status quo.
How can people seeking an abortion protect their data and privacy online, especially if they live in a state where abortion is illegal?
The first step is definitely threat modeling. You need to think seriously about what activities you are doing, who you are in that space, and what aspects of your life you need to separate from risky behaviors or communications or other things. From there, you can take a more meaningful approach. For example, segregating your data, using multiple browsers, storing privacy-enhancing browsers like Tor or Brave or Firefox, and storing more privacy-invading browsers like Chrome.
It’s also important to know when to move sensitive communications to more privacy-focused platforms. That means moving away from social media chat applications to end-to-end encrypted applications. Knowing how to safely attend a protest, knowing what to watch out for when you’re on site and driving and picking people up from hospitals, knowing how to navigate automated license plate readers, knowing how to track your devices. There are a lot of steps people can take to protect themselves. Learn more at Surveillance Self-Defense. There are a lot of educational resources people can look into.
