Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google
Anindito Mukherjee | Bloomberg | beautiful pictures
Google said late Friday that it will quickly delete location history for people who go to abortion sites and other medical sites in the wake of the Roe v. Wade of the Supreme Court last week.
“We’re announcing today that if our system determines that someone has visited one of these locations, we’ll remove these entries from Location History shortly after they visited.” , Jen Fitzpatrick, senior vice president of systems and core experiences at Google, writes in a blog post.
Fitzpatrick notes that visits to places like counseling centers, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics and fertility centers “can be particularly personal.” Google’s parent Alphabet owns very popular devices and data services, including Android, Fitbit, Search, and Google Maps. That’s of greater concern since the Supreme Court’s decision, given the uncertainty surrounding whether sensitive data could be used to target what is now potentially active. crime or not.
The Google post said, “Fitbit users who have chosen to track their menstrual cycle in the app can now delete each menstrual log individually, and we will be rolling out updates that will allow users to delete multiple updates. signed at the same time.”
The decision from the nation’s highest court overturned nearly 50 years of legal precedent reverse the original view that women have constitutional rights abortion. For weeks, Google and other tech companies have avoided answering questions from the media and lawmakers about how their data is stored and practices, and how they comply with actual requirements. potential law enforcement.
Google, sent a email staff with resources for its own employees during the ruling, has also faced questions about its search results beyond data privacy.
Even before the decision became official, legislators call Google and Federal Trade Commission to ensure data for online consumers seeking care is protected in the event the landmark ruling is overturned.
In May, a group of 42 Democratic lawmakers urge Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a Letters stop collecting and storing unnecessary or non-aggregated location data that can be used to identify people who want an abortion.
Google’s Friday post did not say how it would respond to potential requests from law enforcement. Instead, the company said it will “continue to oppose claims that are too broad or legally objectionable.”
Google also says responsibility is shared by multiple organizations.
“As these issues apply to healthcare providers, telecommunications companies, banks, technology platforms and more, we know privacy safeguards cannot be It is up to individual companies or states to act alone,” the post said.
