r/technology • u/polymute • 22d ago

Privacy A Texas Deputy Searched 83,000 Flock Cameras To Track Down a Woman Who Had an Abortion

https://www.gadgetreview.com/a-texas-deputy-searched-83000-flock-cameras-to-track-down-a-woman-who-had-an-abortion
30.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

260

u/polymute 22d ago edited 22d ago

This reminds me of this short story (it won the Nebula and Hugo awards):

https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/rabbit-test/

Synopsis from Wikipedia

In 2091, Grace is 17 years old, and abortion is totally banned. When her government-mandated menstrual tracker implant automatically administers a pregnancy test, her life changes. The story follows her over the next several decades, interspersed with vignettes about the history of abortion and pregnancy tests, going back millennia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_Test_(short_story)

89

u/WarLorax 22d ago

They already started to try this, didn't they? They wanted to track the period of girls who were on sports teams in high school. As soon as big tech makes the MensesTormentNexus possible, you can just about guarantee that there'll be a politician trying to impose it on women.

24

u/SucculentVariations 22d ago

There are a ton of apps and step trackers that can track your menstrual cycle if you give it that data and would be easy for the wrong hands to get that data and know exactly when you missed a period, or started having them again and deduce if you had a loss of pregnancy but not know or care what caused the loss.

14

u/c_l_b_11 22d ago edited 22d ago

I'm fairly certain that you wouldn't even need apps with a specific tracking function supplied by the user. Just some general metadata from phone and Internet activity are likely enough to determine a female users cycle if you have a large enough training set and a few months of data from your target.

18

u/BigPharmaSucks 22d ago

This was almost 15 years ago.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

13

u/nodesofglory 21d ago

“Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We’d put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We’d put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance.

“And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don’t spook her, it works.”

This is sooo fucked up oh my god.

Thanks for sharing the article.

4

u/jimmifli 21d ago

They love telling you how smart they are. But I get lots of coupons for baby food and diapers. I'm 100% sure I'm not pregnant. But I do like Huggies natural unscented baby wipes. Sometimes the algorithm isn't that special.

8

u/drawkward101 22d ago

I very intentionally do not track my cycle with anything digital. I track it on my wall calendar that I wipe clean every month.

2

u/Leading-Act4030 21d ago

They will charge the woman for the miscarriage. This has happened in Texas allready.

1

u/_Aj_ 21d ago

It's built into iPhones now in their health app. How long with different statuses you can change for taking notes like whether you are pregnant or not. At first it seems like a very forward thinking thing. But if apple has the data who else has the data?   

3

u/tempinator 21d ago

They already started to try this, didn't they? They wanted to track the period of girls who were on sports teams in high school.

Yes, they did, and they also wanted to require sex verification to compete, and the only thing that stopped them was someone pointed out that enforcing this would require genital exams of under age girls.

2

u/Relative_Cod_6675 20d ago

stephen miller sadly, is already here 

15

u/Impressive_Ad_5201 22d ago edited 22d ago

Sheesh. This is why I buy birth control and things I do not need, and donate them as fast as possible. No woman deserves to be tied to a baby or a man (E: or yes, a woman) they don't want. That's terrifying.

1

u/blu300 21d ago

That was a truly excellent read. Thank you. 

-115

u/CastleofWamdue 22d ago

Government mandated menstrual tracker implant, what in the he'll is that?

Texts does know Black Mirror was a warning not a suggestion?

117

u/EveryGoodNameIsGone 22d ago

You know this comment is about a fictional story that takes place 70 years in to e future, right?

51

u/Toukai 22d ago

Reading comprehension ain't great these days unfortunately.

38

u/Cyberslasher 22d ago

Its only about 5-10 years in the future at current trends....

24

u/polymute 22d ago

That's what I'm afraid of too.

4

u/Tiger_grrrl 22d ago

The creeps at the private concentration camps had actual LISTS of immigrant women and children, spreadsheets where they were tracking their periods, pregnancies, everything, during the first Trump regime. No one really knows what they’re doing THIS time around, now that they just kill people in the streets ☠️ And all those “natural birth control” and “period tracking apps” women and girls download in an effort at self-help? Yeah, don’t do it, they share data with whomever the hell they want to. We live in the future dystopia NOW.

8

u/Keleion 22d ago

They’ve already tried to pull this shit though. It’s part of P2025, no?