People protest after the leak of a draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, making ready for a majority of the courtroom to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights determination later this yr, in New York City, U.S., May 3, 2022.
Yana Paskova | Reuters
The on-line data location broker SafeGraph mentioned it has stopped selling information on visits to abortion clinics after a report from Vice news revealed how simply the data could possibly be bought, elevating issues that “anti-abortion vigilantes” might use it to goal providers and their shoppers.
Vice reported Tuesday that it bought every week’s price of location data for greater than 600 Planned Parenthood places throughout the United States for simply over $160 from SafeGraph.
Some of these places provide abortion providers, the outlet mentioned.
And the data confirmed the place teams of individuals visiting these amenities got here from, the period of their visits, and the place they traveled afterward, in accordance to Motherboard’s article.
SafeGraph, whose traders reportedly have included billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel and a former head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, obtains and aggregates location data from apps put in on individuals’s cell phones.
The firm says that the “Patterns” data of the kind purchased by Vice, which reveals how teams of individuals work together with a given location, is anonymized to defend the privateness of particular person guests.
But Zach Edwards, a cybersecurity researcher, informed Vice: “it is bonkers harmful to have abortion clinics after which let somebody purchase the census tracks the place individuals are coming from to go to that abortion clinic.”
“This is the way you dox somebody touring throughout state traces for abortions — the way you dox clinics offering this service,” Edwards mentioned.
Vice’s article was revealed a day after a Politico report on a leaked preliminary draft of a Supreme Court opinion, which signifies {that a} majority of justices have voted to overrun the half-century-old Roe v. Wade ruling that claims individuals have a constitutional proper to abortions.
If that finally ends up being the official determination of the Supreme Court this summer time, the ruling is anticipated to rapidly lead to the banning of abortion, or the extreme restriction of the process, in up to two dozen states.
That, in flip, is anticipated to improve the variety of individuals touring from their house states to receive abortions at clinics in states the place the process nonetheless can be authorized, as has been the case since Texas adopted a restrictive new abortion regulation.
When requested concerning the Vice article by CNBC on Wednesday, a SafeGraph spokesman emailed a hyperlink to a web based publish titled, “Demystifying the SafeGraph Facts.”
In the publish, the corporate mentioned it “simply sells info,” and “we solely promote data about bodily locations (not people).”
“To our information, no one has ever used SafeGraph Patterns data for malicious functions,” the publish mentioned. “In truth, the Patterns dataset has largely been utilized by 15,000+ researchers and academics and local governments to combat COVID-19.”
“But there are at all times excessive hypothetical nook instances, and in some instances these are price actively stopping,” the publish famous.
“In mild of potential federal modifications in household planning entry, we’re eradicating Patterns data for places labeled as NAICS code 621410 (‘Family Planning Centers’) from our self-serve “store” and API to curtail any potential misuse of its data,” the publish mentioned.
SafeGraph mentioned that the elimination of this data will have an effect on many educational researchers who need to examine the subject, “like understanding the impression of laws on household planning visits.”
“We acknowledge that our determination to take down Patterns for household planning facilities might negatively impression this beneficial analysis, however we predict that is the correct determination given the present local weather,” the corporate mentioned.
SafeGraph mentioned it’s going to nonetheless have data on the market concerning the places and working hours of household planning facilities.
“Family Planning facilities like Planned Parenthood make their location data public as a result of they need to serve their constituents,” SafeGraph mentioned.
CNBC has requested remark from Planned Parenthood concerning the SafeGraph data.