Senator warns FTC, SEC about selling of data to antiabortion organizations
Sen. Ron Wyden conducted an investigation after Wall Street Journal unearthed the story
An investigation from Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden revealed that a data broker company possibly tracked nearly 600 Planned Parenthood locations across the continental United States.
Politico was the first to report the news about the letter, but the actual investigation was conducted by the Wall Street Journal several years ago. Wyden wrote a letter to the chairman and chairwoman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission about the data selling.
At the letter's core, it encouraged the SEC and FTC to protect consumers from Near Intelligence, Inc. This location data broker sells personal information revealing where Americans have been and the sensitive places they have visited.
Wyden’s office began to investigate Near in May 2023, after an investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that an anti-abortion organization used location data from Near to target antiabortion messaging and ads to people who had visited reproductive health clinics.
According to the Wall Street Journal, The Veritas Society, a nonprofit established by Wisconsin Right to Life, hired the advertising agency Recrue Media to place the ads. The ad campaign reportedly ran from November 2019 through the summer of 2022, after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, permitting states to criminalize abortion, according to Wyden’s letter.
On a web page that has since been taken down but was saved by the Internet Archive, The Veritas Society stated that in 2020, in Wisconsin alone, it delivered 14.3 million ads to people who visited abortion clinics and “served ads to those devices across the women’s social pages, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.”
The company is now under criminal investigation, according to Wyden’s letter.
In Massachusetts, state legislators introduced the Location Shield Act, sponsored by Representative Kate Lipper-Garabedian and Senator Cynthia Creem. It would prohibit companies from engaging in the predatory practice of selling location data while still allowing them to collect and process it for legitimate purposes with user consent. There is currently no federal law forbidding this practice.
Taylor St. Germain, communications director at Repro Equity Now, an abortion rights group located in the state, spoke to me about the revelations.
“Obviously, our cell phones in our pockets track everywhere we go–to access health care, to go to the grocery store, to go to work, to go home at the end of the day. And that reveals really sensitive and intimate things about each of us,’ St. Germain said.
Antiabortion organizations use the data to spread misinformation and encourage abortion seekers to visit crisis pregnancy centers.
The bill in Massachusetts would prohibit companies from selling, trading or renting data insofar as people who live in the state. It requires companies to obtain consent from people who use cell phones.
Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, spoke to me about the data tracking. The issue goes beyond advertising. States like Idaho and Alabama have had their attorney generals seek data from healthcare providers about their state’s residents visiting abortion clinics in other areas.
“If I were a dastardly AG, who wanted to do everything possible to prevent people from accessing lawful healthcare in Massachusetts,” Crockford said, “’ if I thought it was deviant or something, I would buy location data that shows, for example, everyone who travels from Texas to a medical facility in Massachusetts.”
Crockford said there isn’t much that individuals can do themselves.
“There is nothing that people can do to protect themselves from being a victim of this except leave their phone at home when they go someplace they don't want to be tracked,” Crockford said. “And that is simply not acceptable.”