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Comment by telesilla | Hacker News Reader

I am horrified that the day has arrived that as a person, as a woman, I might have to actually think twice what I look up on Google or what I store on my emails or WhatsApp chats because until now I haven't ever worried for a moment.

[Edit] most relevant reply here from Krapp: If you're using a period tracker, you may want to consider deleting it

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Really? Only now? Not 9 years ago when the snowden/NSA revelations came out? I mean, it's great that people are realizing the dangers of the surveillance state, but it's sad that they didn't care until it personally affected them. That does not bode well for the other 50% of the population where the hot button political issue isn't really applicable to them.

> Not 9 years ago when the snowden/NSA revelations came out?

What were you worried about looking up/messaging when those revelations came out?

Any information that if taken out of context could cause damage in an unfair but technical legal court case, or the court of public opinion.

So this just exposes the lie of "nothing to hide" for more people?

Well, besides the obvious "suspicious search terms" (eg. anarchists cookbook), there was a general concern of the fact that the data collected might be used against be in some unknown way in the future (sort of like how posting stuff on social media might cause you to get canceled a decade down the line).

> there was a general concern of the fact that the data collected might be used against be in some unknown way in the future

I think this is a reasonable concern. But I think this is where it differs from the concern people have with sharing abortion data.

In the NSA case, the concern is in a possible future, the information they've gathered could be used against you in some way.

In the current abortion data case, the concern is:

1. That there are states with laws on the books that would punish you if this information came to light.

2. There are companies with this information in hand that have no legal obligation to keep it private.

3. These companies refuse to make any sort of agreement or promise to keep this data away from those that would use it against you, or destroy the data.

4. These companies are within the legal jurisdiction of the aforementioned states.

The threat here is much more concrete.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not saying that the mass collection of data by the NSA is harmless. Rather, I understand why people are more concerned about the abortion data collection, because the threat is more concrete. The full consequence that NSA data collection poses haven't actualized, but depending on how things go, could be much, much worse than this.

Well if you looked further than 2 feet ahead, you'd be worried about getting a secret personality and political profile assembled on you, that a subsequent administration (or anyone that hacks them, or does the same kind of data collection as the NSA/Google/Facebook/VISA/China [1]/..) could use to extra-legally exclude you from payment systems [2], services [3,4], government jobs [5], and..

Oh, wait, I said "further than 2 feet ahead", but this is already happening. Well it can always get worse, who knows how close towards China the US will move in the next few decades. Or maybe your political stance will continue to be so totally in-line with the establishment, that even living in a state-corporate panopticon, you will have nothing to worry about. The ideal citizen of the future.

You saw the cage closing in around you, but thought "Why should I worry? I'm on good terms with the warden."

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/china-spent-years-coll...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chokepoint

[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ahead-far-right-wing-ra...

[4] https://www.foxnews.com/travel/airbnb-bans-white-supremacist...

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/us/politics/military-capi...

All your cites are for white nationalism, which is by definition antithetical to a free American society. They also seem to be conflating actions taken by the government (2, 5) and operations taken by private companies (4).

I'm also not sure what you mean by "extra-legally" in this context. "Extralegal" means not regulated or sanctioned by law. AirBnB banning people from its platform is certainly regulated - for example, you can't ban based on protected classes (of which being a white nationalist is not). Governmental hiring, military admissions, etc. are all clearly very regulated environments.

> All your cites are for white nationalism, which is by definition antithetical to a free American society

What does operation Chokepoint or Chinese hacking have to do with white nationalism? And don't worry, they'll define every opinion they want to suppress as "antithetical to a free American society" - anti-immigration becomes white supremacy, anti-war becomes Muslim extremism/support of dictators, anti-factory-farming becomes eco-terrorism [1],...

> conflating actions taken by the government and operations taken by private companies

I'm not conflating anything. I'm listing the risks of surveillance - they are present in both the corporate and governmental spheres, not limited to only one or the other.

[1] Supporters of ag-gag laws have argued that they serve to protect the agriculture industry from the negative repercussions of exposés by whistle blowers. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag

The exact same things as now. When information is collected, it's potentially available forever, to any future government (and hackers).

I'd be pretty concerned if I was a Muslim in the US or related to anyone in the wrong part of the world.

Privacy isn't the same thing as secrecy.

I know what you're doing in the bathroom, but you still close the door.

Snowden revealed that you're in danger if you're "an interesting person". Politician? Journalist? Civil rights advocate? These people have all been encrypting their emails for a decade.

It's the first time in, well, a long long time, that an average person might have something to hide, simply for the crime of being female.

The hardcore activists, like that one from Philadelphia that videotaped all television, the archivist activist, didn't ever use email even.

It's something that I've always worried about, but these new abortion laws do make the surveillance state a lot more powerful against women. Something like a stillbirth can now easily lead to a woman having all of her data searched through and anything in there that makes it look like an abortion happened can result in decades in prison.

I'm struggling to think of a law that had the same effect on as many people as before.

Women who have had stillbirths were already subject to this type of investigation and many women, especially those of color and/or lower economic status, have been charged with homicide or manslaughter following stillbirths based upon little to no evidence of them doing anything to cause the stillbirth.

> Something like a stillbirth can now easily lead to a woman having all of her data searched through and anything in there that makes it look like an abortion happened can result in decades in prison.

Because things that are not procured abortions were not protected by Roe even when it was in place, places with fetal homicide laws while Roe was in place have, in fact, investigated and, though far less often, sometimes charged miscarriages/stillbirths as homicides, usually of types involving recklessness or criminal negligence, not intent-to-kill.

There are lots of countries where it's been like that for two decades.

But this certainly brings USA one step closer to Iran and Saudi Arabia in terms of religious extremism and your individual rights as a woman.

Yeah, I saw a post that said the US has become "Chrisitian" Saudi Arabia and it is hard to argue that it hasn't (or won't be very very soon). Just look at the $2B payoff from one Saudi country to another.

Everyone has their moment. Glad you’re waking up to the wholesale data trading that has been happening for years in the period tracking app industry. My hope is we will see better data models emerge there.

WhatsApp is not like the others, since it's end to end encrypted. The protocol even provides deniability (although it may be hard to hold in court).

They only have to spy on one side to get both parts of the conversation

Or mandate surveillance software (keystroke logging, etc.) on the phones or computers. "For the children".

End to end encryption doesn't matter if the ends are p3wned.

Paranoid much? That would never happen!

Oh wait - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

How is WhatsApp different if they get legal access to your phone? I don't see how data stored locally in WhatsApp is different than data stored on your phones email client.

If you're using a period tracker, you may want to consider deleting it.

And request that the company providing the app delete your data...

You're late to the party

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