Google will remove user location history for abortion clinic visits | Hacker News Reader

Google will remove user location history for abortion clinic visits

washingtonpost.com

138 pointspseudolus158 comments

'when our system identifies you're at a clinic' implies they have a signal for this

g is dreaming if they think they can make a signal for 'high likelihood illegal location' and not receive a pen register style warrant by every state that cares. roe provided federal a right to privacy for abortions. roe has been overturned.

the google.blog post[2] linked by the wapo article talks about 'law enforcement demands' and says g has a 'track record of pushing back'. eff disagrees[1], says dragnets + keyword warrants are still happening in the US.

maybe could do this with a broader commitment to wiping 'all medical facilities', and more clarity around deleting supporting data for trips. But you mostly can't get anonymous medical care in the US -- even if clinics take cash, states could ask insurance cos for info, or credit card cos, and assume the 'location history holes' in abortion states, not explained by insurance payment, were cash abortions.

would be nice to have an actual right to medical privacy, aka anonymity + civil damages for violators. scotus leans the opposite way -- sorrell v ims[3] overturned a vt medical privacy law as violating the 1st amendment rights of data miners.

1. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/google-fights-dragnet-...

2. https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/protecting-pe...

3. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/10-779.pdf

By this logic, is there literally anything Google could do to push back?

Say PrivacyCo launches their own maps app. In line with their brand, they don't retain any location history and they don't even keep activity logs. However, their server still needs to know where users are temporarily in order to send a map of the local area.

So now Texas comes knocking on their door. "Hey, PrivacyCo, y'know that thing where you don't store location history? Well, you're about to start storing location history on X Y and Z, because we think they might be about to get an abortion and we want to catch them."

At the end of the day, law enforcement is law enforcement and I'm not sure there's a lot private companies can do as long as they're providing these types of services.

Perhaps this is the thing that will make us seriously rethink our relationship with technology. Maybe. Theoretically. Remind me one more time how I ever managed to get anywhere without Apple Maps?

Is there an established precedent for this? A company with resources could fight it in court and win, neutering the State.

> However, their server still needs to know where users are temporarily in order to send a map of the local area.

Serve the maps in very coarse blocks that are downloaded ahead of time (and updates are served as binary diffs) so the smallest region the backend can pinpoint is the current city.

Over a decade ago stand-alone GPS units with single-core, sub-gigahertz CPUs, RAM measured in dozens of megabytes and shitty slow SD cards managed to hold maps for the entire country, so there's no reason devices orders of magnitude faster on all fronts can't do the same. In fact, in the iPhone 3G era I remember buying a GPS app that embedded all of Europe's maps locally and it worked well (in fact, local search is actually faster than online search).

But GPS didn't provide real-time traffic estimates, public transit arrivals, and similar information which can't be calculated ahead of time. And while something like satellite view and/or street view could be pre-downloaded, that would be a ton of data.

Predownloading also wouldn't work for webapp users.

I suppose you could make the blocks a lot coarser though.

Surely most (all?) of the real-time data such as transit times or roadworks is quite minimal and can similarly be downloaded for the entire city?

Doesn't this already (somewhat) exist in open street maps? I feel like the answer here has to be open map data that anyone can download so there isn't a company to track the location in the first place.

A curious person could put Organic Maps on their phone, download city/region maps at home, then try to navigate somewhere using airplane mode with GPS on.

I disabled the pre-installed Google Maps app on my phone. Expecting Google to do things contrary to their business interest of collecting and selling data would be naive.

The OSM data for a whole city is a couple dozen megabytes. The maps provider doesn't need to know location with a granularity that would provide location info that is more useful than, say, cell tower triangulation, which is already available to Big Brother.

This sort of location data has only so much resolution. People could easily muddy it. Organize people to stand against the wall of an abortion clinic for as long as a procedure takes. If you get enough people doing it all the data will be garbage.

Another problem to note is that LEO can (and often does) just buy the data. Even through shell companies. No warrant needed. You may not get info on a specific individual, but you sure can reduce your search space.

Surveillance Capitalism was a mistake. I don't see how it can lead to anything but a Cyber Punk reality. I'm not sure it will even be okay if we get homomorphic encryption going (but clearly there isn't big efforts to do so by these companies).

I've seen HN posts indicating that Apple uses homomorphic encryption for part if its differential privacy efforts in the past (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31672254), but am really having trouble finding sources to back this assertion up.

I highly doubt this tbh. Not that I'm a homomorphic researcher, but in ML I try to keep an eye on it. Everyone I've talked to has always said it is 100x to 1000x slower. Though there is hope since some have told me that they are all CPU based. I have no idea if you could write cuda kernels for this or not. But still, there's a pretty big hit. If you do find a citation I'd love to see it too.

I think what bugs me about that comment is "differential privacy" is a different type of privacy than homomorphic, so would indicate that they are using... differential privacy...

Minor edit: I did find some research papers by Apple mentioning Homomorphic encryption, but nothing to suggest they are using it.

Reading into Sorrell v IMS, what exactly are the privacy concerns about a pharmacy telling drug companies how many of certain types of prescriptions they were filling for a certain doctor?

IANAL the difference is not in recording the transaction among those directly involved, but rather the aggregate collection of specifics as data and the uninterrupted collection of specifics as data, over time, passed on somewhat indefinitely, and with imperfect knowledge of all of that by all involved. Not to mention that the participant, a person not a consumer, has no control or say so.

The difference (at least for now) is that the visit is presumably in a place where abortion is legal. You can't issue a subpoena for someone doing something legal (in another state, outside your jurisdiction, no less). The (very unlikely, even with this supreme court) theoretical moment of doing something illegal is either the 'exit' from the state "with intent to abort" but they need some info.

If woman-over-fetus-priority states create laws that shield other state-data from respecting subpoenas from the fetus-over-woman-priority states (like NY and NJ), then there's no data.

Of course, Google isn't the only one that has access to your phone's geo -- so a question is whether they'll also block all apps within some radius.

I wouldn’t count on shield laws in abortion states protecting women. We’re one Republican administration away from a law requiring other states to cooperate, built on the model of the Fugitive Slave Act. It’s obviously interstate commerce.

An appropriate response to that kind of law would be for blue states to criminalize the criminalization of abortion.

What do you mean here? How would you criminalize the act of a different state's govt? Do you mean (attempt to) hold state legislators criminally liable?

Hold the agents executing the state's laws criminally liable - arrest them and try them if they ever cross into your state. Police, prosecutors, legislators, etc.

The logic holds for me - if state A is criminalizing behavior that's legal in state B, and is prosecuting people who engaged in it in state B, then state B can do the converse.

foreign corrupt practices act lets US officials prosecute behavior that is legal in a foreign country and illegal here

(I'm not saying it applies in this case, but it's an example of applying local law to a locally domiciled company operating abroad).

same with going abroad for sex tourism with minors (PROTECT act)

in US state-vs-state situations, I'm pretty sure some states have public policy exceptions to forum clauses in contracts, though I can't quote you a case

years ago when I left the building my doctor is in, in a street full of doctor's practices, google asked me to rate my doctor using his full name.

the building has many floors and practices. knew my doctor by name. knew I was there to visit him. wanted me to rate him.

very creepy.

What's your hypothesis?

Almost certainly they'd searched for that doctor to get directions?

I mean check-in technology is at least as old as dodgeball (foursquare predecessor acq by G). G + FB both have check-in based features.

gps includes altitude (albeit gps isn't that precise in cities). phone geo can use cell tower triangulation + wifi scanning, on both aapl + droid, whether or not you connect to wifi.

i.e. they have lots of ways

The fact that there even is such a thing as "user location history" is the problem. Carving out (politically motivated, for sure) exceptions only shows the extent of Google's massive abuse of privacy.

Exactly. Collecting location data in itself should not be done, and the presumption that Google is somehow equipped to know when not to collect data is pretty disgusting. It's entirely possible that location data is abused in many ways they cannot think of.

For example, a location that ties somebody to the illegal purchase of a pharmacy drug they desperately need, but cannot otherwise obtain.

One could only imagine what the likes of Hitler, Stalin or Mao (to name a few) would have been capable of if only they had been able to compel the likes of Google to release location data. It's an exceptional tool and a weapon in the wrong hands.

Even the better governments of the world are using this kind of information contrary to the spirit of the law and in many cases against the law itself --and very very few in gov't care, what's more most in government want to expand the capabilities. So, yes, imagine the bad guys and gals.

Watching everybody's movements is tyranny. When you compare how much power those classical tyrants had to what the state has now, you may not need to compare the relatively impotent states of the past.

This is a good opportunity for privacy proponents and activists to take advantage of this opening and push for a stop to the collection of any of this information.

This is the time to take the mile, this is the time to make the slope slippery.

At least for high-impact locations if they can’t get everything. Women’s shelters and hospitals would be an excellent start.

Neither companies not governments should have people's information at their fingertips. Ok, maybe on foreign spies, yes, by all means, but not for citizens. They should not have that kind of information on people. This is something we used to make fun of the Stasi for --and they didn't have THIS capability. But, yet here we are happy to accept it these days.

Gay bars. The homes of people who have been to gay bars. Synagogues.

Why do "privacy activists" have standing to intermediate between me and a third party, if I want to use that third party's services to remember where I've been? Privacy activists need to check themselves.

No problem if you opt in to it as an option.

Per [1]:

- Location History is turned off by default for your Google Account and can only be turned on if you opt in.

- You can pause Location History at any time in your Google Account's Activity controls.

- You control what’s saved in your Location History. You can view the places where you’ve been in Google Maps Timeline, which you can edit or use to delete your Location History.

And...

- You can turn off Location History for your account at any time.

- You can manage and delete your Location History information with Google Maps Timeline. You can choose to delete all of your history, or only parts of it.

- You can choose to automatically delete Location History that’s older than 3 months, 18 months, or 36 months.

Seriously, I don't see how it could be more flexible and user-controlled than this.

(Disclaimer: Googler, but no relationship with Maps or Geo teams. As an individual user, I use and love my location history, and appreciate the level of control I have)

[1] https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687

It's like they are incapable of reading and doing their own research. Regardless, a better solution would be to regulate data collection to make alternative self-hosted services available and easy to use and allow you to opt-out as well.

They changed the defaults in response to the threats from the people you disdain. If this is how you think the situation should be, remember it would not be this way if we had to rely on your judgment or efforts.

Disdain? Only one platform allows you to install and use third-party apps. People that act this way are the ones with an iPhone with TikTok installed while complaining about Google. I'm not on Google's side here, I'm just saying the information being presented is factually wrong.

Google changed it to be opt-in because they were getting sued left and right and investigated heavily for doing it by default. This wasn't a voluntary choice, Google only makes ethical decisions when forced to by an outside party and this was no different.

During some of those investigations, it was revealed that even Google engineers found the way Google handled these controls (like the separate Web and App Activity switch) very confusing, leaving ordinary users no hope of understanding it.

Finally, Google uses a bit of a carrot and stick method to push people to enable it. Rewards reminds you constantly you're eligible for more surveys/money with location history on, and you can't even have Google Maps default a "home" location locally, without pervasive location tracking being enabled that informs the company where you're at every five minutes.

Which is to say, the controls are confusing, the defaults only changed because Google was under investigation, and they make the experience especially on Android if you have it off intentionally terrible.

I actually love location history. Makes it easy to answer questions like: "what was the name of that great restaurant in Edinburgh when I visited 4 years ago?"

Edit: but I do agree it should be opt-in

That is a very emotional argument --but I accept that you could opt in to it. On the other hand, you might instead discover a new or different restaurant experience you would not have otherwise. Which, of course, could be better or worse.

I have nothing against tracking your own location and keeping records of it yourself; but it's an entirely different thing when a company which arguably has more power than the governments of multiple countries does it by default and keeps the records on its servers.

> does it by default

Yet the Google blog post says

> Location History is a Google account setting that is off by default

See https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/protecting-pe...

FWIW I checked my own Google account. It was not enabled. And I have no recollection or plan to ever enable it.

It's saddening to see HN users (among all people) peddling falsehoods like this.

> Location History is a Google account setting that is off by default

Android still by default "shares" location with Google. That setting is merely to turn off storing that data on Google's side. Unless they get a warrant compelling them to keep it. And unless they are lying, again:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-admits-tracking-users-l...

Apple still creates a relational database of iPhone user location by default too, I don't think this is a terribly surprising practice. I don't like either company doing it, but something tells me that they don't have a choice.

Apple Maps is intentionally designed not to associate any data with Apple IDs, and to use random ethereal identifiers for parts of the route.

So... source?

Find My is enabled by default on pretty much all Apple devices, no?

I think it asks if you want to turn it on during the set up flow, but I don't remember. I know it's off on mine, I suppose if you want to use Find My they have to have your location, since that's it's purpose.

Apple's Find My page seems to indicate it's end to end encrypted in many purposes, but lists all the ways it has to reveal your location to Apple to provide the feature.

End-to-end encryption doesn't do much good when Apple (and by extension, the NSA) is on the other end. It's the same deal as Google, with different set dressing.

Someone really ought to sue Google so that during discovery Google will be compelled to speak the truth. The amount of confusion in this issue is immense. And tech publications like ZDNet is part of the problem. Conflating concepts like tracking vs collecting, not to mention the distinction between anonymous, pseudonymous, and tied-to-account tracking. In this particular article the title "tracking" clearly doesn't match the article's content where the Google spokesperson says "so that data was immediately discarded". Is Google lying about this? I think only a legal discovery will find out.

This has already happened, and entered some glorious emails into the public record, like Google engineers stating they'd find their location history settings confusing, despite being basically an expert in the field.

That isn't how lawsuits and discovery works. You can't just sue someone to go on a rogue fact-finding mission.

I have not looked at this for a while, but Google used to tie location search history which is valuable to users with location collection which is mostly valuable to Google. There is probably a perfectly good engineering explanation why, but it's hard to unsee abuse of market domination to track location data angle.

This was changed in 2020; they used to keep it by default.

Google's reputation on such things is far from spotless. That's not HN's fault.

Several solutions to track your location on your device and on your private cloud exist. I use a Nextcloud add on. Nobody but me knows where I went.

nextcloud is sort of complex to manage, no?

Maybe it was at one time, but it is very easy nowadays. It can be setup in many ways. https://growyourown.services/beginners-guide-to-nextcloud/ Mine runs on a Raspberry PI with many services on the yunohost.org platform. I love it.

I've used it to geofence my employer and automatically fill out timesheets.

This is sort of the problem - it's too damn seductive.

It can be turned off in account settings.

https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols?settings=loca...

I've always wondered whether turning it off merely hides it from the end-user.

Turning it off doesn’t mean google stops the collection of data.

Turn Off buttons are like delete buttons on the internet, they don't really do what they say they do.

Please cite a source for your claim.

Please cite a source where it says they do what they say.

Or ask any experienced web developers, they will tell you.

Of course, but there's also a problem that a specific location, we know, would be enough evidence for far right pitchforks

I completely disagree. Someone filed a fraudulent accident report with my insurance company (probably a parking attendant stole my insurance info from my glove box). Google location data saved me as I could illustrate exactly where I was at the supposed time of accident.

I have found it useful for hiking and stuff too.

Good for you. But what about the rest of us? Or even yourself on any other day?

To equate privacy with convenience is ill advised.

Turn it off? Use another device?

It should be off by default, rather than on by default, so you can choose to have it, and we don't accidentally go to prison for going to a doctor who was legal to visit last week and forgetting to alter one of a million privacy settings on one of fifty devices.

It is off by default, on iOS at least: you have to open Google maps and opt-in to always-on location tracking.

It’s by far my favorite feature of Google maps.

Off by default in one app on one device, we still have to worry about smartwatches, cell tower positions, network geolocation, 400 thousands apps with location access to GPS or who knows what; your car reporting back to tesla that you ate somewhere that sold pork in saudi arabia, or visited an abortion clinic in texas, or who knows.

It's too damn much.

I personally don't use corporate shit anymore, but I know that's a near-impossible tech for people whose full-time job isn't deep tech. We need to make life livable for those people, by legislating foremost of all, but also by making tools available and easy to use, and I'm sure many things I can't think of, but we should at least be discussing it.

That wasn't the statement being responded to.

Location history is off by default. I've turned it on because I'm happy with the trade-offs involved, but if you don't think it's worth it just don't turn it on.

Congratulations on the Google exit, though if I recall from previous discussions you don't view ads as a negative on society. So your trade-offs will probably look different than many others in that regard.

I was able to determine exactly where and when catalytic converter was stolen from my car, thanks to my location history data.

I used it on other occasions as well. My only complaint is that it's not more precise.

Couldn't you tell by the load roar when you started the car?

Before I figured out what the loud roar meant I already forgot when I parked, and when I first noticed any issue.

Google location history let me check that the car was parked where it was parked just for one night (I misremembered it as longer period).

Then I could accurately relate it to the police. Which of course will lead to nothing. But I felt better when I could make statements with cerainity.

IIRC, the location history in Google is pretty fine grained in both time (like minute to sub-minute) and location (GPS location if it has it). So if the location history is deleted when a user is within ....500 ft of a sensitive place? The lack of logs all of the sudden may be enough for an authority to ask for e.g. carrier location logs (or pick your favorite app that also logs location data too).

I'd rather they just give us clear location spying settings, that are opt-in, instead of making it so deliberately confusing that their own engineers can't figure out how to disable location spying [1].

[1] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/08/26/1428200/unredacted-s...

The lack of location history around "sensitive" places is in and of itself suspicious, or more simply put, lack of information is still information.

It is - would it appear as a blackout during your trip? They should insert random/junk location data instead.

It's marginally better in that the data doesn't appear amiss, but the algorithm would still be the problem if found out.

If Google writes software with knowledge that its use will explicitly be used to commit crimes, is Google an accomplice?

My location history is spotty enough; it doesn't appear to be constantly pinging GPS, so I don't think an hour sized hole would look amiss.

Why only abortion clinics? They should simply stop collecting location history altogether.

It's not only abortion clinics, anything categorized as a sensitive place.

I'd like to say more but it would violate at least two of the site guidelines. :)

I don't see how the guidelines prevent you from mentioning places that google automatically does not include in location history.

Which guidelines, can you elaborate? Seems odd, especially considering the other low-effort comment you left in this thread (consisting only of the word "No").

How would Google respond to a standing order to send abortion visits in real time? It's good to limit retention but that just speeds up the timetable for collection by reactionary states.

As if last week it was totally reasonable for Google to keep this data /s

This just highlights why these gee-whiz features that are hastily implemented by big tech are short sighted.

There’s plenty of other sensitive places that people go on a regular basis that are still being collected.

I'm missing something. If a state outlaws abortion, why would these clinics still be open? And if we're talking about underground, black market clinics, how would google know?

I think they’re optimizing more for people who travel across state lines to obtain an abortion in a state where it’s legal. Those people may face a risk of prosecution in their home state, so avoiding evidence they were at a (legal) abortion clinic is helpful.

What right would one state have to go after a resident that travels to another state to have an abortion? Isn't it clearly outside the first state's jurisdiction?

I live in a state where failing a drug test is a crime, even if the drugs were consumed legally elsewhere. They can likely make a law similar to that for having an abortion, though I don't know the exact method you'd use.

What state? Never heard of that and it's horrifying.

No comment. It's a misdemeanor in Utah and a felony in South Dakota though. It's called possession by consumption.

I'm pretty sure that if the age of consent in another state is less than your state, it is forbidden to travel there to take advantage of that. I don't know how that law is legal, but I'm pretty sure the same logic can be applied to abortions.

No.

You're wrong.

> Interstate Travel

While each state’s legislature sets its own age of consent, crossing state lines does not grant a free pass. Crossing state lines to have sexual relations invokes federal law. The federal age of consent is 18.

That means, for example, if two people over 16 in North Carolina and South Carolina moved across state lines to have relations, they would still be subject to the federal age of consent, even though they meet the age of consent in both states.

In the case of online relations, the law applies based on the younger person’s state. For example, if an adult in Nevada attempted to send lewd messages or pictures to a minor in California, the Nevada resident would violate the law.

https://www.cwsdefense.com/blog/2020/january/state-lines-and...

The claim was that going from state A to state B to engage in sex would use the minimum of the two states' ages of consent. That is still false.

What you are describing is the _federal_ aoc applying if interstate travel was involved. In the case of online activity, the act is considered to be happening in both states, without involving fedgov due to no state lines being crossed.

None of this has anything to do with an act occurring entirely in state A and being subject to state B's laws. This is what's under discussion with abortion.

None? But that doesn't stop this being the midterm election narrative, pushed by left leaning mass media in wake of the Supreme court decision.

Remember when Utah was mass-arresting residents returning from a gambling and booze weekend in Vegas? No? Probably because that's not a real thing, either.

Regardless of what you think about the "left leaning mass media," abortion funds in Texas like the Frontera Fund are pausing abortion funding, even for out of state abortions, due to the fear that a recently passed Texas law criminalizing anyone who helps someone get an abortion will apply to them: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/29/texas-abortion-funds...

It is not clear that this is enforceable for funding an out of state abortion, but the uncertain legal framework is already harming abortion access. It will take a long time for criminalization of out of state travel to work its way up the courts. It is not just a fear to drive up midterm turnout: this is actually happening right now.

Please do a modicum of research rather than dismissing peoples' concerns out of hand due to your perceptions around media bias. Even if there is such a bias, it seems to be clouding your view of what is factually observable.

The very premise of this type of FUD was actually explicitly mentioned in the Supreme court decision (by Kavanaugh if I recall correctly) - the notion of states hunting down their residents or tracking activities in other states is as far fetched in the context of abortion as it is in any other activity that is perfectly legal elsewhere.

There is no legal uncertainty in this matter, just as there is no uncertainty whether you can be charged with soliciting upon returning from a legal brothel in Nevada, for example.

You should not be surprised by the coordinated effort by interested parties to push this as a narrative, both the agency you mentioned and google in the original article. All these concerns will magically disappear after November, with each org quietly backtracking on their heavily publicized actions.

A state can make it illegal to transport someone or to travel for purposes of getting an abortion (the transportation would be happening in state) and it would be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether to rule it's constitutional or not.

This is a nice start, but I am not sure if it helps at all with geofence warrants. See https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/19/google-geofence-warrants/

Location history is a feature that they use to help you track your personal movements, but I am guessing that they keep your location history briefly in a separate store that serves things like geofence warrants. Otherwise, their utility would be limited to the subset of users that has the feature (off by default) enabled.

Even if they don't store the location history, imagine state authorities know an abortion clinic is operating illegally and just get a warrant to track who visits for a few weeks before shutting it down. They could get the data before it gets deleted, since Google appears to be storing it at least temporarily.

These are really dark times for the future of dragnet surveillance if states do employ it in their criminalization of abortion. I hope that this sparks a conversation about digital privacy and that more people take steps to protect themselves online.

The mind absolutely boggles, what the hell is going on here?

The world really is going insane, first the abortion being illegal, then the fact Google has to take steps like this.

What is going on is that Christianists have seized extreme power and are using it ruthlessly.

Google is taking this action entirely for PR reasons. They want to improve their image.

I'm far too cynical, but I see this ending with police requesting location history to find someone who bombed an abortion clinic and Google using that as an excuse to never remove location history again.

Would really like to know more about the implementation here.

While I personally am not a user or fan of Google location history, I know people who have jobs that involve a lot of travel between medical facilities that find Google location history to be a good mechanism to verify their activities for billing appropriate accounts. Will there be a way to opt out?

I'm curious if there will there be any defined radius of deleted location history. Will it leave some kind of gap that may be obvious?

This only creates opportunities for other startups to track this history by other means, could be lucrative in some states.

Before people overreact to things, realize that it's completely illegal for a state to make a law that says "you can't go to another state for abortions". The supreme court has signaled as such that they wouldn't support any such ruling and would strike it down as illegal. That violates interstate commerce clause which is exclusively the domain of the federal government. States can't war with each other.

Kavanaugh suggested that in his concurring opinion, but that's one justice, and it was a 6-3 decision, and he could change his mind. the Court could well find that bans on out-of-state abortions are necessary to properly enforce state abortion bans, or uphold a ban on facilitating travel since that occurs inside a state's borders, or that the commerce clause needs to be reigned in anyway, and gee, what an opportune moment to revisit that bit of precedent too.

given how the Court just ruled in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, doing nothing but (incorrectly) picking and choosing precedent that supported the outcome they wanted, I'd put approximately zero stock in this Court to be internally consistent whatsoever. except for Gorsuch.

It wasn't a 6-3 decision. It was a 5-4 decision for overruling Roe v Wade. Roberts wanted a more narrow ruling and was against overruling Roe v Wade. Roberts wrote a Concurrence in judgement, not a full concurrence, and did not joint the majority opinion.

And yet as far as I know Texas’ law hasn’t been overturned which accomplishes this in effect. For now I remain highly skeptical. These same justices claimed they would respect precedent during their confirmation hearings.

Because the courts take time. The ruling is hardly a week old. It's going to take years for things to settle.

Google will not be able to sustain this. In states where abortions become crimes Google cannot start deleting just the evidence pertaining to those crimes. They could stop collecting location data entirely, but this selective approach will not survive in court.

Given how cell providers are likewise collecting location data and won't be following suit, it seems like this has a high probability of backfiring...

Why not all clinics?

The US Supreme Court recently repealed Roe v. Wade, a previous decision which established access to abortion as a Constitutional right on the basis of an implied right to privacy the current Court no longer recognizes. As a result numerous states have declared abortion illegal, which makes visiting abortion clinics, specifically (even out of state, in some cases) a crime.

Other kinds of clinics are likely not included because visiting them doesn't pose the same legal risk.

This is the third different rationale I've heard for roe v wade, and none of them agree. Last I heard it wasn't about privacy but about liberty.

> specifically (even out of state, in some cases) a crime.

That's not legal under federal law and the constitution. You can't arrest citizens for participating in some activity outside of the state.

>This is the third different rationale I've heard for roe v wade, and none of them agree. Last I heard it wasn't about privacy but about liberty.

I don't know what you've else you've heard but you can study the decision itself[0], or summary material[1,2], to find the actual legal argument used.

   "On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision holding that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy", which protects a pregnant woman's right to an abortion."

[0]https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade

[2]https://supreme.findlaw.com/supreme-court-insights/roe-v--wa...

>That's not legal under federal law and the constitution.

Feel free to tell that to the several state governments attempting to do so[3]. Relevant quote:

    “Just because you jump across a state line doesn’t mean your home state doesn’t have jurisdiction,” said Peter Breen, vice president and senior counsel for the Thomas More Society. “It’s not a free abortion card when you drive across the state line.”

Of course the obvious challenge is through the Interstate Commerce Clause but given the nature of the current court and Conservative's disdain for it in general, I wouldn't expect the court to rule in the government's favor.

[3]https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7Goi6i...

> Feel free to tell that to the several state governments attempting to do so[3].

Because they're doing so to score points for future elections for their far right electorate. They know it won't succeed and will be challenged immediately and fail.

> Of course the obvious challenge is through the Interstate Commerce Clause but given the nature of the current court and Conservative's disdain for it in general, I wouldn't expect the court to rule in the government's favor.

The current court is using sound legalist principles to rule in the way they're ruling. There's nothing that lets them just simply erase the interstate commerce clause.

Why isn't this considered destruction of evidence and thus a crime itself?

It's not illegal to visit an abortion clinic, domestic violence shelter or other similarly-sensitive place.

Suppose you visited someone's house to murder them. Does it count as destruction of evidence to scrub evidence that places you at the crime scene (eg. google location history or your car's dashcam footage)? After all, visiting someone's house isn't a crime either.

When google does it without knowing what you did there, no. You can't knowingly destroy evidence if there isn't a (known) crime.

Okay, here's a new thought experiment: suppose some trump supporters did some illegal activities at a protest (think jan 6th). In typical trump supporter fashion, they also have truth social[1] installed and location tracking was enabled. Would you be fine with truth social scrubbing evidence relating to that protest? After all, showing up to the protest isn't illegal, so it should be perfectly fine to scrub all information relating to the protest. It'd only be illegal if they specifically searched for illegal activity and only scrubbed those.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_Social

Yes. That's how privacy protection works. Both the good guys and the bad guys benefit equally.

Well, that's the sane way of interpreting it. The alternative is finding some sort of post hoc justification to prevent your opponents for using it.

There’s a nuance here, which is that in your scenario it sounds like truth social made a conscious decision to erase location data focused around this particular event - if that’s the case, and they picked this event specifically, that seems sketchy. Why that event, why just these people, etc.

If, on the other hand, three months before January 6th truth social said “you know what, we are going to delete all location data that is near any government building going forward”, that seems to be to be morally neutral.

The other way to look at it is that this change protects everyone who is at an abortion clinic, whether getting an abortion, protesting abortion, or just happened to be walking by.

Would you also be okay with Google destroying evidence that people went to Jeffrey Epstein's island, since just being there wasn't illegal?

https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312

No, but if abortion is illegal, knowing you where there can be used as evidence:

https://definitions.uslegal.com/d/destruction-of-evidence

> destruction of evidence that is relevant to a case .. or an inference that such evidence can be unfavorable. ... victim of the spoliation [the state] must prove that the destruction was intentional [it was] and also the destroyed evidence was relevant to the issue ...

Literally what Google is doing, if Google deleted location data of all the J6 rioters this wouldn't even be a question if they deleted evidence, because its abortion, everyones ok with it, double standards.

Being in the vicinity of a clinic isn't a crime.

Apart from the other answers given, states have no jurisdiction to make actions taken in another state illegal.

So, if you want to commit a crime, do it near an abortion clinic so that Google won't have your location data to give to the prosecution?

Yeah....that's what I would rely on, the data being scrubbed. /S

Or, you could just leave your phone at home and commit the crime anywhere with the same location data anonymity.

On a side note, isn't it weird how attached we are to our phones it's hard to imagine going anywhere without it? Even to commit a crime!

> Or, you could just leave your phone at home…

Nobody does that. Not even criminals.

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