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And facebook doesn't care about people's rights when those people in power are able to block Facebook from acquiring some new startup they want to buy, so facebook is willing to share the information.
The people prosecuting women for abortions aren't looking for reasons not to arrest and prosecute them.
Who are these people doing this?
> Nationally, about 20% of pregnancies end in a loss, which includes miscarriage or spontaneous abortion, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth or fetal death, according to federal data. Only a small number are investigated as crimes. But advocates say the growing number of laws in some states place people’s actions following pregnancy loss under greater scrutiny from law enforcement.
> Women in South Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and several other states have faced criminal charges after a miscarriage or stillbirth for failing to seek immediate medical treatment, not pursuing prenatal care or disposing of the fetal remains in a way that law enforcement or prosecutors considered improper.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/10/31/stillbirth-okl...
Many states prosecute black women who miscarry and one of their claims is that the woman took some (illegal - allegedly) drug that caused the miscarriage.
> In the year after the U.S. Supreme Court dismantled the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022, more than 200 pregnant women faced criminal charges for conduct associated with their pregnancy, pregnancy loss or birth, according to a new report.
https://missouriindependent.com/2024/10/01/200-women-faced-c...
https://www.newsweek.com/texas-gop-meeting-death-penalty-wom...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/30/pregnancy-us...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/after-overturn-of-roe-more...
"Abstract
When Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health first overturned long-standing precedent protecting a woman's fundamental right to abortion, pro-choice leaders issued warnings about the possibility of prosecuting women for abortions. These concerns were dismissed as hysterical or as political theatrics because, in the past, women were rarely prosecuted for their own abortions. This note analyzes the history of illegal abortion before the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade to demonstrate that women were targeted, used as leverage against abortion providers, and sometimes arrested for their roles in the procedure." https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lj/vol69/iss4/11/
It's not illegal to purchase bulk data without a warrant. [1]
It should be.
So yes, there is precedent of prosecutors buying bulk data and using it in prosecutions.
In fact, that's basically a huge part of the "value add" of palantir.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2026/03/25/nx-s1-5752369/ice-surveillanc...
mainly because I have no idea whether it's realistic to imagine what prosecutors do. I can also easily imagine it to be illegal and wildly unrealistic behaviour for a prosecutor, in my ignorance.
> Warrants related to people getting an abortion?
The question here isn't whether abortion is illegal in some states, but about period tracking data could be used as evidence, or justify an investigation - especially data that is seemingly illegally obtained. AFAIK, illegally obtained evidence is normally not valid grounds for investigation, and might actually weaken the case based on "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine.
It's not [1]. There's no safeguards on information available for purchase like this. The US has very little in the way of digital privacy laws.
> especially data that is seemingly illegally obtained.
That's the thing, it's not illegal to sell private data. It's not illegal for prosecutors and cops to buy private data.
It definitely feels like it should be, so I get why you'd think that. Feels aren't the legal code.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2026/03/25/nx-s1-5752369/ice-surveillanc...
In this case, though not covered by HIPAA, it's also not clear there was legal consent to sell this information given it was against their privacy policy.
The latter. Somebody in a town of dumbfucknowhere, OH wakes up, downloads this data from a commercial company obtained legally or not and then charges an actual person with getting an abortion. It is technically possible, I would factor it in my threat model if it was my problem, but does it actually happen?
I see a potential motive for the person doing this -- either promotion, quota hitting, number bullshitting or religious zeal. They can probably get something out it?
And what will people in power do with this information?
[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/07/11/1107741175/texas-abortion-bou...
NO, that's why I asked. As per John Oliver's last week tonight, "Did you know there are countries that are not America?"
It's actually quite difficult to investigate an abortion, though. Abortion isn't "real", in the sense that there's no obvious difference between a natural abortion (read: miscarriage) and a purposeful one.
The thing that means abortion abortion colloquially is the purposeful-ness of it. If you knowingly terminate a pregnancy, that's an abortion. If your body terminates its own pregnancy, for a variety of reasons because the human body is very complicated, that's not an abortion.
Generally trusting people with that nuance is, I think, asking for trouble.
This whole data economy has significantly undermined privacy, including 4th amendment protections.
Facebook previously gave private Messenger chats to Nebraska police, these messages were used as key evidence to charge a mother and daughter over an alleged illegal abortion[1]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/10/facebook-use...