The company behind the Internet’s dominant search engine and the Android software that powers most of the world’s smartphones outlined the new privacy protections in a blog post on Friday. In addition to automatically deleting visits to abortion clinics, Google also listed counseling centers, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics and plastic surgery clinics as other destinations that will be deleted from users’ location histories. Users have always had the option to edit their location histories themselves, but Google will proactively do this for them as an added layer of protection. “We’re committed to providing strong privacy protections for people who use our products, and we’ll continue to look for new ways to strengthen and improve those protections,” Google senior vice president Jen Fitzpatrick wrote in the blog post. A Google spokesman did not immediately respond to questions from Reuters about how the company would track such visits or whether all relevant data would be deleted from its servers. DEMONSTRATION | The abortion provider reacts to the decision:
This Abortion Provider Says ‘Half of the United States Is on Track to Become an Abortion Desert’
Renee Chelian is a US abortion provider and founder of Northland Family Planning Centers. The company’s commitment comes amid escalating pressure on Google and other Big Tech companies to do more to protect the troves of sensitive personal information across their digital services and products from government authorities and other outsiders. Abortion rights advocate Eleanor Wells, 34, wipes away tears during a protest in Los Angeles on June 24, 2022. The Supreme Court ended nearly 50 years of constitutional protections for abortion in a conservative majority decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. (Jae C. Hong/The Associated Press) Calls for tighter privacy controls have been fueled by the recent US Supreme Court ruling that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed constitutional protections for abortion. That reversal could make abortion illegal in more than a dozen states, raising the specter that records of people’s location, texts, searches and emails could be used in prosecutions for abortion procedures or even medical care requested in a miscarriage. Like other tech companies, Google receives thousands of government requests each year for digital user records as part of investigations into misconduct. Google says it fights back against search warrants and other demands that are overly broad or appear unreasonable.
