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Warren Proposes Sweeping Ban on Location and Health Data Sales (theverge.com) 227

As the Supreme Court's expected decision to overturn Roe v. Wade looms over Washington, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has announced sweeping legislation to ban the sale of location and health data. From a report: Warren's Health and Location Protection Act -- cosponsored by a slate of Democratic senators, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) -- would bar "data brokers from selling or transferring location data and health data." There are few limitations, making the bill one of the most strident proposals aimed at regulating data sales. "Data brokers profit from the location data of millions of people, posing serious risks to Americans everywhere by selling their most private information," Warren said in a statement on Wednesday. "With this extremist Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and states seeking to criminalize essential health care, it is more crucial than ever for Congress to protect consumers' sensitive data."
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Warren Proposes Sweeping Ban on Location and Health Data Sales

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  • by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2022 @11:29PM (#62623844)

    but they wont rest until they outlaw it country-wide.

    whatever happend to 'states rights'? we all knew it was bullshit but its super clear, now. they only want states rights when it goes their way.

    if a woman travels to another state, what business is it of yours? why can't people mind their own business and let women make their own decisions.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2022 @11:45PM (#62623872)

      why can't people mind their own business and let women make their own decisions.

      Authoritarians cannot deal with people making their own decisions. They have to control everything and everybody. Just as if that had ever worked out well in human history or was compatible with any reasonable moral principles. But they cannot help themselves, and the usually rationalize it as "being right" (universally ignoring observable reality) or "being on a mission from god / the great leader / all that is right and proper / etc." As long as we, as the human race, fail to make sure these people stop doing damage, this crap will continue.

      • Authoritarians cannot deal with people making their own decisions. They have to control everything and everybody.

        Thank God for the Freedom fighters to ensure the authoritarians don't stop our slide into all-encompasing corporate control!

        Don't tread on my freedom to have facebook control every aspect of my waking life!

      • Authoritarians cannot deal with people making their own decisions. They have to control everything and everybody.

        False, they only hate women. There's not a single piece of legislation that regulates in any way what a man can do with his body. ... Unless you count legislation that subsidises erection pills and you won't see that getting overturned by the limp-dick republicans in congress anytime soon.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          False, they only hate women.

          It is nowhere near that simple. Have you looked at what happens to men after a divorce, for example?

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by sabbede ( 2678435 )
          So, you're saying that the people who want men to be able to avoid their responsibility to the women they sleep with are the ones who love them the most? Did you know that more men support abortion than women? It's not by much, something like 51:49 vs 49:51, but interesting.

          But you know what? There's another question here that needs answering. What the hell does any of that have to do with the bill Warren introduced? "I support abortion, so we need to pass new consumer data laws!" What? Sounds lik

          • by Nugoo ( 1794744 ) on Thursday June 16, 2022 @08:26AM (#62624738)

            Did you know that more men support abortion than women? It's not by much, something like 51:49 vs 49:51, but interesting

            I'll call you out on this. You're misinformed or lying.

            https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/ [pewresearch.org]
            https://news.gallup.com/poll/245618/abortion-trends-gender.aspx [gallup.com]

            From the Pew Research page:

            Majorities of both men and women express support for legal abortion, though women are somewhat more likely than men to hold this view (63% vs. 58%).

            Another interesting graph on the Pew Research page is the "Views on abortion by religious affiliation" one, where it shows that the only religious demographic that is overall opposed to abortion in all circumstances is white evangelical Protestants.

          • by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Thursday June 16, 2022 @09:00AM (#62624854) Homepage Journal

            There's another question here that needs answering. What the hell does any of that have to do with the bill Warren introduced? "I support abortion, so we need to pass new consumer data laws!" What? Sounds like a total non-sequitur to me.

            Okay. Let's go over it.

            You may have noticed an increasing trend where government wants to investigate The People (either for specific crimes, or just trawling for whatever they can find) but they keep running into that damn 4th Amendment.

            But the courts have long upheld that the 4th is only a limit on what the government can do, not what can be done. Private actors are free to gather whatever information they're able to, and especially in the modern age, a lot of this information is sent by people's user-agents to private actors. The upshot is that private databases contain a lot of information about people that the government would love to have (in order to support actions against those people) but can't legally receive directly from the people. But getting indirectly, by purchasing it from whoever did the surveillance, is apparently legal.

            Lately, a lot of states' legislatures have enacted new laws indicating an increased interest in abortion. They would like to more easily detect when abortion has happened, and who might have been involved. Normally this would be a futile desire because abortion produces virtually no external effect in the world -- an act without any consequences to others.

            But it's been fashionable and practical for the last decade or two for people to carry little computers around, with radios which constantly talk to other computers, and those other computers remember who they talked to and where. The upshot is that if a layman consumer buys a phone and uses its default settings, they create records in private databases of everywhere they have been.

            This is useful for governments, if they want to establish that patients and providers were in the same place at the same time. Putting a government camera in the parking lot for purposes of establishing this would be illegal, but buying the same data from private databases is not currently illegal.

            Oh, and putting cameras in parking lots for these purposes can, under some circumstances, be illegal for two reasons, which is easy to forget. Sure, there's the 4th amendment. But another one that people might forget, is that the parking lot might be out of jurisdiction.

            So, for example, the state of Texas might want to know who is visiting a clinic in eastern New Mexico, but the New Mexico government won't cooperate because FUCK YOU AND YOUR POLICE STATE. But it's still legal for Texas to buy who-was-where information about people in New Mexico, from these private parties.

            Warren's legislation appears to be intended to cause the results that a state like Texas would get, to be similar to what they would get in a lower-tech world, where people weren't constantly telling private databases where they have been. It's intended to cause life-under-the-4th-amendment in 2022 to be the same as life-under-the-4th-amendment in 1791.

            While many of us think that conservatives won't ever be able to bring back the good ol' days of the 18th century, I do sometimes get the impression that we're the minority and there actually is fairly widespread support for preserving the intent of the 4th amendment despite its technological obsolescence. Warren is obviously banking on the hope that the 4th amendment is still popular, not yet swept aside by newer attitudes.

          • Did you know that more men support abortion than women? It's not by much, something like 51:49 vs 49:51, but interesting.

            I'd be interested in a cite for those numbers. Is that a corrected figure based only only people who support abortion and what percentage are male vs female?

            They stand out as quite wrong in general with pro-abortion group being a clear majority (and has been consistently across all polls for a long time).
            https://www.npr.org/2022/06/03... [npr.org]
            https://www.pewresearch.org/fa... [pewresearch.org]

            This one breaks down the numbers and shows while the trend moved in the right direction it's actually 48:61 in favour of women: https://news [gallup.com]

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday June 15, 2022 @11:50PM (#62623880)

      if a woman travels to another state, what business is it of yours? why can't people mind their own business and let women make their own decisions.

      Republican politicians don't really care about anti-abortion, just that it riles up the ultra conservative portion of their base, gets votes and donations to keep them in power. /cynical

      • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday June 16, 2022 @01:48AM (#62624012)

        Indeed. Good example: Trump. He used to be pro-abortion and did not care about religion. As soon as he wanted do get elected, he changes all this to what got him the most votes. No moral compass, just do whatever it takes to get power. While there are examples on the right side of the political spectrum as well(in the US: "Democrats"), on the ultra-right side (US: "Republicans") it is hard to find politicians that do not work like this.

        • by gtall ( 79522 )

          Now, now, the former alleged president had a spiritual advisor, Dr. Paula White. She's one of those Prosperity Preachers (naturally) like Joel Olsteen who wouldn't open his Church to displaced people when some hurricane came through Houston a while back.

          It does say something about the Republican party, which says it believes in individual responsibility and rights, that it sold it little black soul to an authoritarian dingbat.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Some conservatives do care about abortion, and not just for religious reasons. If women have more control over their fertility then they will gain more equality, which they see as a zero sum game meaning that any benefits women see will be a detriment to men.

        • Name the people with that view. Show us that you aren't just building straw men.
          • You can start with listing every name of every senator trying to reject medicaid support for planned parenthood, while at the same time supporting subsidies for the little blue pill.

            There's zero abortion related reason to support contraceptives for only one gender while trying to ban them for another. Wieland wasn't the only human shitstain in support of such a measure.

      • by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Thursday June 16, 2022 @07:17AM (#62624504)
        While I think that's probably true in some cases, I think there are plenty of Republican politicians who grew up in environments where they were taught that abortion was ethically equivalent to murder.

        More than that, though, I don't think it's helpful to assume bad faith, either in an individual or general sense. Even if you genuinely think all Republican politicians are cackling Saturday morning cartoon villains rather than people who grew up in environments that taught different (and sometimes incompatible) values to your own, it's important to assume good faith when engaging with people you disagree with purely for pragmatic reasons (e.g., actually accomplishing anything). If you always assume the people on the "other side" are acting in bad faith, then you also assume they have nothing worthwhile to say, that they have no concern for ethics or truth, and that there's no reason to listen, engage, compromise, etc. This undermines the entire foundation of debate and ensures deadlock; why even talk at that point?

        Even if others won't afford you the same courtesy, it's important to try to engage with the assumption of good faith. This is something I've always tried to do, even in the face of people assuming the worst of me or insulting me. Because eventually, if you engage people as actual human beings instead of assuming they're cackling villains, they'll start to do the same back to you, and from there you can sometimes start to find common ground or tolerable compromises in situations where common ground isn't possible. Without that, I don't think it's possible to live together peacefully with people of different values in the long term.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      If Roe is overturned, it would turn abortion in to an actual political issue where voters would get to choose the morality of it. It would no longer be some litmus test for potential Justices and remove the political aspect from the Court. It would only be outlawed nation-wide if voters in every state supported local politicians that promise to outlaw abortion because it would become a 'states rights' issue rather than en edict from a Federal Court. The Court would not be outlawing it (it would be correc

      • by Deal In One ( 6459326 ) on Thursday June 16, 2022 @03:27AM (#62624104)

        Having it outlawed in every state would make a great number of people happy. Not because they're anti-woman, but because they believe in the value of human life. .

        Right, value of human life. /s

        What of the value of the pregnant woman's life?

        Or for that matter, the value of the child's life, after the woman has given birth?

        I don't see cheap / free childcare services being talked about.

      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        Getting Roe thrown out is only the first step. They'll be in Congress advocating a nationwide ban on all abortions unless Republican wives really, really want one.

        • Yes, they will, and they won't achieve it so long as significant opposition remains among the voters.

          Now, obviously, a far larger problem in the U.S.A. is simply the plurality-takes-all voting systems which allows minority rules and ideas that aren' that popular to take shape, as well as of course that one only has two actual options to choose from when voting, which affects this issue and everyone else.

        • Except that overturning Roe and Casey would make it a State, not Federal matter. Congress would have no say.
      • by Merk42 ( 1906718 )

        Likewise, a handful of states would go to the opposite extreme and have abortion with no limits at all, including after birth.

        Literally no one is advocating for an abortion 'after birth'.
        Though, if they want a post birth abortion, they'll just send the kid to public school and wait for him to be shot because MUH 2ND AMENDMENT.

      • by Nugoo ( 1794744 )

        Having it outlawed in every state would make a great number of people happy. Not because they're anti-woman, but because they believe in the value of human life. They won't rest advocating for what they believe in because it is a deeply moral issue to them.

        I'll repost a comment I've made previously about this:

        I would have an easier time accepting the conservative opposition to abortion if they weren't also opposed to comprehensive sex education, widely and freely available contraception, cheap health care, and a strong welfare state. They claim to care about the life of the child, but that claim rings hollow to me in light of the above.

        My current working hypothesis, which fits all the data I've seen so far, is that conservatives believe that women (and only w

      • If it gets overturned, my guess is that a handful of states will outright ban abortion except in cases of rape/incest.

        Why would you guess that? Some legislators have already drafted laws with specifically *no* carveout for rape/incest.

        but because they believe in the value of human life.

        Horseshit. The pro-birthers don't give a flying fuck about human life. That is clear. They have shown they want unwanted children born into abject poverty. They have shown they wanted medically unviable children born regardless of disfigurement or disabilities they will be stuck with for their statistically short life. And above all they have shown they want a medically unviable birth to occu

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      When they can tell people how to live, they feel they are virtue signaling God to accept their sorry asses into Heaven when they go tits up. Somehow, God being all-powerful prevents Him from fending for Himself and requires these Quislings to help him out.

    • whatever happend to 'states rights'? we all knew it was bullshit but its super clear, now. they only want states rights when it goes their way.

      Just like everyone else; just like every other “right”

      “rights” have been a farce since the dawn of man. — Freedom is not so much a delusion granted to the weak by the strong, as it is a delusion granted to the weak-minded, by themselves./p.

    • by indytx ( 825419 )

      but they wont rest until they outlaw it country-wide.

      whatever happend to 'states rights'? we all knew it was bullshit but its super clear, now. they only want states rights when it goes their way.

      if a woman travels to another state, what business is it of yours? why can't people mind their own business and let women make their own decisions.

      This issue is bigger than abortion. There's a great episode of the Throughline podcast from a few years ago about the rise of the anti-abortion movement. Apocalypse Now [npr.org] Everyone should be paying attention. Some really powerful forces have been playing a long, long game.

    • by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Thursday June 16, 2022 @06:42AM (#62624410)
      How is putting States in charge of abortion law contrary to State's rights? You are describing what is literally the return of authority over a matter that formally belongs to the States, to the States, as contrary to their rights.

      Under every formulation of the claimed right to an abortion the authority to regulate it should belong to the States. Even the absurd marketing claim that ending life is healthcare puts it under the States sovereign authority over public health. If you consider it an unenumerated right, well the 10th Amendment says the power to say so is not a Federal matter - "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

      Yes, pro-life advocates want it banned everywhere, but the potential decision would not do that. Do you think California will ban abortion if given the chance? What about Illinois or New York? Jersey? Maryland? No, it will just make a question that is no less controversial today than it was almost 50 years ago, one that is answered much closer to the People. Why shouldn't Georgia get to decide for Georgia and Vermont for Vermont?

    • but they wont rest until they outlaw it country-wide.

      whatever happend to 'states rights'? we all knew it was bullshit but its super clear, now. they only want states rights when it goes their way.

      if a woman travels to another state, what business is it of yours? why can't people mind their own business and let women make their own decisions.

      Well, it's all connected, but another piece of the puzzle seems to be:

      Allow enough time for any given private company to either get the maximum money out of the situation and/or change their business model to exploit the change before we make the change.

      So, if we get what we need here, it won't be for a few years, and the horses are sure to be out of the barn by then.

  • Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Thursday June 16, 2022 @12:17AM (#62623920)

    Ban the selling location and health data, yes.

    How about banning the collection of location and health data? Wouldn't that make more sense?

    As in, if you provide a service that needs location or health data, your service must use the information and then forget it. The moment you record it, you break the law.

    • Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday June 16, 2022 @02:49AM (#62624070)

      How about banning the collection of location and health data? Wouldn't that make more sense?

      No. Collecting health data is critical for providing healthcare. Yet there's zero benefit to being able to sell it to another party. Even if you say ban the collection without signing a waver, people will still sign the waver since they will be forced to to receive healthcare so a law banning the sale is still required.

      Forgetting past health treatments is a recipe for feeding addiction, incorrect diagnosis, accidental overdoses, incorrect prescriptions, etc. Modern medical diagnosis will simply not function without recording the results of the several people involved.

      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        How about banning the collection of location and health data? Wouldn't that make more sense?

        No. Collecting health data is critical for providing healthcare. Yet there's zero benefit to being able to sell it to another party. Even if you say ban the collection without signing a waver, people will still sign the waver since they will be forced to to receive healthcare so a law banning the sale is still required.

        Forgetting past health treatments is a recipe for feeding addiction, incorrect diagnosis, accidental overdoses, incorrect prescriptions, etc. Modern medical diagnosis will simply not function without recording the results of the several people involved.

        This. Also on a more personal level. I migrated from Australia to the UK and started with a blank slate on the NHS, I wish I could have signed a form that said "yes Medicare (Australia) please share my medical history with the (UK) National Health Service".

        What I (or anyone else with half a brain) wants is for private organisations to be selling our medical data to all and sundry. Come to think of it, nor public organisations (though, they're better controlled than private ones).

      • Also, I find the location history aspect of Google Maps (timeline) indispensable. I share my location with my wife and she with me for safety reasons and because it is very convenient to know where the other person is. I trust my wife with this information but I wouldn't necessarily want that information to be sold to anyone else.

  • by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Thursday June 16, 2022 @01:27AM (#62623996) Homepage

    That is the basis of protection of personal data in Europe. It stops a lot of bad exploitation of personal data.

    It would also make life much easier for corporations if they had to work with the same rules in the USA and Europe.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday June 16, 2022 @01:51AM (#62624016)

      Well, Europe is not in flames or completely economically destroyed as result of the GDPR. But it is likely that some people make a little less money and in the US, that is a big no-no.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Maybe European companies make more money, because people are more willing to trust them with personal information since the law prevents them from selling it and otherwise abusing it without consent.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Maybe European companies make more money, because people are more willing to trust them with personal information since the law prevents them from selling it and otherwise abusing it without consent.

          That is actually a possibility. I have no numbers and they would probably not be comparable anyways. But it is nice that you can here, for example, hand out your phone number to a vendor and they a) do not call you except if there really is an issue and b) do not sell your number either.

    • Large corporations love heavy handed government regulations. They require lots of expensive lawyers, thus keeping small companies that cannot afford all those lawyers from competing and taking market share.

      • Well, they generally don't because it still costs them more than they might lose to competitors, but you do have a point about the effects. Though I'm sure there are specific cases where you are completely right.
  • by SkOink ( 212592 ) on Thursday June 16, 2022 @05:07AM (#62624250) Homepage

    This bill won't be allowed to pass.

    Police routinely buy warrantless location data from brokers - one of those fun tricks that erodes our civil liberties. And the police lobby always vigorously opposes any bill that reduces or limits their power.

    As much as we might want this bill - don't get your hopes up.

    • This bill won't be allowed to pass.

      Police routinely buy warrantless location data from brokers - one of those fun tricks that erodes our civil liberties. And the police lobby always vigorously opposes any bill that reduces or limits their power.

      As much as we might want this bill - don't get your hopes up.

      You're dreaming if you think Warren is doing anything that will limit the police's ability to spy on you.

    • by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      There's an explicit carve-out to allow law enforcement access to private data.

      Note that the law doesn't ban the collection of private health and location data, just selling it. And it explicitly allows companies to give access to the government.

      I'm not entirely clear how that squares with the stated goal of preventing law enforcement from getting access to location information to punish people who illegal get abortions, but you'd have to ask Warren that.

    • This bill won't be allowed to pass.

      Police routinely buy warrantless location data from brokers - one of those fun tricks that erodes our civil liberties. And the police lobby always vigorously opposes any bill that reduces or limits their power.

      As much as we might want this bill - don't get your hopes up.

      On the other hand, big tech (FAANG, basically) will likely lobby in favor of this bill. They mostly don't sell data anyway, because they have the people and the systems that make them better able to monetize the data by selling services that make use of data rather than by selling data. So banning the sale of data would destroy a lot of their bottom-feeding competition, forcing a lot of the customers of those competitors to come buy services from big tech, since they'll no longer be able to get the data the

  • The bill would bar "data brokers from selling or transferring location data and health data."

    How about applying it to government?
    The government should be prohibited from purchasing, selling or transferring this data without a warrant.
    FOIA requests can not be denied for information on government data transfers of Americans' personal data

    Data brokers should not have health data
    Americans should be able to compel data brokers to delete all data associated with them

  • the dems are almost certainly going to lose the Senate and possibly the house (despite having more votes for both, nationally for the Senate but at the state level for the House). The GOP will block everything for 2 years so they can blame the mess on the Democrats in the hopes of putting Trump back in the Whitehouse in 2024. And then, well, after that they're just not going to let anyone vote democrat. [atlantaciviccircle.org] One Party Rule it is.

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