Legislators are investigating how some technology companies handle abortion-related health information.

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According to a letter from House of Representatives Supervisors Carolyn Maloni and Raja Krishnaamorti on Thursday night, five health brokerage companies and five health monitoring companies are seeking information on the collection, retention and sale of personal health information. Committee, with representative Sarah Jacobs. According to letters from CNN Business, the companies must respond by July 21.

The move comes amid growing fears that Supreme Court Rovi Wade could criminalize personal information, such as location history, health history, messages, and searches, in some states.
Many technology companies have so far refused to comment on how they intend to respond to requests from law enforcement. And online privacy experts have identified data brokers – who collect consumer information from a variety of online sources and have the permission of third parties, especially advertisers – as a special vulnerability because law enforcement may purchase user data instead of extracting it. Standard legal claim.
A big question for tech companies Post-Roe: How to answer law enforcement information questions?

The companies contacted by lawmakers include data brokers SafeGraph, Digital Envoy, Pacer.ai, Gravy Analytics and Babel Street as well as Health Tracking App Operators Flo Health, Glow, BioWink, GP International and Digitalchemy Ventures. In recent weeks, some menstrual and birth control apps, including Flon, have announced an “anonymous” mode that will help protect users.

In the letters, the legislators asked information brokers, for example, a list of buyers related to income from local information sales and family planning clinics or abortion services. You also request health monitoring applications “Documentation and Links for Private Reproductive or Sexual Health Information”. Voluntary or legal response, as well as communication with state and local governments about such information.

Collecting confidential information poses a serious threat to those seeking reproductive care and such caregivers, not only by facilitating government intervention but also by harassing, intimidating, and even assaulting people. Legislators wrote.

Congress has passed a new law protecting the privacy of the United States following a Supreme Court ruling, and last month a group of senators passed a law barring brokers from selling health and environmental information. “Congress is considering legislative reforms to ensure the privacy of personal reproductive and sexual health information, and we are investigating the practice of information brokers and other companies regarding the collection, dissemination, and sale of this personal information,” Maloni, Krishnaamorti and Jacobs wrote in their Thursday letters.

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