Jailed by a Google Search: the Surveillance State’s War on Self-induced Abortion – Pigeon
Abstract
Far from a chapter in A Handmaids Tale, today those who try, succeed, or even consider ending their own pregnancies are arrested and imprisoned, often incriminated by their own devices. We have the opportunity to lend our security skills to those disproportionately likely to experience surveillance: those seeking to self-induce abortions by ordering medication online. We’ll cover what the portal to online care (and resulting digital paper trail) looks like, and why “single-use” privacy needs are the next major challenge in protecting our digital reproductive rights.
Bio
Pigeon is Director of a security nonprofit and organizer of civic hackathons. A self-professed tech regulatory nerd, she leads a team building technologies for safer abortion access, security research and open data projects to reinforce government and tech company accountability to reproductive rights. In her free time she recreationally files FOIA requests, fundraises for abortions, and builds and plays games.