{"id":19501,"date":"2022-07-04T03:10:12","date_gmt":"2022-07-04T11:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2022\/07\/04\/news-13234\/"},"modified":"2022-07-04T03:10:12","modified_gmt":"2022-07-04T11:10:12","slug":"news-13234","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2022\/07\/04\/news-13234\/","title":{"rendered":"My Body, My Data Act would lock down reproductive and sexual health data"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: David Ruiz| Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2022 10:36:11 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

A new bill entered into both the House of Representatives and the Senate proposes the strongest Federal data privacy protections yet for an increasingly scrutinized form of data in the United States\u2014reproductive and sexual health data.<\/p>\n

The \u201cMy Body, My Data Act of 2022<\/a>\u201d was announced in early June in response to a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that reported to show the Court\u2019s intentions to overturn a seminal decision from 1973 that guaranteed a Constitutional right to have a choice to an abortion. Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-CA), sponsor of the bill in the House of Representatives, said in a press release that she was focused on protecting reproductive health data in light of the new,  judicial threat.<\/p>\n

“Since the Supreme Court leak, I\u2019ve heard from so many people who are panicked about their personal reproductive health data falling into the wrong hands,\u201d Jacobs said.<\/a> \u201cThe My Body, My Data Act will protect that information, protect our privacy, and reaffirm our rights to make our own decisions about our bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill, which has 46 cosponsors in the House and 11 cosponsors in the Senate, would stop companies from collecting, using, retaining, and disclosing \u201cpersonal reproductive or sexual health information\u201d unless a company first receives express consent from a user or if a company is using such information to specifically deliver a service that a user has requested. The bill\u2019s definition of \u201cpersonal reproductive or sexual health information\u201d is broad, including any information that could reveal a person\u2019s attempts to \u201cresearch or obtain\u201d reproductive health services, any reproductive or sexual health conditions, such as pregnancy, menstruation, and whether a person is sexually active, and any information about procedures that a person has undergone related to reproductive or sexual health.<\/p>\n

If passed, the bill would also extend new rights to consumers to access and delete personal reproductive or sexual health information from the companies that collect it.<\/p>\n

Since the bill\u2019s announcement last month, it has only gained more attention.<\/p>\n

On June 24, the Supreme Court decided in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization<\/em> that the right to an abortion, which was guaranteed under a right to privacy as decided in 1973, was not \u201cdeeply rooted in this Nation’s history or tradition.\u201d Voting 6 \u2013 3, the Court overturned Roe v. Wade<\/em>.<\/p>\n

With the Court\u2019s decision, immediate fear arose that reproductive health data could be requested by law enforcement only to be used as evidence to prosecute individuals seeking abortions\u2014or even those who miscarried. The Digital Defense Fund responded to the Court\u2019s decision by updating its resources<\/a> on how individuals can keep their reproductive health decisions both private and secure. The group\u2019s resources include a section on keeping reproductive health data out of the hands of \u201cBig Tech.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further, several period-tracking apps independently announced efforts to anonymize user data<\/a> so that even if law enforcement requested data about certain users, those companies could not respond in a meaningful way. Users have reportedly flocked<\/a> to period-tracking apps that are making these promises, but as TechCrunch recently uncovered<\/a>, one such company that announced new, pro-user plans last week\u2014Stardust\u2014was still sharing users\u2019 phone numbers with third parties.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cTechCrunch ran a network traffic analysis of Stardust\u2019s iPhone app on Monday to understand what data was flowing in and out of the app. The network traffic showed that if a user logs into the app using their phone number (rather than through a login service provided by Apple or Google), Stardust will periodically share the user\u2019s phone number with a third-party analytics service called Mixpanel.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

TechCrunch also reported that Stardust\u2019s efforts to bring \u201cend-to-end encryption\u201d were potentially faulty, as the company\u2019s founder described a data transfer process that may only provide encryption for data in transit and for data that is stored on Amazon\u2019s web servers.  <\/p>\n

The period-tracking app morass is familiar, then: Once again, users in America of any number of services are left to independently manage their interactions with companies that could be sharing their data with an immeasurable number of third parties which, to most consumers, are entirely unknown.<\/p>\n

The My Body, My Data Act could change that, requiring new restrictions not on how data is technologically stored, but on whether such data is ever collected in the first place.<\/p>\n

The bill also includes what is called a \u201cprivate right of action,\u201d meaning that consumers who have had their privacy rights violated under the law could be able to sue individual companies for those violations. The inclusion of a private right of action is exceedingly rare in nearly any data privacy law that has been introduced in both statewide legislation and before the Federal government. <\/p>\n

The bill is currently supported by Planned Parenthood, NARAL, National Abortion Federation, URGE, National Partnership for Women & Families, and Feminist Majority.<\/p>\n

The post My Body, My Data Act would lock down reproductive and sexual health data<\/a> appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/blog.malwarebytes.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: David Ruiz| Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2022 10:36:11 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

A new bill proposes the strongest Federal data privacy protections yet for reproductive and sexual health data.<\/p>\n

The post My Body, My Data Act would lock down reproductive and sexual health data<\/a> appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10488,10378],"tags":[6102,11063,21400,21401,26821,26822,26823,26824,26825,26826,5897,8220,26827,26828,26829,26830,30,26831],"class_list":["post-19501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malwarebytes","category-security","tag-abortion","tag-data-privacy","tag-data-privacy-law","tag-data-privacy-legislation","tag-dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization","tag-my-body-my-data","tag-my-body-my-data-act","tag-period","tag-period-tracking","tag-period-tracking-app","tag-privacy","tag-reproductive-health","tag-roe-v-wade","tag-sara-jacobs","tag-scotus","tag-sexual-health","tag-supreme-court","tag-supreme-court-of-the-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}