A brand new Senate invoice seeks to develop well being knowledge privateness protections.

After Roe’s reversal, activists and knowledge privateness specialists started warning interval app customers to delete their apps. Customers would log their intervals which might permit the app to study an individual’s cycle and is ready to predict their fertility home windows and immediate customers once they may have to take a being pregnant check. Privateness specialists raised issues over the likelihood that knowledge collected by these apps may very well be used to establish folks in search of abortions in states the place abortions have been banned and criminalized. The brand new invoice titled, “Upholding Protections for Well being and On-line Location Knowledge (UPHOLD) Privateness Act” goals to stop that.

Ought to it go, the invoice would give shoppers extra possession over their well being knowledge and prohibit firms’ potential to gather or use private well being data with out client consent. Moreover, it will ban the usage of personally figuring out knowledge for promoting whether or not that be collected from shoppers, health trackers, medical facilities, or shopping historical past.

The laws was launched by Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, and Mazie Hirono. “Because the reversal of Roe, knowledge brokers and tech companies have continued to revenue from the non-public well being and site knowledge of tens of millions of Individuals, together with these in search of reproductive well being care companies,” mentioned Warren in an announcement.(Opens in a brand new tab) “The UPHOLD Privateness Act would defend shoppers’ delicate knowledge and their proper to privateness.”

After Roe’s reversal, many interval monitoring apps made updates and statements assuring customers’ knowledge is secure — Flo launched “Nameless Mode” which removes identifiable person data, Glow mentioned it has by no means and can by no means promote person knowledge, and Stardust introduced it makes use of end-to-end encryption for all customers — but it surely nonetheless stays to be seen what would occur if legislation enforcement requested interval monitoring app knowledge to be turned over.

“With Republicans working to ban and criminalize reproductive well being care nationwide, it’s crucial we safeguard the reproductive knowledge privateness of everybody in our nation,” mentioned Hirono in an announcement. “Everybody ought to be capable to belief that private knowledge about their our bodies and their well being care will likely be protected.”

The invoice was solely simply launched, within the meantime, this is the right way to donate to abortion funds and reproductive justice networks throughout the nation.