Additionally, many of the traditional methods of remaining relatively anonymous on the Internet may begin to disappear. Given that agencies bound by the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires libraries and schools to ban access to content that may be “harmful to minors,” must decide whether to allow public access to abortion information.
Mass surveillance is so normalized that the fundamental way we operate in the world ends up helping these technologies become more sophisticated. If you are seeking, offering or facilitating abortion, there are practical steps you can take to protect your digital footprint: perform a risk assessment, communicate via Signal and enable disappearing messages, use a VPN on your smartphone and computer, use DuckDuckGo instead of Google, Familiarity with existing surveillance technologies such as traffic cameras, facial recognition and data scrapping, enable two-factor authorization, log out of all accounts (yes, even with an incognito browser), connect to WiFi only in public places that don’t require you to authenticate, transfer funds out of third-party apps instantly (and eat them up) transfer fees), use cash or prepaid cards whenever possible. Organize as much offline as possible.
If you organize publicly, please don’t post anything that could be used to influence you. As a sex worker, I take precautions for my own safety, including concealing my birthday, age, ethnic background, hometown, current city, previous city, commute, alma mater, graduation year, time zone, weather, current employers, past employers, and even my favorite color. When I post photos, I Photoshop my face and tattoos, and I never expose my natural hair. If I post a screenshot, I’ll cut off the time and any timestamps.
I know this sounds paranoid. These precautions seem excessive; the algorithms seem dystopian. But the oppression these technologies generate are insidious and pervasive, and those trying to spy on us have long refined the tools to do so. That’s why sex workers are hunted in the first place: because they know no one’s going to listen to us until you’ve googled “menstrual delay for two weeks.”
when i start want to know why The way people behave, I answer this question with a question: “What is seven minus yellow?” Unanswerable, and more importantly, irrelevant. I cannot infer the motives of others, even if I can infer that their motives have nothing to do with the effects of their actions.Thinking about this is a waste of time at best, and in roeto entangle and entangle the judge’s intentions is to put a feather in a knife fight.
That said, we can dissect these decisions and try to speculate on how this legislation will affect us. The first step is to let go of any lingering trust you have in the integrity of the country.
Neither the intent nor the effect of FOSTA exists, or Dobbs It’s the eradication of sex work or abortion, which has been around for thousands of years and will continue to exist regardless of its legality. Remember: these measures are not about the law; they are about power. These laws slowly and systematically exclude certain populations from social participation by codifying cultural biases that have been implemented. So while some will face arrest and many more will experience nightmares of unwanted pregnancies or infertility, the legislation’s broadest impact will be a chill in free speech and the systematic de-platforming of abortion activists from society. change. Media and financial institutions, they will protect themselves from liability at our expense.
