Police forces are already buying data. Many apps like this exist pretty much solely to collect and sell data, and to throw you some ads. Why would you not expect police forces to purchase _this_ data?
Would love to see your source that makes you confident these apps are secure against subpoena and/or simply buying access to the data and trawling through it.
If you consider that anti-abortion groups have gone to the extreme effort of creating fake abortion clinics in order to ensnare unwitting women to divulge information about pregnancies they intend to terminate, then how is it "fear mongering nonsense" that the information in these fertility apps might be used for similar purposes?
I could reasonably see those same groups creating their own app or buying an existing app and feeding the information to law enforcement that's willing to work with them.
Their websites literally call themselves "[Location] Women's Clinic" and their tag line is something along the lines of "Take control. Start with a free abortion consultation today."
Yup. Even in cases where they don't use "clinic" specifically, it's still something deliberately misleading. I used to live near a "Pregnancy Crisis Center" that was styled very much to look like a walk-in clinic; it was no such thing.
A [dead to me] family member of mine works at one. When she's there she straight up pretends to be a medical professional, dressing up in scrubs and everything and gives medical advice she's entirely unqualified to give.
> What do these apps collect that prove that a user received an abortion?
I'm skimming the article and yes, I don't see that mentioned anywhere, despite that being the lynchpin of the whole article.
I suppose a pregnancy would throw off a woman's menstrual cycle, but so can many other things. No way that a mere scheduling change of a woman's period would hold up in court as evidence of an an illegal abortion.
One of the interviewees also implies that states will start criminalizing miscarriage, which is just idiotic. Nobody involved in this article has actually thought these ideas through.
It's entirely plausible that a miscarriage might draw police or bounty-hunter scrutiny. Even if this doesn't lead to a prosecution—which is not guaranteed, since inappropriate and poorly-motivated prosecutions take place all the time—it's not exactly pleasant.
Misleading headline. That woman induced the miscarriage by using hard drugs while pregnant - perhaps unintentionally, but it was still a consequence of her decisions.
I of course was speaking of uninduced miscarriages, which happens shockingly often - one in four pregnancies, if my memory serves me correctly from the time it happened to me and my ex.
A 10-year-old girl was refused an abortion in Ohio recently. Justice Thomas is talking about going after contraception protections. I don’t think anything is inconceivable at this point.
There was no evidence that the drug use caused the miscarriage as far as I know. And from some statements I've seen from doctors there is no general known mechanism for meth to cause miscarriages.
If a user has regular cycles for 2 years, then a late period, then the cycle resumes slightly offset, that could be a pretty solid hint. There are plenty of examples of women being arrested for miscarrying [1], which is more than enough reason to strongly advise anyone using a period tracking app to stop.
They don’t, they provide evidence of how along the pregnancy was when the abortion was performed.
Ohio for example has just enacted a 6 week abortion ban (which for non uterus havers is effectively a total ban).
* If someone from an absorption clinic fudged the paperwork to put you under 6 weeks period tracker app data can be subpoenaed to provide evidence otherwise.
* In states that are trying to make it illegal to have an abortion anywhere if you get pregnant, travel out of state or out of country to abort, and then are witch hunted by someone they can again subpoena your period tracker to provide evidence that you were pregnant.
Given the potential profit in detecting when a woman is pregnant (see famous target story), I find it hart to believe you couldn't infer something from actual biometric data.
If a user reports a regular cycle then reports no periods for a couple months then resumes a regular cycle it could be an indicator that the person was pregnant and their pregnancy ended. That information then could then be used against them to accuse them of having an abortion.
It doesn't matter in the end if the person had a miscarriage, had an abortion, or was never pregnant in the first place - it could still be used as "evidence" if someone wanted to go after them.
you are a either a blithering moron, or acting in bad faith
few people are saying "the gestapo will literally be called to your house the second you miss a period in a red state"
but rather, that this data can and will be used as collaborating evidence in a criminal trial.
a state prosecuting an abortion will have to prove the person is actually pregnant, and there is zero reason to believe they wouldn't use this data as one more tool in their arsenal building a rock solid case. it's not as if people undergoing illegal abortions are going to have good records that can be looked up otherwise
Feels like the argument that people are overreacting will be made every step of the way. The last Roe thread had many posters claiming that the SCOTUS decision is fine because "it just leaves it up to the states" even though the clear, stated goal of Republican lawmakers is to ban abortion nationally. I can't tell if these arguments are being made in bad faith or it's just denial.
>I can't tell if these arguments are being made in bad faith or it's just denial.
I think it's a combination of denial and an absurdly strong desire to be seen as "above the political fray." That or they're all auditioning for writers positions at The Atlantic.
To be honest, there is a lot of this on HN. These are intelligent people. It really baffles me. "Yeah, we have a lot of evidence that the US form of government survived this time only due to a chain of extremely fortunate events, and the VP and some senators got nearly executed, but you are missing the bigger picture of history, stop freaking out". They said - without a hint of irony.
Let's do a thought experiment: say the speed limit in State X is 60mph. In State Y is it is 70mph.
If you went to State Y and drove at 70mph there, will the police in State X arrest you when you come back because you went over 60mph, even though the claimed "offence" was in a different jurisdiction where it was totally legal?
This whole thing about people having abortions where it is 100% legal (or even just - heaven forbid - tracking menstrual cycles) and then getting into trouble for it in places where abortion is not legal seems really weird. I can't believe it is being discussed in the US - this is like something out of Afghanistan.
Yes, but this and the Dred Scott decision backfired on the slaveowning South so badly that they, ironically, cried "states rights" for the next century or so.
When there is a federal law about it sure, plenty of precedence, but that's a very different case. Here there is no federal law one way or the other about the situation and it's unlikely the current congress would be able to pass such a law. This lack of federal stance is where the impact of the judicial ruling changing comes from.
There are certain precedents: if you travel abroad to have sex with children, or commit espionage or terrorism against your home country, you can be prosecuted in the US even if what you did was "100% legal" in the jurisdiction where the acts physically took place.
Applying this kind of logic to speeding or indeed healthcare does seem like an overreach of government - but in general Americans who support women's reproductive rights favour more government overreach, not less.
It's just a smear. Biased language ("overreach") addressing generalities rather than specifics is how you nudge people toward "this group is bad, because they favor [biased language bad thing that everyone agrees is bad—what, are you going to defend 'overreach'? Of course not]".
The Republicans chose abortion as a way to create safe voters for their party and voter disgust for the opposing party. Now they've won (at a state level) and they need to keep those voters. They must continue the battle even after it's already won.
The best thing you can ever have as a political party is a base of rabid single issue voters who want something that reasonable people don't.
You get to count on their vote by default, so you don't have to consider or campaign towards anything else they want.
It's especially good when these single issue voters are so extreme that the party can slip in policies that are against their other interests but still get their vote.
NPR's extensive coverage of Trump voters after the '16 election came up with quite a few cases of heavily religion-oriented voters who were like "yeah, he's obviously a huge piece of shit, but I 'prayed on it' and voted for him anyway" (purely because of abortion, clearly)
These voters have been vindicated as doing exactly the right thing, according to their views, now that his court appointments have lead to the loss of Roe.
"But abortion" is an incredibly common refrain from my conservative Christian family and friends who otherwise claim Trump is awful.
And then of course they fell into supporting his election fraud lies.
The American church is dying because it can't stop making deals with the devil on the issues of abortion and LGBT liberty, both issues that Jesus said absolutely nothing about. Meanwhile, he said a hell of a lot about helping the poor, the sick, and the foreigner.
In my mind, this kind of person isn't a real follower of Christ. They're modern day pharisees. Hypocrites who Jesus would have hated.
Did they? When? I think there were many times where the Dems had the majorities and clout to codify permitting abortion, at least in more "conservative" forms like "up to the third trimester unless special circumstances," between Roe and now and yet it never happened.
These kinds of culture war battles actually do serve a valid electoral purpose: they ban liberals from moving to red states.
Sure, you nominally have freedom-of-movement within the US. In practice, however, there's plenty of ways you can make people decide not to move. California is basically unlivable if you don't like three-hour traffic jams or paying insane rent, because the state is structured with a landed gentry of suburban old-time homeowners. Now, Texas is unlivable if you are an unmarried woman or want your children to be taught the history of racism in America[0].
The real thing that has screwed over Republicans is their stance on immigration. They could be reliably importing hordes of conservative voters from other countries if they hadn't spent so much time demonizing them for being too conservative.
[0] The laws on the books only talk about "critical race theory". However it is actually rather difficult to explain, say, Jim Crow laws or the nadir of race relations without embracing at least some of CRT's base assumptions.
How is this any different with slave states wanting to enforce their slave laws on non-slave states by requiring them to turn over run away slaves? Since non-slave states no longer had slavery, there was no crime committed when slaves ran away and traveled to the free states.
Slave states where trying to push their state laws as federal laws and circumventing non-slave state sovereignty and federal laws.
There is concern and precedent around “conspiracy to commit abortion” being implemented, so that if you live in Alabama and plan a vacation for Denver specifically to get an abortion you can be tried.
Any law like that will fail the first legal challenge. You can't be guilty of conspiring to do something legal. If abortion is legal in Colorado, then you'll be in the clear.
There are some insane laws in the US like the Texas one that allow private citizens to sue anyone that helps with access to an abortion in any way. That is arguably a terrible law that is fundamentally broken and should be stopped by some court, but so far it hasn't.
There are probably enough ways to pass laws that are not unconstitutional in immediately apparent ways that would still interfere with abortion access across state lines. And even then I think it is quite likely that a few blatantly unconstitutional ones will be passed as well, and who knows how that will end.
Before RvW was overturned, Texas passed a law that lets anyone sue anyone who aids and abets an abortion: the doctor who performs an abortion, an insurance company that helps pay for the procedure, an uber driver who just happens to be driving you there, someone who lets you know what options you have available to you, etc.
Some states are just taking a scorched earth approach here, and nothing would surprise me about what they will try to do to punish anyone who is even tangentially involved in the process...
What I think is under-appreciated is that this is going to harm a lot of non-abortion healthcare.
I can personally vouch for the fact that hospitals in my red state were excessively timid about providing necessary or beneficial care that looked too abortion-like—with Roe-v-Wade compliant state restrictions on abortion in place. It's a safe bet that'll be even worse now.
Depends on the crime. For serious crimes I think it is quite common?
Like, Finnish law claims jurisdiction over all crimes committed against or by Finnish citizens committed abroad, no matter the location or acts legality per local law, if the crime could result in prison term of 6 months or longer according to the criminal code of Finland. We also claim jurisdiction over some particularly heinous crimes committed abroad no matter the nationality of victim or perpetrator. I think it is very rare to see it applied, because crimes according to Finnish law are often crimes abroad, too (I mean, the location of country often takes precedence?). And I don't think our laws grant our authorities power to act outside territory of Finland (like the US sometimes does).
But if a Finnish citizen traveled to country X, did something bad enough to mandate a long prison sentence, came back to Finland, was found, and for one reason or other were not extradited back to X for trial there, they would be tried here.
For those who are anti abortion, this isn’t a case of speeding in another state but rather going to another state to commit murder of an innocent. Considering the stakes they will do everything in their power to hinder people from attaining legal abortions.
This is a serious thing that any app maker needs to plan for. Your work can be repurposed as surveillance, and the conditions for that can change in surprising ways.
Apple does a pretty good job of taking this into account, minus their iCloud "back door," but they're almost the only big company that does this, and obviously a big part of that is a strategic opposition to both Google and Facebook. I could be wrong, but it seems to me like, after Apple, the only companies who even think about this are relatively small, privacy-focused companies like ProtonMail.
Me and my girlfriend use period timing. We accept the risk because we would eventually like children, now wouldn't be ideal but wouldn't be catastrophic either. Both of us agree that regardless of the law we wouldn't get an abortion anyway.
Risk isn't black and white, you have to actually measure things and not be ideological about it.
More broadly, it's not safe to store any digital data that an authority can _willfully misinterpret_ to use against you. Miscarriage? That's an abortion. Googling for a source of Methotrexate for your Lupus? Intent to supply abortion drug. Calendar entry for an Antifa protest that became violent? Intent.
Even if police were able to get a warrant and were willing to try taking a drink from the firehose of user data... it's hard to imagine they could glean anything useful that would meet evidence standards? Like how do you differentiate a pregnancy from a few months of inactivity? And how do you tie random usernames to real people?
I get that you can theoretically connect the dots here, but it doesn't seem like a plausible concern.
We do not already see courts filling up with police using app data to crack down on speeding drivers or underage drinking or other illegal activities.
The police don't have to do the work of correlating the data themselves. Would you stake your freedom on the idea that there's not a data broker somewhere buying up data and correlating it to create a "pregnancy score" for advertisers that might also be useful for law enforcement?
Okay, but there's a difference between Target throwing darts and accidentally hitting a target[sic] and legal grounds to press charges.
I administer marketing systems for a living, and on a good day we hit 1 target out of a hundred. People really overestimate how sophisticated the data is.
Police could have gone around buying phone books to look for parole jumpers - but the cost/benefit ratio on following up on every potential name would have been absurd. This would be a whole other magnitude above that.
Perhaps I'm being cynical, but all it takes is an "expert witness" from the analytics firm in court saying that the chances the defendant was not pregnant are less than "1 in 10,000" or something. How good the technology actually is might not even matter to a jury considering the hype around ML and AI.
> Police could have gone around buying phone books to look for parole jumpers - but the cost/benefit ratio would have been absurd. This would be a whole other magnitude above that.
I'm not sure the cost will matter much when we're talking about an ideological crusade like this.
I think the distinction here is that this data could be used as evidence if they already have a suspect. In that case it's much easier to get you to turn over your phone and usernames and activity and testimony, etc.
But I think the risk of people being "caught" with this data is absolutely minimal.
> I'm honestly not sure the cost will matter much when we're talking about an ideological crusade like this.
Okay, but even in like the darkest days of prohibition when the federal government had a literal mandate to round up every person in the US for illegal drinking, not even a fraction of a percent of the obviously guilty population was even charged with a crime. At a certain point, laws themselves are a legal fiction if they are unenforceable and police will only ever focus on a few high profile cases. So I guess I am cynical myself, but also trying to be rational here.
It's not funny because they're very different things, so it's not necessarily contradictory to hold both positions.
[EDIT] Incidentally, the position you call out isn't even one position, but a bunch of positions on multiple issues. Probably lots of folks held the position you don't like on some of them, and the one you do like, on others. "Made up strawman has contradictions" isn't insightful.
It is contradictory and any mental gymnastics to prove otherwise are just moot. You are either against the government/politicians/bureaucrats/democratic majority dictating what you can do with your body and your private healthcare data or you are not.
Everything else is just trying to convince (yourself mostly) that using authoritarian power to dictate to society what YOU like or YOUR ideological preferences is ok because "You are advocating for good things".
Nope, same thing. Both sides want to use government to impose rules on other people's bodies and both are afraid the government will have a free lunch on harvesting data and target individuals through them. If you think one is justified and the other is not is the differentiating factor, its your own ideological/religious bias talking.
I think given your (evident—correct me if I'm wrong) view on how political positions must be supported in order not to be invalidated by contradiction, you're going to find a lot of "contradictions" everywhere, and little agreement that you're helping anything with those discoveries.
We're at the inevitable stage of this extended HN discussion of politics where I recommend a thorough reading of book I of Plato's Republic. In particular the attempt to nail down a definition of justice. TL;DR simple, set principles tend to run into trouble when confronted with circumstances and outcomes. You have to take those into account rather than blindly following moral guidelines, or you'll have a bad time.
"Government surveillance is bad"—OK, what about criminal investigations? National security? Both ripe for abuse but—can we actually just ditch those tools on principle and be OK? Probably not, so... they're good when they're good, and bad when they're bad, and we can't make a sweeping pronouncement that covers all those cases. No contradiction, just messy reality.
"Killing people must be illegal"—but self defense and war? "OK smartass, murder should be illegal" well sure if you use a word that means "bad killing" of course it's going to encompass the kinds of killing you think are bad—you've conceded the point!
"Government dictating what you can do with your body is bad"—the draft? Polio vaccination requirements for school kids? I'm for those while being against, say, forced sterilization. Somewhere in between is the point at which I can start to apply the principle that "government dictating what you do with your body is bad"
Strictly principle-based approaches to policy do not hold up. There's always a "but..." and never admitting nuance, exceptions, et c., does not work. Setting principles aside when the in-actual-fact cost/benefit ratio gets sufficiently wonky isn't (necessarily!) hypocrisy. This is frustrating if you want ethics and political philosophy to look like math, but that's simply not how things are. It's frustrating if you take the statement "my body, my choice" to be 100% iron-clad absolute intended by the speaker to apply to every circumstance forever—but it's not, because, again, this ain't math, it's human communication, and you must not take it that way unless you're trying to misunderstand someone.
Any coherent and satisfying-in-practice approach to policy is going to have a lot of judgement calls going on.
If we lay out the circumstances, scope, and cost/benefit of these policies, it's plain you're not even close to comparing like to like. The source of contradiction is entirely your own atypical and unworkable approach, not the stances of your opponents.
No wonder you mention Plato, as he employs the exact same tortured logic to justify how his brand of authoritarianism is good, as the authoritarians of his choice will enact “good things”.
In all the examples, you’re drawing the line on the things “you like” when determining if authoritarian policy is good or bad, which indeed makes you a hypocrite.
The Texas GOP platform literally calls for both banning all abortions and banning mask mandates to "preserve medical freedom". There is no ideological justification for both and as far as I can tell it's literally just "whatever keeps liberals from moving to Texas".
That's an extremely contradictory position to hold for the GOP - they're hypocrites. Do you have any other arguments except for whattaboutism though? Telling me that it's ok to be wrong because the GOP does it too is not a very convincing argument.
Funny how the same people who were chastising others who didn't want 20 years of pointless war in Afghanistan are now concerned about saving lives by banning abortion.
Or how about:
Funny how the same people who supported storming the capital because they didn't want to take precautions to protect the health and wellbeing of others are now interested in banning common medical procedures to "save lives".
Or maybe even:
Funny how the same people who were so concerned about bodily autonomy during a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic are now ok with dictating what 50% of the populating does with their body on an ongoing basis.
"Funny how the same people who were chastising others who didn't want 20 years of pointless war in Afghanistan are now concerned about saving lives by banning abortion."
You mean the ultra on the left NY times? I'm sure they're in favour of reproductive rights, not against them.
"Funny how the same people who supported storming the capital because they didn't want to take precautions to protect the health and wellbeing of others are now interested in banning common medical procedures to "save lives"."
If I recall correctly, only unarmed civilians were executed by the government at that instance. I wouldn't suppose you're victim blaming, are you?
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] thread"Some men, like activist Santiago Mayer, have begun to sign up for accounts themselves in an attempt to distort the data."
Santiago is reported as having three periods a month. A new normal some may ask?
I could reasonably see those same groups creating their own app or buying an existing app and feeding the information to law enforcement that's willing to work with them.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/texas-abortion-h...
Their websites literally call themselves "[Location] Women's Clinic" and their tag line is something along the lines of "Take control. Start with a free abortion consultation today."
I wonder if they have to mention that they're not a medical practice during in-take.
Yup. Even in cases where they don't use "clinic" specifically, it's still something deliberately misleading. I used to live near a "Pregnancy Crisis Center" that was styled very much to look like a walk-in clinic; it was no such thing.
I have a question though- Do abortion clinics in other states have to comply with subpoenas?
I'm skimming the article and yes, I don't see that mentioned anywhere, despite that being the lynchpin of the whole article.
I suppose a pregnancy would throw off a woman's menstrual cycle, but so can many other things. No way that a mere scheduling change of a woman's period would hold up in court as evidence of an an illegal abortion.
One of the interviewees also implies that states will start criminalizing miscarriage, which is just idiotic. Nobody involved in this article has actually thought these ideas through.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59214544
I of course was speaking of uninduced miscarriages, which happens shockingly often - one in four pregnancies, if my memory serves me correctly from the time it happened to me and my ex.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-05/miscarria... lists examples from Texas, California, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Nevada, and South Carolina
Ohio for example has just enacted a 6 week abortion ban (which for non uterus havers is effectively a total ban).
* If someone from an absorption clinic fudged the paperwork to put you under 6 weeks period tracker app data can be subpoenaed to provide evidence otherwise.
* In states that are trying to make it illegal to have an abortion anywhere if you get pregnant, travel out of state or out of country to abort, and then are witch hunted by someone they can again subpoena your period tracker to provide evidence that you were pregnant.
It doesn't matter in the end if the person had a miscarriage, had an abortion, or was never pregnant in the first place - it could still be used as "evidence" if someone wanted to go after them.
few people are saying "the gestapo will literally be called to your house the second you miss a period in a red state"
but rather, that this data can and will be used as collaborating evidence in a criminal trial.
a state prosecuting an abortion will have to prove the person is actually pregnant, and there is zero reason to believe they wouldn't use this data as one more tool in their arsenal building a rock solid case. it's not as if people undergoing illegal abortions are going to have good records that can be looked up otherwise
you are a bad person
I think it's a combination of denial and an absurdly strong desire to be seen as "above the political fray." That or they're all auditioning for writers positions at The Atlantic.
Let's do a thought experiment: say the speed limit in State X is 60mph. In State Y is it is 70mph.
If you went to State Y and drove at 70mph there, will the police in State X arrest you when you come back because you went over 60mph, even though the claimed "offence" was in a different jurisdiction where it was totally legal?
This whole thing about people having abortions where it is 100% legal (or even just - heaven forbid - tracking menstrual cycles) and then getting into trouble for it in places where abortion is not legal seems really weird. I can't believe it is being discussed in the US - this is like something out of Afghanistan.
Antiabortion lawmakers want to block patients from crossing state lines: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/29/abortion-...
Applying this kind of logic to speeding or indeed healthcare does seem like an overreach of government - but in general Americans who support women's reproductive rights favour more government overreach, not less.
> but in general Americans who support women's reproductive rights favour more government overreach, not less
Compared to what?
It's just a smear. Biased language ("overreach") addressing generalities rather than specifics is how you nudge people toward "this group is bad, because they favor [biased language bad thing that everyone agrees is bad—what, are you going to defend 'overreach'? Of course not]".
You get to count on their vote by default, so you don't have to consider or campaign towards anything else they want.
It's especially good when these single issue voters are so extreme that the party can slip in policies that are against their other interests but still get their vote.
TL;DR, single issue voters are NPCs.
These voters have been vindicated as doing exactly the right thing, according to their views, now that his court appointments have lead to the loss of Roe.
And then of course they fell into supporting his election fraud lies.
The American church is dying because it can't stop making deals with the devil on the issues of abortion and LGBT liberty, both issues that Jesus said absolutely nothing about. Meanwhile, he said a hell of a lot about helping the poor, the sick, and the foreigner.
In my mind, this kind of person isn't a real follower of Christ. They're modern day pharisees. Hypocrites who Jesus would have hated.
Sure, you nominally have freedom-of-movement within the US. In practice, however, there's plenty of ways you can make people decide not to move. California is basically unlivable if you don't like three-hour traffic jams or paying insane rent, because the state is structured with a landed gentry of suburban old-time homeowners. Now, Texas is unlivable if you are an unmarried woman or want your children to be taught the history of racism in America[0].
The real thing that has screwed over Republicans is their stance on immigration. They could be reliably importing hordes of conservative voters from other countries if they hadn't spent so much time demonizing them for being too conservative.
[0] The laws on the books only talk about "critical race theory". However it is actually rather difficult to explain, say, Jim Crow laws or the nadir of race relations without embracing at least some of CRT's base assumptions.
Slave states where trying to push their state laws as federal laws and circumventing non-slave state sovereignty and federal laws.
There are probably enough ways to pass laws that are not unconstitutional in immediately apparent ways that would still interfere with abortion access across state lines. And even then I think it is quite likely that a few blatantly unconstitutional ones will be passed as well, and who knows how that will end.
Some states are just taking a scorched earth approach here, and nothing would surprise me about what they will try to do to punish anyone who is even tangentially involved in the process...
I can personally vouch for the fact that hospitals in my red state were excessively timid about providing necessary or beneficial care that looked too abortion-like—with Roe-v-Wade compliant state restrictions on abortion in place. It's a safe bet that'll be even worse now.
Like, Finnish law claims jurisdiction over all crimes committed against or by Finnish citizens committed abroad, no matter the location or acts legality per local law, if the crime could result in prison term of 6 months or longer according to the criminal code of Finland. We also claim jurisdiction over some particularly heinous crimes committed abroad no matter the nationality of victim or perpetrator. I think it is very rare to see it applied, because crimes according to Finnish law are often crimes abroad, too (I mean, the location of country often takes precedence?). And I don't think our laws grant our authorities power to act outside territory of Finland (like the US sometimes does).
But if a Finnish citizen traveled to country X, did something bad enough to mandate a long prison sentence, came back to Finland, was found, and for one reason or other were not extradited back to X for trial there, they would be tried here.
Apple does a pretty good job of taking this into account, minus their iCloud "back door," but they're almost the only big company that does this, and obviously a big part of that is a strategic opposition to both Google and Facebook. I could be wrong, but it seems to me like, after Apple, the only companies who even think about this are relatively small, privacy-focused companies like ProtonMail.
It is not.
Thus, no.
Risk isn't black and white, you have to actually measure things and not be ideological about it.
Time to start erasing your digital footprint.
Even if police were able to get a warrant and were willing to try taking a drink from the firehose of user data... it's hard to imagine they could glean anything useful that would meet evidence standards? Like how do you differentiate a pregnancy from a few months of inactivity? And how do you tie random usernames to real people?
I get that you can theoretically connect the dots here, but it doesn't seem like a plausible concern.
We do not already see courts filling up with police using app data to crack down on speeding drivers or underage drinking or other illegal activities.
The police don't have to do the work of correlating the data themselves. Would you stake your freedom on the idea that there's not a data broker somewhere buying up data and correlating it to create a "pregnancy score" for advertisers that might also be useful for law enforcement?
I administer marketing systems for a living, and on a good day we hit 1 target out of a hundred. People really overestimate how sophisticated the data is.
Police could have gone around buying phone books to look for parole jumpers - but the cost/benefit ratio on following up on every potential name would have been absurd. This would be a whole other magnitude above that.
> Police could have gone around buying phone books to look for parole jumpers - but the cost/benefit ratio would have been absurd. This would be a whole other magnitude above that.
I'm not sure the cost will matter much when we're talking about an ideological crusade like this.
But I think the risk of people being "caught" with this data is absolutely minimal.
> I'm honestly not sure the cost will matter much when we're talking about an ideological crusade like this.
Okay, but even in like the darkest days of prohibition when the federal government had a literal mandate to round up every person in the US for illegal drinking, not even a fraction of a percent of the obviously guilty population was even charged with a crime. At a certain point, laws themselves are a legal fiction if they are unenforceable and police will only ever focus on a few high profile cases. So I guess I am cynical myself, but also trying to be rational here.
[EDIT] Incidentally, the position you call out isn't even one position, but a bunch of positions on multiple issues. Probably lots of folks held the position you don't like on some of them, and the one you do like, on others. "Made up strawman has contradictions" isn't insightful.
Everything else is just trying to convince (yourself mostly) that using authoritarian power to dictate to society what YOU like or YOUR ideological preferences is ok because "You are advocating for good things".
It's not. You're comparing apples and oranges and declaring that you've spotted a "gotcha" that doesn't exist.
> any mental gymnastics to prove otherwise are just moot.
Glad to see you're open to considering that you might simply be wrong.
We're at the inevitable stage of this extended HN discussion of politics where I recommend a thorough reading of book I of Plato's Republic. In particular the attempt to nail down a definition of justice. TL;DR simple, set principles tend to run into trouble when confronted with circumstances and outcomes. You have to take those into account rather than blindly following moral guidelines, or you'll have a bad time.
"Government surveillance is bad"—OK, what about criminal investigations? National security? Both ripe for abuse but—can we actually just ditch those tools on principle and be OK? Probably not, so... they're good when they're good, and bad when they're bad, and we can't make a sweeping pronouncement that covers all those cases. No contradiction, just messy reality.
"Killing people must be illegal"—but self defense and war? "OK smartass, murder should be illegal" well sure if you use a word that means "bad killing" of course it's going to encompass the kinds of killing you think are bad—you've conceded the point!
"Government dictating what you can do with your body is bad"—the draft? Polio vaccination requirements for school kids? I'm for those while being against, say, forced sterilization. Somewhere in between is the point at which I can start to apply the principle that "government dictating what you do with your body is bad"
Strictly principle-based approaches to policy do not hold up. There's always a "but..." and never admitting nuance, exceptions, et c., does not work. Setting principles aside when the in-actual-fact cost/benefit ratio gets sufficiently wonky isn't (necessarily!) hypocrisy. This is frustrating if you want ethics and political philosophy to look like math, but that's simply not how things are. It's frustrating if you take the statement "my body, my choice" to be 100% iron-clad absolute intended by the speaker to apply to every circumstance forever—but it's not, because, again, this ain't math, it's human communication, and you must not take it that way unless you're trying to misunderstand someone.
Any coherent and satisfying-in-practice approach to policy is going to have a lot of judgement calls going on.
If we lay out the circumstances, scope, and cost/benefit of these policies, it's plain you're not even close to comparing like to like. The source of contradiction is entirely your own atypical and unworkable approach, not the stances of your opponents.
In all the examples, you’re drawing the line on the things “you like” when determining if authoritarian policy is good or bad, which indeed makes you a hypocrite.
Or how about:
Funny how the same people who supported storming the capital because they didn't want to take precautions to protect the health and wellbeing of others are now interested in banning common medical procedures to "save lives".
Or maybe even:
Funny how the same people who were so concerned about bodily autonomy during a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic are now ok with dictating what 50% of the populating does with their body on an ongoing basis.
You mean the ultra on the left NY times? I'm sure they're in favour of reproductive rights, not against them.
"Funny how the same people who supported storming the capital because they didn't want to take precautions to protect the health and wellbeing of others are now interested in banning common medical procedures to "save lives"."
If I recall correctly, only unarmed civilians were executed by the government at that instance. I wouldn't suppose you're victim blaming, are you?