Leftist outlets warning about potential data privacy infringements for those seeking abortions pushed for the surrender of people’s privacy when it came to COVID-19.
MRC Free Speech America discovered at least eight publications which seemed to have had major revelations on data privacy. Once the news broke that the U.S. Supreme Court would — and eventually did — overturn the infamous pro-abortion Roe v. Wade (1973) Liberal outlets, such as The Washington Post and The New York TimesBuzzFeed News Fortune went into apparent shock and hypocritically warned about Big Tech’s threat to women’s abortion-related data privacy.
However, these outlets were not the only ones to sing a different song when it comes to data privacy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As MRC discovered, most headlines told the tale of how data privacy has changed since the Supreme Court was overturned. Roe.
The PostAny veneer of logic coherence was torn out. The publication He was quick to alert abortion-committing customers about possible threats to their data, in at least four stories.
A July 1 story was pretty on the nose with the scare-mongering: “Okay, Google: To protect women, collect less data about everyone.” The Post sounded the alarm bells in its sub-headline: “In post-Roe America, Google searches and location records can be evidence of a crime. Here are four ways Google should protect civil rights in its products now.”
One June 29 story was headlined: “Abortion is illegal for millions. Will Big Tech help prosecute it?” Another June 29 story fretted: “You scheduled an abortion. Planned Parenthood’s website could tell Facebook.”
This is the second section. The Post complained that if people used the baby-slaughter giant’s “online scheduling tool, it appears Planned Parenthood could share people’s location — and, in some cases, even the method of abortion they selected — with big tech companies.” A June 26 story sought to give tips to abortion seekers on how to cover up their digital trails: “Seeking an abortion? Here’s how to avoid leaving a digital trail.”
The Post’s warning to abortion-seekers about “leaving a digital trail” is a complete departure from the same publication’s celebration of the wonders of digital contact tracing in a June 14, 2020 story headlined: “Contact tracing is ‘best’ tool we have until there’s a vaccine, health experts say.” The PostIt did, however, make a 180-degree change on data privacy issues because of Roe’s overturning, propagandized during the pandemic that “Contact tracing plays a key role.It will require a lot of effort to make it work. A large number of people needing to be recruited and trained.” [Emphasis added.]
“Today’s far more extensive undertaking [on contact tracing]To trace 100,000 people, you will need to have at least 100,000 trained personnel. delve into strangers’ personal lives and persuade even some without symptoms to stay home,” The Post Claimed. Privacy is so important.
BuzzFeed News was the most hypocritical of all eight news outlets in terms of data privacy protection. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Roe, BuzzFeed sounded the Big Brother alarm for women seeking abortions in a story headlined: “In A Post-Roe America, Googling ‘Abortion’ Could Put You At Risk. Here’s How To Protect Yourself.” BuzzFeed used woke language on gender in an apparent attempt to scare readers: “[P]regnant peoplePeople who want to get abortions in 23 countries that have banned it will need to deal with the following: digital surveillance apparatus that could be used against them.”
Contrast BuzzFeed’s scaremongering about a “digital surveillance apparatus” with its April 29 2020 story headlined: “We Need An ‘Army’ Of Contact Tracers To Safely Reopen The Country. We Might Get Apps Instead.” BuzzFeed’s primary complaints with a “digital solution” for contact tracing were that it was decentralized, didn’t go far enough and was hamstrung by people’s privacy concerns. “An attempt to automate the process by layering in the use of smartphone technology, meanwhile, This has been made more difficult in the US due to privacy concerns as well as the absence of a single approach.,” the publication wrote in April 2020. [Emphasis added.]
Over at Fortune magazine, the outlet praised COVID-19 contact tracing apps as a smashing success in a May 14, 2021 story headlined: “Contact tracing apps saved thousands of lives, says a new study.” This dubious praise for digital Big Brother stands in stark contrast to how Fortune The post-Roe issue in its June 27, 2022 story: “Tech companies have gone silent on data privacy since Roe v. Wade was overturned. When will they speak up?” What a joke.
CNN did not fare any better. The leftist outlet heralded demands by U.S. lawmakers May 25, 2022 that “Google should limit location data collection to protect abortion seekers, US lawmakers say” after the leak of a draft SCOTUS opinion revealing the high Court’s intent to dismantle Roe. CNN’s apparent concern over data collection came more than two years after the same publication celebrated how Google and Apple were “working together to help track the coronavirus” via digital contact tracing.
The MIT Technology ReviewTwo competing headlines were published in just under a year, showing that the publication was unable to address the data privacy issue. The abortion issue was addressed by the Examine fretted June 28, 2022: “Big Tech remains silent on questions about data privacy in a post-Roe US.” But when it came to COVID-19 on Feb. 24, 2021, the Examine ignored any concerns about data privacy and touted digital contact tracing: “Digital contact tracing brought tech rivals together while the pandemic kept us apart.”
The New York Times also couldn’t get its act together on the issue of data privacy. October 3, 2020 The Times called contact tracing the “key to reigning in the virus” and whined that such efforts were falling flat in the United States and Europe because of privacy rules. “Beholden to privacy rules, Western officials largely trusted people to hand over names to contact tracers,” the newspaper bleated.
It praised how contact tracers in countries like Taiwan and South Korea were using “cellphone and credit card data to identify people who were potentially exposed.” It then complained: “But in Europe and the United States, which have largely relied on the public to provide information and follow quarantine rules voluntarily, the response has been spotty.”
After the Supreme Court decision, however, it was time to address the issue of abortion. Roe It was passed. The Times switched gears and mourned how data left us vulnerable online in a June 29, 2022 story headlined: “Our Data Is a Curse, With or Without Roe.” The newspaper fretted that the Supreme Court ruling on abortion was “a moment to reflect on what we have given up to the hungry maw of America’s unfettered data collection economy.” It doesn’t appear that privacy concerns over an “unfettered data collection economy” were as much of a big deal for The Times COVID-19.
Don’t expect consistency from Bloomberg News, either. The publication’s headlines show that it contradicts itself in data privacy. Here’s a Bloomberg News story on abortion privacy post-Roe: “Privacy Advocates Offer Tips on Protecting Abortion Data.” Now check out a story from the same publication about COVID-19 contact tracing: “The World Embraces Contact-Tracing Technology to Fight Covid-19.”
The story showed how the “”[g]The overnments aim to return people to work and are a crucial part Contact-tracing technology is used hereThis allows authorities to track and notify citizens infected with the virus. [Emphasis added.]
MRC only needed to dig up two tweets from Axios to show the outlet’s hypocrisy when it comes to data privacy.
Here’s Axios’s tweet on abortion data following the SCOTUS ruling: “Privacy experts fear the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn federal abortion rights will erode other key protections and expose daily life online to criminal investigations.” Now here’s Axios’s tweet on contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic: “Widespread contact tracing will be key to the next phase of our coronavirus response, but the U.S. is severely behind.”
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