The Real Dangers of Abortion Under Trump

worse under Trump. And to talk about what we need to be afraid of and what we don't is Kate Bertash who's the executive director of the Digital Defense Fund, and also Crystal, who's an abortion worker and also a volunteer for abortion hotlines. So both of you two, welcome to the show.

provide free digital security evaluations trainings. We do a lot of project management work to help people set up what they'd like to change about their systems and security, and we also help people pay for it, which is a really wonderful way to get to kind of see through our values. So and excited to be on here today to talk a little bit more about the implications for both organizations and individuals.

them get their folks as well, like Crystal. I know we'll provide some additional color to this as well, but we know what kind of threats face people facing abortions and those who help them, because unfortunately a lot of these threats have been happening for the last several decades, people have been prosecuted for suspicion of ending their own pregnancies.

We get a lot of really incredible and insightful data from organizations like IF one how who put out these reports that are called self care Criminalized, and they look backwards across all of the different cases that have happened to space and try to come up with sort of

like these key aspects. And one of the big things that we know that I'm sure we're going to talk about a lot through this episode is that the core way that people come to the attention of law enforcement for seeking to allegedly end their own pregnancies is through usually someone they know reporting them, or someone responsible for

their care. So that might be like healthcare worker, social worker, other representative agent of the state, and it can be really devastating to kind of hear and I think internalize that it's often people's family members like X or friends, neighbor who might turn somebody in expecting or misunderstanding that

it is a crime to end your own pregnancy. I think one of the things that's really hard about this is that it involves some of the ways in which, like I guess it's what you would call very unfortunately typical policing practices, the way in which people's rights are violated when they are interrogated, when they are pressured into

disclosing information. There's something called consent search that it unfortunately be ends being a very common feature of these kinds of cases, which is where you're put in a room and you're talking to representative agent and state or a police officer, and they sort of pressure you into agreeing to unlock and disclose often your phone and other device, or to otherwise share information quote unquote voluntarily. And it's easy to see why people kind of get pressured into that.

So that is something that tends to happen in many kinds of prosecutions of crimes or alleged crimes, and I think it's hard for a lot of people to imagine what that's like to you know, be pulled over and searched in this way, or like they're often like people are not the targeted victims of something like stop and frisk, and so it's sort of hard to imagine in your mind the way in which somebody is information or their data or their case comes to the attention of law enforcement.

And so we like tend to then imagine these other threats that feel perhaps closer to our daily experience, especially as like often people who are not racially targeted by police, who are not targeted by the family policing system or have their pregnancies surveilled by the hospital systems. So people like to imagine then that. I think a big one that we all hear and I think we're all going to take a deep breath at the same time is

period tracking apps. Yeah, I thought it was kind of remarkable, as Crystal, I'm sure you've heard this too, mm hm. And I would love to at lease space, Crystal for you to add any context to sort of like the threats that are that are present versus stuff that people imagine. I know, we're going to spend a lot of time talking about our friend the period.

I order from this provider overseas? Such as women on web and just yeah, people asking like can I be arrested? You know, can I do this? Will I be in trouble?

without any issue. But there is also risk, and it's kind of like what Kate was saying, where people tend to it seems like people don't know what the risk has been or what it looks like, because, like Kate was saying, there's like I been all these years of pregnancy criminalization, and we know what it looks like, and it tends to not be what people are worrying about right now, where people seem to be thinking like that the police are going to come and arrest them for

putting in this order along with hundreds of other people in a given day, or that the police are somehow going to get their period tracker information on their on their phone, and you know, like of course, you know, practice dicial security in a way that makes you feel comfortable, Like if you don't want to use a period tracking app, you know there are safer ones to.

So you just have to not leave evidence. Like so, yeah, you can order the medication online, but You can also use signal and we can know that Kate's probably going to go more into this, but you can make sure you have disappearing messages. You can use encrypted emails and search engines. You have to make sure you're thinking about who can see your data and you know where your

data is being recorded. And that's really like, if you want to protect yourself in terms of avoiding criminalization for abortion and pregnancy outcomes, and you know, having a secure and safe abortion in the United States, then you have

to look at the basics like this. And I'm going to let Kate talk about that a little bit more because I know that you have all the good information that the Digital Defense one has looked into about the apps and then how to delete data and what data to delete and how to think about this.

how it's going to show up a lot. Yet we're trying to think about sort of what are the ways we can have our digital devices and our technology sort of support us with these by default type of settings. One of the things that's really tough to I think understand until you've been through it is sort of like what it looks like when you go through any kind

of investigation. I think the other hard kind of like context to get from the way we talk about it now is that a lot of how pregnancy is criminalized, that sort of scaffolding, that infrastructure was built during the drug war. So one of the most common kinds of pregnancy criminalization in America is drug testing people who are

pregnant or come to give birth without their consent. And you know, so we basically consider like being an alleged drug user to be the sort of like primary way that our decision of like how much the digital evidence matters has like kind of come to take shape. So often when an investigation is happening, the police will look for where are all the sources of information I can find about this, because like the human body is like not super compliant with like.

But that means that they sort of have to then go to this like digital body of evidence to kind of tell the story or as like all the wonderful lawyers that advise us like to say, to sort of like be able to draw the dots or the bndes between the dots and form this kind of like coherent set of facts of what happened between one moment to

the next. So often when we're like imagining all of the data that lives in our phone, because unfortunately, in many cases, when you are perhaps coerced into consenting to the search of a device, they will often take your

phone and then have you unlock it. It gets plugged into a device that makes clone of the entire drive, and then they can sort of with many different techniques kind of leisurely look through it for keywords to kind of tell where there might be evidence somewhere on your phone that you, for example, when on the internet search

for and purchased abortion medication. So yes, like period track and data might be one portion of that but unfortunately, in all the cases that we've seen, or at least in and most of the ones that we're most familiar with,

all of that quote unquote plain text data. So where you've just written out in your own unencrypted words into a search bar in the search engine on your phone, or you've sent a text message to a very close contact with somebody telling them how you feel about your pregnancy that you desire to end it, perhaps your plan to buipills, even the receipt that comes into your inbox.

It's not necessary then to go to all these companies and go file a for a warrant and get all that information, because now it's in just plain text, quote unquote on your phone, and that is far more information than the abstract information that might come out of a period tracker. So unfortunately cops don't tend to use these in cases that we've seen because it's quite simply not necessary.

That kind of like plain text admission of your state of mind or the statement of your intent has unfortunately been the sort of core evidence that comes up. And I think this has like a lot of like really quite sad implications. I know, in prior to prepare for this episode, we were discussing a couple of cases that

I know folks might be more familiar with. A big one that came up is, you know, the case of a mother and daughter out of Nebraska who were having a discussion around allegedly helping the daughter to find an end for her pregnancy over Meta's Facebook messenger. And I think what I find really quite devastating about it, for many reasons, is that these messages were actually ones that like I think any of us could hope to have with a very supportive parent or other person in our life.

Is like, why we have, you know, these conversations so that we can feel connected and support it through such a complex and affecting process. It then becomes very sad to me that it becomes a criminal matter just because it was in a place that that conversation, you know, Meta did not have this family's back in terms of encrypting those messages or ensuring that they were free to speak of what they wish when they wish by default.

So I think, like when we start to give out advice, it's been important for us at Digital Defense Fund to kind of work backwards. I know it's been an exist crisis. I think for everybody in the digital security space to know that like the list of advice I could give you on how to protect yourself when going through these transactions, or when seeking support, or like just having a normal you know, questions and going on the internet being able

to google them and get them answered. That we have to kind of like start from the basics, because like you have the right to find information from reliable resources, You have the right to buy pills from a reliable source. You have the right to like seek that kind of connection and support from people in your life. And so we're trying to cut down on like all the infinite amount of advice that we could give and try to like narrow it to like what is actionable, what has

the greatest impact potentially in the cases we've seen. And I know we're going to dig into it, but I would love to leave room to tack a little bit more about that whenever, it's a good time in this conversation to go through our top three action items.

they they sought a different avenue. There actually hasn't been a successful lawsuit against an abortion seeker under Aida bet law or any other law in Texas in the last two years, which I think is just something worth bringing up, is that, you know, we actually haven't seen that happen yet other than this case. But what happened in this case is this person was planning on terminating their pregnancy. They were talking to some friends who were helping them out,

and their iPhone was synced up to their iPad. So if anyone's familiar with that, you can have your your I messages app here on both devices. The I messages that are coming to your phone are also going to be going to your iPad, And her ex husband took pictures of the I messages coming through on her iPad, and that was what was used. Even though the lawsuit was dismissed because it was a very silly lawsuit, total

waste of time. But that is the kind of thing that we really you really need to be asking yourself, is you know, where are my messages going?

household surveillance threat model I think is vastly underestimated. I can't recall the figures at the moment, but one of those more recent reports from if one how actually had detailed just how frequently actually that sort of like how it is also this like intimate partner violence situation that comes up also in a regnancy or abortion criminalization case, and so you know, this person challenged me to think about the exact threat model of the unlocked iPad on

the on the family coffee table, and thinking about like when we share information and we share devices kind of

like where does it go? So Like, Actually, our first piece of recommendation that we often give is is it can sound deceptively simple and it doesn't sound technical at all, but it is to think about like who you are telling about your experience and about like you know, your abortion or wanting to have an abortion, and then understanding whether you've been clear about your boundaries, like do you expect them to not share or tell with others? Like

can you delete any messages with them? Would they ask if you ask them after the fact to delete things

for you, would they absolutely do that. I think you've can be really challenging to kind of like zoom out and realize, like you know, it's often not as easy as it sounds to like kind of do this mental inventory and think about all the different ways that like me and my best friend talk or you know, when I mentioned things to people offhand, we don't have a really good I think like social practice of you know, understanding the implication of like sharing other people's information without

their permission, and so like, you know, it's very impactful, but also very difficult, and it can't be very individual for all of us to kind of think more carefully about with whom we share things, and how we ask people to keep our confidence, and how we can even offer each other the ability to like delete things that

we don't want to exist indefinitely. I think one of the biggest sort of existential struggles that crosses over to where people get support for abortions from like organizations also includes the fact that I know has been discussed many times on this podcast, that there is a difference in how much information is kept depending on where you were

having a conversation on your phone. So an SMS text message, those little green bubbles that go back and forth between you and possibly other people who are on iOS like or iOS and Android combination conversation you're friends with and an Android might have a green bubble come back to you.

That basically means that that is going as an SMS text message to your phone carrier, and that means that it's going quote unquote in plain text, totally unencrypted to the cell tower, and it's being held by that phone carrier unencrypted, readable as it is as you typed it in as far as.

intend to do with your text message. But it's why we often then encourage people as like sort of a second step to try and use encrypted chat with Signal

or another trusted and encrypted chat. Again sounds overly simplistic, but I think having those disappearing messages on, especially between people who are seeking support from one another, whether it's somebody in your life or another organization that's helping you to get your abortion, there really is something to that ability to again speak freely, to be best friends, helping your friends you know, allegedly get abortion medication, or to being a mom you know there to support your child,

no matter what. I think, it's just something really wonderful about how using disappearing messages with signal like reflects the values that we actually have already with each other. And just like make sure that technology companies or corporations or law enforcement don't get to get in the way of how we want to live our lives.

an Abortion Hotline or m A hotline dot org. But you can call and get some you know, feedback from a doctor about Hey, do I even need to go to the er?

some of my symptoms. And you know, it's like this extra kind of added support that you can access as a pregnant person or you know, if you're having a miscarriage, if you're having an abortion, to assess your risk and to see if you can avoid even going to a medical plight given that you know, going to an emergency room in a banned state is something that does increase the risk of criminalization.

about your abortion of pregnancy experience. I know that it's really hard because often when folks are in a hospital setting, we're sort of socialized to disclose everything. You know, we want to tell our doctor what's wrong and tell them everything we took, and you know, you worry it might be relevant, but I was reassured, I think by many other professionals in the space, that doctors treat based on the symptoms that you present with, regardless of how they

got there. You might be a physician where you don't know. So you know, if you just tell folks what's going on with your body, what you are seeing, what you were feeling and experiencing, it is their job to treat you regardless of what you choose to share. And I would say that that's actually a true regardless of what healthcare condition you come into the ear with, it is your right to only disclose as much as you feel

safe doing so. So I think like that was something that I know, again we're not used to thinking about that as like a digital security measure, but it is an information security measure, and I think an operational security measure that you know, we've had to like then realize that that's actually probably almost more important to tell people before we start getting into this nitty gritty of like things to do with your phone, is to understand that

those principles that we believe that you know, the human again, the human body is very varied and how it experiences something like pregnancy, miscarriage, and abortion, and that you know, folks have a responsibility to treat you regardless of you know, what's in your phone or what happened before that or this like statement of facts that are relevant to a courtroom and not to your care.

messages on. For our second item, we're going to make a plan for if we need to get care after the fact and ensure that we're trying to again have our support people. Also understand that you know, doctors treat you based on the symptoms you present with. That is, you don't have to tell them anything else that you

do not wish to disclose. And the third thing is that something that I think as digital security practitioners we kind of forget is super important, which is that, like you know, I think I run into this conflict whereas like experts or smart people, we try to like imagine in our mind, like how we would have this perfectly like footprint free abortion, you know, like this like you signal use Tori's bitcoin, kind of like strange way of architecting, you know, privacy in our mind. And I call it

the ghost abortion, like that it's it's a myth. You can't have one. There's no such thing as an abortion that leads no footprint. But I think we forget then that it actually is super meaningful to delete what's within our power to delete. So our third recommendation for folks is to like be aware of what's collected and and then ensure that you know that you can delete your browser history, you can delete your Google Maps history from like driving to the clinic. You can delete your emails,

you can delete messages on certain platforms. And I think just like understanding that deleting what you can is actually super meaningful. I actually didn't know untill I got this job that certain platforms, like even Google products, like if you delete something from it, it is purge from the servers like something like two and a half months later. So when you delete stuff, it's very meaningful. I think there you get more options than ever to decide like

how long you want to keep something. And it does make it so that that primary thing we talked about, like if somebody were to take my phone from me and to like you know, make a clone of it and try to look through it, at least it's deleted. That copy is no longer on my device. Even if they would have to go to like you know, get a warrant later, that.

like you know, these things are within our power. I think it's really easy to get tangled up in the idea of like abstract data and things that are really tough for us to always know when they're generated, like ad tracker data or you know who is reselling or doing something with my period tracking apps? There are great options that are local only to your phone, like Yuki app.

If you are concerned about that other apps, seeing whether or not they use best practice of security, if they've responded and said like how they would respond to a llegal request, that's awesome. I think that just sort of taking that uncertainty away is great because tracking your period is really important. As Crystal would tell you, it is an essential way that you're going to know how pregnant you are and find the option that's safest for your circumstances.

So yeah, and that that I'll pass to Crystal for anything else you think our folks should know before we depart.

Given the abortion restrictions and the abortion vans now we are only you know, admittedly they're going to get worse. This is going to get less safe. There is going to be greater risk of criminalization. So when people call, when people call and they ask like can I access pills.

get information out of you. They'll let you confess your crime, So invoke your right to remain silent, get a fucking lawyer, don't talk to them. And you know, listen, this is advice that's not just coming from me, right like this, this is the advice you will get from every single person who does who does any kind of from offense. This is what you'll get from a public defender. This is what you'll get from anyone who has even sort

of interacted with the legal system. And this is also true even if they tell you that, oh, you're not a suspect, you're just a blah blah blah. We're trying to get information. It is their job to lie to you. Think about it roughly the same way of like if you're dealing with like a country secret police, how much information would you give them? The answer is do not. Simply do not do this.