Looking for an abortion online? Listen to this first.

and spread the word. Come in. Decency also does not exist in surveillance capitalism. Um just incause anybody's worried about that if they can make money on it, they do not care how evil it is, and that that is a pretty universal lesson. There are No Girls on the Internet. As a production of My Heart Radio and Unboss Creative, I'm Bridget Todd, and this is there are no Girls on the Internet. By now, you probably know that last week the Preme Court of the United States overturned Row v. Wade,

the landmark decision legalizing abortion in the United States. Now, I have spent most of my adult life working on expanding and protecting abortion access, so I'm not gonna lie I took it pretty hard, and even though abortion advocates and providers have been expecting this for many, many years and preparing for it, it still felt like a punch to the gut. I'm angry, I'm numb, but most of all,

I am just fucking exhausted. Now, let's be clear abortion is a technology issue because in the issue isn't so much quote back alley abortions and code hanger imagery. It's the digital surveillance and criminalization of people suspected of having abortions or aiding in abortions in states where expanned. When the news broke, there were a ton of questions circulating around social media. Should you delete your period track or app? How can someone securely find that obtain abortion pills without

creating a digital paper trail. It's a lot to navigate, and I'm not a lawyer, so this is not legal advice. Nor am I a cybersecurity or digital security expert. But I know somebody who is. I turned to Dr Jen Goldbeck, professor at University of Maryland and computer scientist. I found Jen on TikTok, where she's been doing a popular series teaching people how to more securely access healthcare, including abortion

care online. So I have to start by really asking this kind of grounding question, like in these very weird, intense times, like how are you? How are you? I know that this time must be uh intense for someone with your body of work. How how are you holding up? Like not great? If I'm going to be like super honest, Um,

I'm getting stuff done. It's been really nice being on sabbatical this year, um, which I think a lot of people think that means you don't have to work for a year, But it's just to kind of work on different stuff. But you don't have teach classes, you don't have to go to all the committee meetings that you normally do. So I've been writing a book and it's been good to have a slightly work pace. Um. But yeah, you know, I deal with a lot of bad stuff

on the internet, Like that's kind of my job. And the bad stuff, man, sure has not stopped in the last couple of years. Um, so you can get a little overwhelming. I'd be really happy for it not to be a thing anymore. But I'm still functioning, you know, so that that account that as a win. Yeah, you gotta get your your w's where you can in these days, I feel like for sure, So how did you come like you have this? I was reading about your background and it's fucking amazing. How did you come to be

doing this work? Like what brought you to digital security? What brought you to really doing in research into the way that the implications of the online tools that we use every day. It's yeah, you know, so I started um I started my pH d in two thousand one, and I remember going to my advisor and being like, so, social networks, that's the thing that people study in sociology. What happens if we put one of those on the web? And he's like, interesting ideal, Like maybe try that and

see what happens. And so my timing was like just perfect for you know, at that point, it was blogging, and then social media kind of emerged. So I've really been studying it since it was a thing and it was like it had all this promise to be really great, and I think, frankly, it's done a lot of great things, especially for traditionally marginalized communities, Like we take a lot of crap there, but it also has given us things that we wouldn't have in any other way. But it's

also man like the dark, terrible stuff that goes on there. Um. And so you know, as a computer scientist, I'm kind of building artificial intelligence and technology that works in that space. UM. But I've always had kind of this interdisciplinary bent and the department I'm in I'm in which is called Information Studies, it lets you do that. You can do whatever you want there, which is amazing. And so I've I've kind of consider myself like a public anthropologists sort of of

like the bad Internet. So like you guys really don't want to go there, but I'll go there and I'll let you know the kind of stuff they're doing. And there's a lot of demand for for somebody to tell people that because the people very rightly don't want to go look at it themselves. And so I kind of fill that gap, like I'll endure it and then I'll tell you what it's about and then we can think

about that. I know that you've been doing this series trying to keep give people information about how to avoid being tracked online if they're trying to access an abortion. How did this come to be? Like how did you start doing this? So you know, I have never had an abortion, and I it's I've never been pregnant, right, but I have never wanted kids, and so it has been a thing my whole life that I've been grateful

to know was an option. Um, Like I was. I was clear from the time I was six years old. I thought, you just got pregnant, like you got a cold, Like you just woke up one day, you had like a big belly and you And I remember telling my mom like it's six, Like God, I hope that never happens to me, right, Like never a doubt in my mind that I didn't want kids. And so you know, obviously, like I've always been very careful, but I have always known that like if I ended up pregnant, like I

was not gonna stay pregnant. Um. You know, eventually, after about ten years of harassment, managed to get a doctor to tie my tubes for me. That's a whole other conversation. Um. So it's not a thing that I personally worry about, but I am like so aware of, like how important for my whole life it has been knowing that I would have access to that if I wanted it. Um, And knowing all I mean, I know and we all

do whether we know it or not. I know a ton of women who have had abortions and a ton of men who have been with women who have had abortions, and like how important that is? And uh yeah, like you're really good at getting my rage up today, Like let it. I mean, it's a raging topic. It is, it is. I'm right there with you. It is a rag topic. I think a thing like that has built

up over the last two years. Well more right, I mean we have like Trump and then we have COVID, and then we have the election in the insurrect action, like all of this stuff that's been happening Q and on right, which has been a big presence in my life. It's like there's I do what I can do, which is to sort of bring some light into spaces where people might be confused. But I feel very powerless to kind of fix what I see as like such a

big problem, big complicated, festering problem. And this was like another one of those things like I can't believe, like this is like yet another thing in this string of awful stuff. What can I do? Well? The one thing that I can do is that, like you can get an abortion in a lot of a lot of the cases where women need them. You can do it with medication.

You can do it safely. That is easily accessible online, Like you can go online, you can buy it and they will send it to your house, no problem, right, no matter what state you're in, they'll ship it to you from another country. You can get it. And so then the concern becomes, well, how are they going to track this? And like we all know to be worried

about that now, but not exactly how it's working. And when I do these videos on TikTok talking about this stuff, I get a lot of kind of like bros honestly in the comments, going like, well, if you just use a VPN, it's not going to be a problem, and like, I'm all for a VPN, right, Like that will encrypt the traffic coming out of your computer, so it's less

likely to get snooped on. But it does not solve any of these problems of like capitalist surveillance, digital tracking, all of this, And so people sometimes think like, oh, I know there's one thing to do, right, I'll use incognito mode on my browser. I'll use a VPN and that will protect me and it won't. So I want to talk you through here's the entirety of this process.

If you were to go buy abortion medication and get it shipped to you, and here's what you have to do for every single one of those ways they're going to track you. There's protections that you can take in every one of those steps to actually get access to that. So, um, it's it's a way that makes me feel like a little bit of control over what's going on, at least helping people know that, Like, if you're going to go that route to buy medication online to have an abortion,

here's the steps that you can take to be really protected. Yeah, I mean you you mentioned the response that you got from like broby types is something I've sort of been wrestling with. Um. I have noticed, this is just my

anecdotal opinion whatever. I have noticed that the surveillance and like digital security space for the last ten years has been a little bit I guess browy for the lack of for lack of a better phrase, and I guess we're in this moment where it's so clear to me, Oh, it's always been the case, but in this moment in particular, it's so clear to me how important digital security and issues are for women, for non binary people, for people

who are traditionally marginalized. So who are not you know, bros? Um, when we think about surveillance, I guess, how do we make sure that that doesn't get lost, that the issue doesn't does it become like, oh, the face of digital security is like a white dude. How can we get to a place where we can have a more honest understanding of what is at stake for who when it comes to digital security and things like us being tracked online? Yeah, I mean I think you nailed a really important point there.

It's like the bros are not at risk in the same way that women are, that people of color are, say trans people now right, I mean they're having all of their own big legal issues with with access to healthcare. It's not the bros that are having those problems. And there's a really interesting dynamic here that I've seen kind of before. These social issues, say over the last two

or three years, have brought this to the forefront. But when I would just talk about security and privacy in general, you get a response that's like, well, what you just said isn't a perfect solution, right. So, when I was one of the first videos I did about abortion is like, hey, if you're gonna search for like abortion related stuff online,

use incognito mode in your browser at least. And then I'm like, you can use the tour browser that pretends to prevents you from getting tracked, but at least use incognito mode. Now, all incognito mode does is delete your search history when you close the window. That is the

entirety of the protection you get. So it's very insecure or but we've seen women already be arrested and charged with murder when they have miscarriages because they searched for abortion related stuff at some point, and that's just the cops taking their computer and looking at their search history and it's in there, So like, don't keep your search history. It's a thing that's going to get you some percentage

of safety. And I do that video and they're like, well, you know, incognito mode, like it doesn't do this, and it doesn't do this, and it's not a perfect solution. It's like yeah, man, like I know, but that doesn't mean don't do things. And this is a thing I think a lot of security bros get really caught up on, is like you don't have a perfect solution, like I can find ways that that thing is insecure, and so you're dumb and bad and wrong and I'm smarter than you.

They don't actually come with another solution or like a thing that makes it better. They just want to have that little power place of like let me explain to you, well, you're wrong about this and and and that I feel is the real problem where it's like they don't face the same issues that we do, whatever those issues are, whatever group you're part of, they're kind of safe. It's really easy to come from a place of like, well you suck and you're wrong and I'm smarter than you,

and not bring any solutions with that. And I think that's sort of what we're dealing with. And frankly that we see a lot online is like they're kind of used to being in this position of power, and so women come along, people of color come along, trans people come along, and go, here's the thing that we can do to stay safer. They want to kind of reclaim that position of power and be like that's not right,

Like I know better than you, guys. I see that kind of power dynamic, which we've seen so many times with so many things online just kind of playing out in the security space as well. I think for a lot of them it's like theoretical, and for us it is not theoretical. It is very real world for sure. Not everyone is a digital security expert. In fact, the people who most need practical advice on how you can more securely access abortion online are folks who might not

necessarily consider themselves techys. This is why Jen keeps accessibility the forefront of her work. She wants to make sure that the tips and tools that she highlights are accessible enough to actually be helpful for the folks who need the most. Going back to what you were saying about how sometimes you get these growing people responding to you about like, oh, you're wrong about this, You're not doing

that perfectly. I think it's really tricky because the the audience that you're speaking to, for the most part, they're not going to be digital security experts or tech experts.

There are people who are looking to access abortion right and so you kind of have to walk this line of making sure that your tips are accessible for people who need them, and those people, by and large, I'm sorry, are not people who are going to you know already be showing up a level of tech expertise, and so coming from a place of like, oh, it has to be perfect to even be you know, something that you

put out into the world. Again, I just feel like it doesn't reflect where we're actually at, Like, like, how do you how do you balance making sure that the tips that you give are actually going to be accessible for the folks who need them. Yeah, you know, so there's there is a nearly perfect way that you could

buy abortion medication and not be tracked. You take a whole bunch of cash, you go buy a burner phone, you use it on public WiFi, you use the tour browser, You use cash to buy gift cards that you use to pay for the medication you have it shipped to. This is kind of the big question. Mark someplace that's not you and pick it up from there and there's no digital trace of you. So great one that's super

hard to it's very expensive, right, that's not accessible. I mean if I I think, like if I were like seventeen and needed an abortion and didn't want to tell my parents about it, right, I mean, I think that's part of the audience I'm reaching On TikTok. They're not going to use a bunch of cash to go buy a burner phone and use publicly and like all use the tour browser, right Like, that's not what they're gonna do.

And the fact is, like, you know, if we have like big government agency right like there's an n s A, FBI ci A task force coming to get you, man, there's nothing you can do right there, they're going to figure this out. But the fact is they're not going to be going like, oh, abortion medication was like purchased by somebody on the Panera WiFi at this time, So let's go get the security footage like some ci cs I nonsense, Like that's not most of what we're dealing with.

It's like your neighbor found out you got an abortion and they're gonna do the Texas civil suit thing to get there ten thousand dollars and turn you in. What's gonna make it easier? Um, So I like to give you know solutions, what's gonna get you more protection? Like delete that search history. It's gonna help. Is it perfect? No? But if you do that and you know you use a gift card to buy it, and you don't take your phone, if you're going to like planned parenthood, so

you can't get tracked, like we know people are tracking that. Like, these are all really simple steps that anybody can do. They don't cost you a lot of money. It's just kind of changing your habits and being aware. And I think having that like one, people are more likely to do it. It's accessible to more people, and it's going to give a good amount of protection, even if it's not perfect. Nobody like the perfect solutions stupid and hard and nobody wants it. Yeah, otherwise we'd be doing it

already with everything. Yeah, exactly. You know. One of the tips that you give that I love is that, Um, you know, if people don't have the abilities you're like, go buy a burner phone. If you don't, if you can't buy a burner phone, go to a library. And you talk about how public libraries are the bastion of privacy protection. Can you tell us so I love that, um shout out to librarians. Can you tell us more about that? Yeah? I mean if you go back to

like the George W. Bush administration. Um, so we're looking like post nine eleven. I think one of the nine eleven hijackers may have looked something up in a library ones or or at least part of this whole terrorism panic around then was like, oh, people in libraries are gonna be doing terrorism there, so we want to be able to access all the books that people have checked out. Like I'm worried about Jen doing a terrorism I want to see everything that she's checked out and everything that

she's done. And the librarians were like, no, we're not doing that. If we have to throw away all of our records of books that people have checked out, we will do that before we'll turn them over. And I think that George W. Bush quote was radical militant librarians, right. Um so this, you know, we can kind of go back to then and librarians are like no, like people should just be able to come here and get information,

like that's their job. I mean the department that I'm in information studies at Maryland we have the Library Science program, so professional librarians among other professionals, come out of our school. They're very committed to helping people find the information they want and giving them protection for that. Um. So, like, on one hand, your librarian is likely not going to be a digital security expert who will be able to track you talk you through how to prevent being tracked.

But on a lot of those computers, for all sorts of reasons, they'll like automatically delete your search history, and they're not gonna collect a lot of information about you because you know, if you go on the library computer before me, they don't want me looking through all of your history, right, there's a good reason to keep that private, And they have this history of not turning over that information and in fact having a lot of legal protection

from turning that information over to the government. And so while they're not going to give you a necessarily a ton of great advice on like how to keep your phone from being tracked, they will show you how to access information and use the Internet in a way that's likely to be safe for you. Um, and it's free and it's a great resource. And librarians love helping people

find information. So you know, always your mileage may very be cautious about if you're telling them you're searching for abortion related information, depending on where you are right but if you just want to private search oneto, they absolutely should be able to help you set that up. That's good advice. I I love librarians. It's like every time I hear more about the times of public resources that

they offer to the community. It's like, we need to be talking more about the amazing resource that we have available to us in public libraries. Yeah, like they need a master's degree to be a library in and if if you were experienced with librarians is only like it's where I checked out books as a kid, and then I returned the books. You go, like, what do they

need a master's degree for? But it's because they have all this expertise on lots of other topics, many of which are related to kind of community relations in management, because it's a big part of their life. Let's take a quick break that are. Back in the wake of the Supreme Court striking down ROW, I heard lots of well meaning people say things like, well, don't worry because

we've been here before. But that's not actually true because the last time abortion was illegal in the United States, in the days before Row became the law of the land in ninete, we did not have the vast infrastructure of digital surveillance, tracking, and data sharing and selling like

we do now. We didn't all carry GPS devices in our pockets, we did not all create digital paper trails of all the information we've ever accessed, and we certainly didn't have companies selling and sharing that information with third parties, including law enforcement. We did not create digital logs of the most sensitive information about our bodies, like our periods, onto apps who then go on to share it with

God knows who. For instance, the popular period tracking app flow based a lawsuit last year for sharing people's personal information, including quote intimate details about sexual health and menstrual cycles, with third parties like Facebook and Google, despite public assurances that it would not and they did this because data is quote vital to their business, according to the lawsuit.

Add in laws like s b E in Texas that deputized ordinary citizens to turn in anyone they suspect of having an abortion or aiding and a betting an abortion for a ten dollar reward, and you can serve to see the scope of the situation that we're currently facing. So I want to set the stage a little bit.

I feel like there's probably people listening who were like, this is I'm learning a lot about the state of play as it pertains to digital security and what is really at stake with the information that I, you know, put on the internet. And that technology has about me.

And so people, you know, you might I guess that you might be thinking like things like when we have our periods and you know, the goings on of our of our reproductive health, that's probably like protected by HIPPA or like common decency, right, But that is not the case. So so what is the reality around you know, our information and how it can be accessed and perhaps used

against us? Yeah, so so HIPPA has really gotten a lot of attention between like COVID and vaccines and and certainly now at this So HIPPA is a law that just provides, just applies to your health care providers. So your doctor's office, your pharmacy, they're not allowed to give away your records. Um that said into ingle. So my dog, I have a bunch of rescue golden retrievers um that have a variety of issues. And one of my tax is very serious anxiety and he's on prozac. So it

takes prozac every day. And uh, he's on my like CBS family account, and I got a text from CBS like, hey, Chief Brody, just you know May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, and it's like they're sending kind of marketing emails or text to my dog because he's on an antidepressant UM, which you know sort of shows like they're you know, they're following hippo rules for the dog even if they don't have to. But they can still use it internally for things, right, So hippa, it's not It

doesn't have anything to do with privacy. Really. It has to do with how your medical records are sent around and that they can't be released. You do get some privacy from that, but not anything relating to apps, the internet people, just your doctor and your pharmacy basically, So ignore hippa. It doesn't apply to anything that we're worried about. Essentially, um,

common decency all so does not exist in surveillance capitalism. UM, Just in case anybody's worried about that, if they can make money on it, they do not care how evil it is, and that that is a pretty universal lesson. I am an optimist and I keep going, yeah, but they wouldn't do that, and like, yeah, they totally would. They are they have been for ten years. Like, um, you're just not going to get a lot of protection.

What we've seen with like period tracking apps, UM, is that a lot of them were sharing information, and they do it in a variety of ways. So some full on released your period data and your health data to Facebook and Google. They got in big trouble for doing that, So that can totally happen. Um, some of it is is a little more passive, right, So they might use

a third party to do like analytics. So I want to know, like, does Jen come to the app other than when she's logging her symptoms or her cycle info? So do I come to it in the middle of the month and look for anything? Do I use it for anything other than just like putting stuff in? So that could be interesting them to know, and it may help them develop new features or you know, decide things. But writing code to do those sorts of analytics is

pretty heavy duty. There's plenty of third parties who will do it for you, So they might partner with a third party to do analytics, but that third party the necessarily gets access to some of their data. So it might not be every single thing that I've logged in the app, but there's a lot that they can infer. There's a lot that they're going to collect and save, and so your information can be leaking out in ways

that even the app may not necessarily intend. And those analytics parties absolutely could use it for marketing, right, they may show ads in the app to help pay for it. So it's a free app, but we'll show you like little banner ads at the bottom. It might be coming from there. So there's a ton of ways that um, even not being hacked, which is the thing we could talk about. UM, your data can get shared with third

parties by those apps. And if we're looking then at places like Texas, for example, where there's a ten dollar incentive for me to find out anybody who gotten abortion. That's data that it would be really interesting for me as an evil person to try to find a way to track down through data brokers online advertisers that maybe

incorporating it into their background. Wow. I'm so glad that you brought up the like quote like bounty hunter policies and states like Texas, because I do think that highlights the just the real world stakes of what we're talking about and how important it is that we really understand what we're doing when we give in for what we might be doing when we give our information to these apps.

I guess this, I mean I don't know. Maybe this is too black and white of a question, but what do you say that people in the wake of row v. Wade being struck down. Should folks be thinking about the leading period tracker apps? Should they be like is that is that too like black and white or simplistic of a way to even be framing it? Or what do

you think? I mean, I think it's a really useful framing. Um, whether or not you do you know, it's going to depend on frankly, where you are, what kind of support you have, um, what level of worry you have? Right? So, uh, you know, I mentioned I had my tubes tile, so I'm not gonna get pregnant. I guess it could fail. And if I got pregnant, um Man, I'm like a well off white woman, right, I could go to Canada. If I couldn't get an abortion in the US, I

could go to Canada. I know how to cover my tracks. I mean, I have all the resources and privilege and money necessary to get an abortion if I wanted one. Um, if I were in a kind of rural, really Bible belty anti abortion place, and I'm a younger woman without a lot of financial resources, so I couldn't travel by myself to a state that could do an abortion for me. Maybe I'm too young, I don't have the money for it.

My parents would catch me that kind of thing. Um, And you know that people around you are really excited about bounty hunting people who get abortions, then yeah, like maybe start tracking that on paper like I did in high school. I have little red dots in my planner. Um. Yeah, you know, I don't think it's gonna be the main

place people go to. You always can lie right, like, oh, yes, I did have my period last month, and you just find however many days and you plunk it in there and you've got a record that that makes it look like you weren't pregnant even if you were. Um. But you know, if you're worried about people like checking in on that, right, somebody gets ahold of your phone, are they gonna go look at it to see when you had your last period. I don't think it's a bad idea.

And look, generally, I think everyone should be wary about logging any kind of personal information like this in any app, even if there's not a law that would get in the way of your health care, because it's almost always going to be monetized and sold to advertisers. I mean, you earlier today or earlier, I think it was this week,

you were posting on TikTok about elevated access. You know, the pilots who you know, will they take donations and they'll fly people every all of the like, like all everywhere in the United States other than Alaska and Hawaii to get abortions like a portion care or gender affirming care. What do you make of the fact that we're in this place where we have to have pilots taking donations to shuttle people to get healthcare, where we have to be deleting our period tracker apps, you know, so we

don't get criminalized for abortion care. Like, what do you make of the fact that we're in this place where these kinds of things they sound so wild, but they are very necessary. Yeah, I mean I have kind of the pessimistic view and the optimistic view together. So the pessimistic view is that, um, this this seems to me

a pretty linear path towards authoritarianism that started in right. Um, we certainly saw this with like the rise of Trump and his rallies and and chance for people to be arrested and chance to you know, take people down and physical violence in those spaces. And we saw steady increases in that and kind of normalization of that kind of hate and language and violence over the course of the Trump administration. Um, and this kind of other ring, right,

and we're seeing it, you know where we wait. I mean, this has been a very long battle for the anti abortion camp. So I don't like they maybe are in a position to achieve it now, um, but they've been trying to do that for a long time. Do you especially look at like right now, like the anti trans and anti gay measures. You know, I'm in Florida, um Man.

Stuff is a nightmare here right, um, where you know you're having like gay teachers quitting their jobs because they're not even allowed, Like students found out that they were married to somebody of the same gender and and they're like, so I'm going to get fired for that, right. I mean, that's happening in Florida now, that kind of mothering, Right, who is the enemy and and let's start doing stuff

against them? I mean it's such textbook authoritarianism, and and so we've really seen I think a ramping up of that not that things were great for women seeking abortions, or trans people or gay people. But we've seen progress, right, and things have kind of been progressing, and now we've seen a really aggressive backlash that and some success with that backlash. Um, so that's really upsetting, But I'm not surprised.

I mean, it seems like a path that we have been on, you know, for the better part of the last decade, and hopefully we get out of that. But I don't know, right. I mean, I think the next couple of elections, the midterms, in the next presidential election, maybe we'll give us an insight of how much staying power that has. The optimistic side that I have is man or a lot of people trying to do something

about it. So the elevated access, I mean, these pilots getting together, Like how awesome is it that there's this like network of pilots that are like, we will pick you up in Texas if you need gender firming care, and we will take you to Colorado and you can get it there. You need an abortion, like we'll come get you. Somebody else will pay for it, and we'll take you somewhere. Um. You know, my TikTok series is

a little cheap free thing. But it's like I've spent two decades building this knowledge and I'm gonna drop it to you in one minute segments for as long as I have to to kind of protect that. And there's great resources, you know in the abortion space that are like, tell us what state you're in, We're going to tell you how you can get abortion medication or see a provider. Well, here's what your legal options are. And if we have to send you to a pharmacy in India, we have

vetted them. We know that it's trustworthy. There's a lot of people. I mean, first, the majority of people want abortion access to be a thing right, and a lot of people are willing to take action. And frankly, this is another great thing that I see from social media is it allows us to kind of organize those movements nationwide from people who are like sitting at home and

just want to help. Um. So I'm optimistic in that space that there's gonna be a lot of people working at the grassroots level to fight this kind of legal authoritarianism that you know, I'm I hope we see our way out of but I think it's gonna be a little while oh my god. I mean, I have been in the like abortion space for a long time, and it's truly the only thing that gives me hope is that the space of abortion provider, abortion advocates and their allies.

It is such a dynamic, a space filled with dynamic, creative people who want to fucking help. And you know, I hear things all the time where it will be like, oh, a bunch of teens in Texas took down the bounty Hunter tipline website, you know, by organizing on TikTok. Like, I'll hear these things and it's like, as I don't know, I don't have a lot of faith in our elected officials to have our back, but I I believe in us, like I believe in you know, uh, the power of

the people who care, and we're the majority. Like I'm so glad that you brought that up. I think for so long we've allowed anti we've about anti abortion folks to set the narrative of what we how we talk about abortion. And the reality is eighty percent of Americans support abortion access and wanted to be protected, and so people who are outside out of step with that, they are the extremists and there's not too there's not both

sides to it. There's not two sides about it. We need to make sure that we're making that very clear. And we talk about abortion that the majority of the of the country, there's not a pocket anywhere where the majority of people are against abortion access. It is. It is popular, we all and we've decided. And so people who are fighting against it, they are the ones that that are the extremists, not us. I also obviously am

like a huge supporter of abortion access. And what we've sort of seen in the last few weeks, right since we got this leak decision, is one states where abortion is is already legal and not really threatened, are making it easier to get an abortion right. So we've actually seen a liberalizing of abortion access in those states, which

I think is awesome. Um. The other thing that we're seeing, you know, on one hand, you look at like Oklahoma, right, so they just passed this bill today yesterday, UM, defining like human life at fertilization. Uh, and I mean ghoulish right is absolutely unscientific. Nobody understands the implications of what

they've just done. And I people are going to start to see it because those of us who are in favor of not just abortion excess, but like women's health care access go so no more IVF then, for example in Oklahoma, um so, man, even if you're against abortion and you want to have a family, if you do IVF, well, all those frozen embryos that you haven't used, what are you gonna do about them? Because those are now human

lives that you're in charge of. Um And even the people who think there should be limits on abortion, the percentage who think a topic pregnancies should not be allowed to be aborted, they have to try to move that inviable like ball of cells into the units where it never can implant that you have to do that extra medical procedure. No. I mean, the number of people who think that's a good idea are just infintesimal. And yet

we're seeing it legislatively. And so the hope is that what this will do is really open the eyes of a lot of people too. It's not these things that you're seeing on the posters. It's like people trying to have IVF, people who have completely inviable for nancies, people who you know, find out six or eight weeks into their pregnancy that that they're pregnant and you're not giving

them any options. You know. I think it's going to galvanize a lot of people who maybe haven't thought this was an issue that affected them that much because they're like, they had kids, they're find having more kids. Um, they maybe have a religious position, you know. I think it's going to bring this community together and get things seen by people who don't normally think about the issue more.

After a quick break, let's get right back into it. So, you know you were talking earlier about apps and how anything that can be for sale will be for sale. I'm in in in this day and age in my life, I am like a fairly parent and white person when it comes to this stuff. Like I own an iPhone, but other than that, I don't have any kind of quote smart device is in my home. But that was

a journey. I went from like thinking it was so cool that I could come into my apartment and be like, hey, Google playing Madonna and it would start playing, and then you know, now I don't have any of that stuff. But I guess there's probably people who are listening right now, um, who are thinking like wow, I you know, I have never really thought about digital security and this all feels

super overwhelming and hard. You know, what do you say to those people who are just sort of starting to think about the implications of the technology that we use, and they're like, gee, this is a lot. Yeah, I mean I guess two points there. One is so I also don't have any of those technologies. I call them in home surveillance devices because that's like what they are. Um, it's work man. Like, when we bought this house that I'm in now, we had to buy a TV, like

we bought it fresh. We had to buy everything to go and we didn't move stuff to it. Finding a TV that doesn't have voice control, right because if you look at the terms of service on those TVs are like, don't have sensitive conversations in front of your TV because we can't guarantee your privacy, and has like no, if I have to, I will get in there with a soldering iron and pick up microphone out and I have to. Uh. It was it was a little bit of a challenge.

So yeah, So on one hand, like obviously a lot of the tradeoff we talked about with all of this is like there's convenience on one side, right, it's easy to do the thing that lets you be surveilled by design, right, and then it's harder to do things that protect your privacy. So you want to think about where you fall on the scale. I also have an iPhone, Right, it would be more secure if I just had a flip phone. And there's just like too many things I would not

be able to do if I didn't have that. UM, But you want to think about what is the most evil thing that a person could do with what I'm doing with my current digital setup. So, for example, your Internet search history or the history of websites that you go visit. I think the first law that was signed into effect when Trump became president UM was blocking an Obama administration regular lation that said your internet service provider, so Comcast or Exfinity or a T and T, whoever

gets you your internet to your house. Obama put in a regulation that said they can't look at your search history, your web browsing history and use that for advertising for monetization. And then the very first law that the Trump administration signed into effect was removing that regulation. Now, this was a rule that was supported by like percent of Americans were like, yeah, internet service providers shouldn't be able to snoop on what I'm doing, and they overrode that rule

anyway and said, go ahead and do that. Right, say about everything you do online and it's worse than you think, Like go back and look at your searchain history, right, it's like cringe worthy awful stuff like why did I search for like kangaroo sex? Like, oh, you know there's like a commercial that came up. Um, could people twist that and give it in a way that makes you

look bad? They totally can, right, Um, all of that everything you do online, everything you buy, everything you search for, every website you go to, every action you do on it is being aggregated in the back end and used to target you. Everywhere you move with your phone on is being used to target you. And understand where you are. Be creative about how evil it can be because that's happening.

And if we look at abortion, for example, before before any of this row you wade stuff over the last couple of weeks, we know, for example, that there's anti abortion groups that we're setting up geo fenced advertising. So basically you can draw a little map and say, anytime anybody walks into this space, I want to start sending them ads, and they would draw it in a one block radius around planned parenthoods or abortion providers, and then if you crossed into that space, you would start being

targeted for months with anti abortion advertising. We know that they're doing that, and they can collect data from our phones if we engage with any of that content, and so your privacy or anonymity goes away. So as you think about the convenience that you get from bringing your phone to your doctor's office, a thing you should totally be able to do, you want to think about if you should. That said, the onus should not be on individuals for this right. It's a thing that should make

us push really hard for better privacy protections. They have it in Europe, right, none of this stuff would be legal in Europe in the way that it is here. They have in California to a certain extent. Um, we really need much better federal privacy laws and that will resolve a lot of these issues, and it's the thing that people should be pushing for. Um. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a great place to go. Look um it's

e f dot org. They have a whole legislative sections so you can see on the local state federal level, what legislations being in place, and like write some letters if you care about it. I'm still glad that you

mentioned them. I love E F F shout out to them. UM, So you know you've mentioned a couple of like really great tips for folks if you're if you're you know it, looking for abortion pills and you want to do it, you know in a way that you're going to be less likely to be tracked you using a tour browser using incognito mode when you search, um using public WiFi. Are there other tips that you want to shout out for folks if you if they if they might need

this information. So, so that's all important stuff, I would say for sure. The most important one is that you are not paying with a credit card or a debit card connected to your name. So figure out how much your medication is going to cost, use cash by like a Visa Vanilla gift card, which you can get anywhere for that amount, and then pay with the Visa Vanilla gift card. Um. So much of how we're tracked is

through credit card number. UM, so definitely do that. And the other way that we're really easily tracked is through email address. So set up a fresh email address that you are only using to buy this abortion medication. UM. Proton mail is the one site that I recommended for this. It's free, it's encrypted, it's really good and secure. UM. You can just set up email address, use it to buy your medicine. Don't use it for anything else. If you do that, gift card fresh email address on something

like proton mail. You know I loved Gmail, I use it right, but they track the hell out of you on Gmail. So proton mail email address, Vanilla gift card, UM, you you get eight of the protection from acting just from those two measures. So UM, you know that's easy and accessible to anybody. Definitely do that. That's really helpful. And I guess you know. One of my last questions

for you. I usually ask folks who are doing tough work, whether it's digital surveillance or you know, abortion, like fighting for abortion access. I usually ask, like, what keeps you grounded and happy in this work? And I feel like I might know for you. You You know you're just like this from looking up looking you up online, I know that you're like a really cool person, like you're an ultra marathon or like you have all of this you have a whole dynamic list of really incredible interests. You

also run Golden Ratio, a nonprofit that helps dogs. Yeah. So I grew up with the Golden Retrievers and I had a couple of dogs that I got his puppies and when they died, you know, ten years ago. Um, you know, I had been wanting to rescue and just wasn't sure how to do it. You know, I got my first dog, like as I was moving out of the dorms, right, so I didn't like quite know how to adult with a dog. Um. But you know, at that point I was like, okay, like let's start doing rescues.

So we started fostering um and then kind of fell into this space of rescuing senior dogs and then dogs with special medical conditions. So we're kind of like the Island of misfit toys. Um we have We just lost one this week actually, um, one of our epileptic dogs. UM. So he was number six. We have five right now, but we have a blind diabetic, we have a tripod. We have the one on prozac who also has really bad allergies. So all the dogs basically that nobody else

wants to deal with because they're like way too much work. Uh. They come to us and uh and we share them online because they are both like super joyful just existing. But also the transformations that these dogs make. You know, Remy who's are blind diabetic, we got him last July. Um. He was on a chain in the backyard for five years. He had never been to the vet. He had a perfect rectangle of baldness between his shoulder blades where the chain connected to his collar and had just rubbed the

fur off. He had lined his ease or luck. Yeah, he had never had his diabetes treated. He was blind, no training, obviously, no house breaking, and they're like, here have this dog and uh, you know, his fur had fallen out, like he was just a mess. And now he is like he comes up and he like rests his chin on my chest and he's it's fluffy monster, and his like vision is coming back and he plays

with all the other dogs. And to watch that transformation of these dogs who have had, like you know, some have had like okay, slightly neglectable backgrounds, and some have come from like really profound abuse. Um to come here, you know, especially when we're in Florida, they like can go into the ocean in our backyard and swim around and we get to see that transformation, and then we share it with people online. It's been a really it's

kind of an amazing thing. So there're a lot of work, but like, how how much happier does it get than like sick golden retrievers just really wanting to love on you all the time. It's a top notch balance against all this bad stuff on the internet. While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately that right is no longer protected everywhere in the United States. The Supreme Court overturned Roe

versus weighed on June. Abortion is a basic health care need for millions of people who can become pregnant, and everyone should have their freedom to decide what's best for themselves and their families, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy. This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety, and could have harsh repercussions for other landmark decisions. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion care, threatens

the health and independence of all Americans. Even if you live in a state where abortion rights are upheld. Access to safe medical procedures shouldn't be determined by location, and it should not be the privilege of a small few. You can help by donating to local abortion funds. To find out where to donate for each state, visit donations for abortion dot com. That's the number four. And if you where someone you know needs help or you want to get more involved, here are five resources. One Shout

Your Abortion as a campaign to normalize abortion too. Don't Ban Equality as a campaign for companies to take a stand against abortion restrictions. Three Abortion dot Cafe has information about where to find clinics. Four Plan the Pills dot org provides early at home abortion pills, but you can keep in your medicine cabinet. And five Choice dot cr D dot CEO has a collection of these resources and more. I encourage all of y'all to speak up, take care,

and spread the word. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, You can be us at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangodi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Brigittad. It's a production of I heart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tara Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our

contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Dodd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, check out the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts