Press Releases

Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (WA-01) joined 41 members of Congress in calling on Google to stop collecting and storing location and search engine data, to prevent extremist prosecutors from using this information to identify people obtaining abortions.

“We believe that abortion is health care. We will fight tooth and nail to ensure that it remains recognized as a fundamental right, and that all people in the United States have control over their own bodies,” the members wrote. “That said, we are concerned that, in a world in which abortion could be made illegal, Google’s current practice of collecting and retaining extensive records of cell phone location data will allow it to become a tool for far-right extremists looking to crack down on people seeking reproductive health care.”

Google has designed its Android operating system to transmit location information back to Google whenever any app on the phone uses location services—in contrast to iPhones, which collect and retain far less location information. The company also collects location data from users of Google Maps.

As a result, law-enforcement agencies are able to send geofence warrants to Google, demanding the company turn over information about all phones that Google knows were near a particular place at a particular time. Extremist politicians could use these warrants to target doctors who provide abortions or identify women who travel out of state to obtain reproductive health care. 

“If abortion is made illegal by the far-right Supreme Court and Republican lawmakers, it is inevitable that right-wing prosecutors will obtain legal warrants to hunt down, prosecute and jail women for obtaining critical reproductive health care. The only way to protect your customers’ location data from such outrageous government surveillance is to not keep it in the first place,” they wrote.

Separately, DelBene has introduced the Information Transparency and Personal Data Control Act (H.R. 1816), which would establish a national consumer data privacy standard and protect Americans’ personal information, including health and location data.

Read the full letter to Google here.