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Smartphone Surveillance Tech Used To Target Anti-Abortion Ads At Pregnant Women (rewire.news)
VoiceOfDoom writes: Rewire reports: "Last year, an enterprising advertising executive based in Boston, Massachusetts, had an idea: Instead of using his sophisticated mobile surveillance techniques to figure out which consumers might be interested in buying shoes, cars, or any of the other products typically advertised online, what if he used the same technology to figure out which women were potentially contemplating abortion, and send them ads on behalf of anti-choice organizations?"
Regardless of one's personal stance on the pro-choice/anti-abortion debate, the unfettered use of tracking and ad-targeting technology which makes this kind of application possible is surely a cause for concern. In Europe, Canada and many other parts of the world, the use of a person's data in this way would be illegal thanks to strict privacy laws. Is it time for the U.S. to consider a similar approach to protect its citizens? Google has been reportedly tracking users on around 80 percent of all 'Top 1 Million' domains. Facebook is doing something similar. A recent report shows that Facebook uses smartphone microphones to identify the things users are listening to or watching based on the music and TV shows its able to identify. Facebook says the feature must be turned on, and that "it's only active when you're writing a status update."
Regardless of one's personal stance on the pro-choice/anti-abortion debate, the unfettered use of tracking and ad-targeting technology which makes this kind of application possible is surely a cause for concern. In Europe, Canada and many other parts of the world, the use of a person's data in this way would be illegal thanks to strict privacy laws. Is it time for the U.S. to consider a similar approach to protect its citizens? Google has been reportedly tracking users on around 80 percent of all 'Top 1 Million' domains. Facebook is doing something similar. A recent report shows that Facebook uses smartphone microphones to identify the things users are listening to or watching based on the music and TV shows its able to identify. Facebook says the feature must be turned on, and that "it's only active when you're writing a status update."
"Is it time for the U.S. to consider a similar approach to protect its citizens?"
It's long overdue. But here in the US, corporations with more money than they know what to do with are WAY more important.
You have a choice between making such rules and fighting it out, debating where the internet actually is etc. or just giving up and assuming people don't care. I suspect people who do care already have remedied the problem almost all the time.
Telling women to not do abortions is nothing bad IMO. Its what ads are about: telling us to do different stuff. Its what made google rich.
What IS bad though is to forbid abortions, because this will just lead to women who want to abort their child to use more dangerous methods.
I don't suppose there's a less biased, neutral toned article on this subject available to read, is there?
According to AdBlockPlus, I'm already blocking 10 ads on this page alone. Fortunately, this means I'll never have to find out if they're targeted or not.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
HIPAA?
AdFuel
I realize that people are emotional about abortion, but objectively this is no more creepy or unethical than anything else in the advertising industry.
yeah, the reatard know that I'm close to my mom PC because of the mic... now her goal is to destroy xfce. look, SHIT (this is how I call the daughter of the croocked cop) stop using my mother against me. As I said, I was ignored all my life, the best thing I know how to do with anybody is how to easily reject anybody.
First time I've heard that. It's really much "milder" to my ears than anti-abortion. You know, kind of like describing our president as anti-choice after he lied about "If you like your plan you can keep your plan"
Security and Privacy increased by blocking Ads. Time to rebrand ad blockers as security and privacy protection.
Boom... you're getting these banner ads for basement paint.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
If you can target pregnant women with your religion-funded protest why can't you target Grind'r users with some anti-homo therapy bullshit? Where is the line EXACTLY?
TFA:
Fuck you, VoiceOfDoom
What is the fucking point of inserting an inflammatory / accusatory 'anti-choice' label in the article?
This is Slashdot, not some pro-choice / pro-life forum
VoiceOfDoom, go fuck youself !
I admit this is sort of off topic, but this story just made me consider: why do I suddenly have ads on /.?
For many years now, I've had no ads with a little message explaining that since I've had a story on the front page, I could browse Slashdot ad free. Did this go away with the last regime change?
Notice how the 'pro-' prefix is only attached to one side. The other side isn't pro- anything, only anti-. I've only ever seen the two camps called pro-life and pro-choice, but somehow pro-life became both anti-abortion and anti-choice.
Yep, TFA is about convincing women to make the right choice. But for "progressives" some choices are more equal than others.
Choosing to have a baby makes you "anti-choice".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
With any luck, this will end corporate liberty to use personal data in any way EXCEPT to send ads agreed to by the consumer prior to the first object.
It has just as much meaning as the term "pro-choice". Which choice? What are the options?
That of a human fetus. Which — to millions of people world-wide — is already a human being. The choice, which you and VoiceOfDoom wish to preserve, has two options in these millions' opinion:
Because they consider abortion to be murder, they don't view this particular choice as legitimate.
Not sure, whether the organizations mentioned in TFA think so, or simply wish to increase the birth-rates in USA. But even in the former case, they are not "anti-choice" in general — they are against offering this particular choice.
No doubt, there are a lot of things you think ought to be illegal — even if abortion is not among them. That makes you "ant-choice" too, whenever the choice is between doing and not doing one of those things...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Until you're born... And then fuck you...
We don't need laws regulating what companies can and can't do. What we need are technological means of protecting ourselves. It might start by people saying no to facebook and the tech world working on and getting funding for developing privacy friendly solutions: Adapting phones and browsers to inhibit tracking and spying functionality would be a great start. That would mean funding further research into fingerprinting techniques and making it burdensome for end-users to accidentally decloak themselves. Tor is a great start to this end, but there is a a heck of a lot more that needs to be done to protect an ignorant and complacent world.
We have some resemblance of starts to solutions. From Zero Coin which can potentially add anonymity (and not just psudo-anonymous via mixes) to BitCoin and other altcoins to LibreCMC, Replicant, and Trisquel (operating systems for different types of devices which aren't dependent on proprietary pieces of software where spying components are often hidden). But we do need to take it farther to the underlying technology at a hardware level. We need to antagonize Intel and AMD to get rid of proprietary components which are known to contain potentially privacy-invasive technology (remove control functionality is advertised by these companies). Examples of this include the Intel Management Engine Firmware and proprietary bootloaders (most cell phones, routers, and similar devices). Then we also need to fight the FCC on the wifi front. Linksys didn't solve the problem and we are dependant on *proprietary software* in an "open source" system which is *in fact* inhibiting features like mesh networking and packet injection being added to these components completely destroying the core value in loading these alternative freedom-potentially-respecting operating systems.
> based on an opposing ideology
Crisis Pregnancy Centers offer help to young and struggling moms-to-be, such as free diapers and baby products, classes on parenting, and a lot of encouragement and support - being a young single mom is hard, but with help you can do it.
Certainly some Crisis Pregnancy Center volunteers are aware that if no assistance and support were offered, if these young women felt that they had to do it all alone, some would get abortions. Some may feel that abortion is similar to murder. Many are people who have themselves gone through the challenges of parenting , often as a single parent, and want to be of help to other people who are doing the same now.
You say there is an "opposing idealogy". There is an idealogy which opposes offering help and encouragement to people who are facing difficult challenges? An ideology which opposes educating young moms about child nutrition, how to calm a crying child, and how to maintain a healthly social network when you're a new parent? An ideology which wants young women to think that they ARE alone and that abortion is the only option?
Is that YOUR ideology? If so, you've been unusually honest, probably unintentionally.
It goes beyond "ideology". Spreading misinformation and lying to patients about made-up bullshit like fetal pain and post-abortion suicide is just fraud and harassment.
This is excellent. There should be more of this. It will make people angry. Perhaps the Angry People will begin to appreciate what privacy means once it is taken from them. Perhaps. We can only hope. More offensive ad tracking, please! More, more, more, I don't use all this nonsense on MY phone anyway! More, please! How about an Ashley Madison Tracker? To hell with the password database, just a little location analytics on that phone ought to do the trick!
Is it wrong to target a problem drinker with ads for AA? How about targeting problem drinkers with free booze? What about targeting young mothers with ads for 'family planning' services, or as the article suggests pregnant women with 'pro-life' services? I'm sure there is a line there somewhere. Morality is a funny, fuzzy deeply personal thing... and I guess the line will vary from person to person.
Disclaimer: I am very strongly pro-choice (where choice is the right for a woman to seek an abortion if she wants).
but that's a mighty fine right wing talking point you've got there. It's also a pretty old one. Now the real question is: are you conscientiously aware that you're repeating it or did the political engine that created the abortion issue as a means of driving a wedge between working class voters manage to sneak it in there as intended?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
because nobody has ever threatened lives and even carried through on those threats because of the type of soap I buy.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
IF there was a shortage of parents wanting to adopt, then I would agree that this is a reasonable requirement. Since the reality is that people go to extraordinary lengths including travelling abroad, it is clear that there is no shortage.
Because having an abortion is on the same level as buying ethernet cables or looking up used car ratings? Methinks not.
I don't remember what comedian said it, but it's quite true, if men could get pregnant, you'd have a drive-through abortion clinic in every WalMart. And don't forget to have your membership card stamped, for with every tenth you get a pack of condoms for free!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The abortion part is clickbait. What this is about is if privacy laws should be stricter in the US. The information of people was sold and is used. In Europe this is not allowed. From somebody who lives in Europe, this could be a bit stricter. So how does it work in Europe?
So I worked for CompanyA who had clients (companies) that had customers (people). They decided to close and sell the product portofolio to CompanyB. The customers would still be able to keep the identical product with the same name and what not.
As we sold the product and not the customer, we were not allwed to just send a file with everything to CompanyB and have it automated. What we did was
1) Send a letter that we were going to stop
2) Inform them that if they want, they can cancel
3) If they did not cancel, they would be contacted by CompanyB
4) CompanyB (where I work now) send a letter to the customer saying they would now be dealing with the product
5) The customer needed to sign a new contract
6) All contracts needed to be verified and treated as if they were a new customer (because in reality they were)
The period of transfer CompanyA asked sometimes info about customers that, even while available, we were not allowed to give.
For me personaly this was nice, as I was working for CompanyA while being paid by CompanyB.
Other things mean that if your spouse calls for info, we are not allowed to give it, unless it is explicitely allowed. Mind you, most companies do not honor that last one.
Direct marketing to people is very restricted. It is allowed to customers you have a business relation with (e.g. people who bought something from you) but not to others. So no buying of data and sending then mail or what not.
If people ask to stop sending stuff, you better agree with that.
To me the privacy laws are not going far enough, but that is just a personal opinion.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Just what this planet needs it more people, especially stupid ones.
LOL at "reproductive rights".
Let's start at the beginning: how exactly are hundreds of thousands of supposedly intelligent women becoming pregnant 'by accident' every year, in the UK alone? Haven't they heard of contraceptives? Why aren't their male partners wearing condoms?
Don't tell me. "Condoms fail". Well actually, condoms never fail - it's their USERS that fail to use them, and then LIE about them 'breaking'. Do you see the tests they perform on condoms when they are manufactured? They are blown up like a balloon, to test for holes and flaws in the material. There are NO scientific tests of condoms being used, which show them 'breaking'. All we have are ANECDOTAL reports from users, who have a vested interest in LYING about them 'breaking', when actually they didn't actually use a condom that time.
So what's the real issue? What's really going on? Well, the real issue is that too many women are sleeping with men who don't find them sufficiently attractive to maintain an erection while putting a condom on, or who don't feel sufficiently comfortable with them to maintain an erection while putting a condom on. Both parties feel ashamed of this fact - the man because he thinks others will doubt his virility, and the woman because she thinks others (including her partner) doubt her attractiveness.
These are the REAL reasons there are so many abortions each year, let alone the fact that lots of women try to trick men into marriage (or just staying with them) by getting pregnant 'by accident' ("Oh, I forgot to take the pill"), and it doesn't work, and the man doesn't want to stay with her, so she has to have an abortion.
Abortion is the worst atrocity imaginable, and it happens because of incredibly selfish people.
Furthermore, we can work out scientifically that women who have had an abortion are far more likely to have STDs than women who haven't. Women who sleep with men who don't wear condoms are obviously far more likely to have STDs than women who refuse to sleep with men who don't wear condoms, and those men will also most likely have slept with other women, without wearing a condom too. Abortion should be illegal because too many women are using it as a form of birth control, because for some reason they seem to be incapable of finding a decent man who wouldn't dream of sleeping with anybody without wearing a condom (unless they were deliberately trying for a baby).
And of course, the pro abortion industry don't want you to see what the unborn baby IS. They want to hide all mention of the word 'baby', so they use the scientific term 'fetus'. Gee... I wonder why?
The inflammatory title is meant to get attention. However, I also believe it’s true (for most cases).
We find it distasteful to force arbitary morals onto people or bombard them with propaganda and ads. Privacy violations are wrong too, and that’s what this article is really about. But the abortion issue itself is something that can be looked at objectively. And I want to understand how some people can claim to value human life on the one hand and then blithely throw it awas on the other hand.
There are situations where abortions are medically necessary (like when the mother’s life is threatened by the pregnancy), and there are some gray areas when it comes to serious developmental defects that are often terminal anyway. But a lot of the time, abortion is used as retroactive contraception. People with no self-control or forward planning ability have sex, and pregnancy happens. There are lots of ways to prevent pregnancy in the first place, not the least of which is to find a partner of the same sex, which is something we honestly need to push our society into taking advantage of more.
But hey, let’s just terminate human life willy-nilly because it’s fucking convenient for us! As someone who is liberal about most things, I see abortion (most of the time) as a massive shirking of personal responsibility. CHOICES have consequences, and you should have to deal with them and not force others to pay for your mistakes or, say, murder someone over it.
This is what I really don’t get about the “pro choice” people. A human fetus does indeed have an underdeveloped nervous system, so killing it is not the same as torture. At the same time, you can also kill adults painlessly, yet we don’t have clinics where you can take your office enemies to have them euthanized. A human fetus is definitely alive, and it’s definitely human. So why do people make some arbitrary distinction that because it hasn’t been BORN yet, it’s okay to murder it? (I’m using the word “murder” because I don’t want to hide behind euphamisms. Deal with it. Abortion is killing someone who is not threatening your life, which makes it at least manslaughter.)
Hey, maybe you want to live in a society ruled by social darwinism, where there’s are no rules against killing people. Most slashdotters would have been killed by now by bullies in highschool in that case, so you should appreciate the systems of laws and morals that protect you. I don’t care if you’re devoutly religious or an atheist, we have solid grounds for human societies to have ethics. And we as humans have decided that killing your fellow humans is wrong. Interestingly, I find atheists to often have a stronger sense of morality, because they don’t have religious fervor to tell them when it’s okay to break their own rules to force someone else to live by their bizarre and arbitrary religious tennets. So just to be clear, this is not a religious issue.
Indeed, putting stupid religions aside, most people find murder to be objectively wrong. We value human life, instinctively, unless we’re psychopaths. It doesn’t matter if Christians tell you murder is wrong because Christians have been known to murder in the name of their God. The same is true of Muslims. When wars are fought and terrorists bomb airports, the rest of the world stands aghast at the needless loss of human life over stupid idiological issues.
So don’t distort the abortion issue into a right vs. left thing or a stupid religious issue. 99% of religion is bullshit, and we don't get the idea of murder being wrong from religion.
Often single mothers are vilified, especially if they’re in high school. (Although most abortions, I think, are not had by high school girls.) And the fathers frequently skip town or deny responsibility. A girl who has a baby before she can finish her college degree is typically screwed in more ways th
Spreading misinformation and lying
So... the *same* as the rest of the advertising industry.
Telling them about the consequences is only fair. One decision and then you need to live with the guilt for a whole life. Yeah, now you're thinking its the right choice, but will you in a few years? Or will you think "only because i wanted more free time i prevented a life"?
Nothing political about it. How can a standard medical term for a medical procedure be considered political speak?
It only seems political to you because "pro-abortion" sounds bad compared to "pro-choice" simply because people tend to know what the procedure does. So why duck the truth and paint it in colorful language if you are proud of your political stance?
The center to the argument is not whether women have the right to reproductive freedom (there's another one of those feel-good terms). The anti-abortion crowd (well, most of it) isn't there protesting sex education, sterilization, condoms, HPV vaccinations, v.d. and fertility treatments. They are there protesting abortions (including some caused by birth control pills that prevent implantation after fertilization). If you remove abortion from the list of services, the only people left protesting would be the uber-religious types who believe, for example, that HPV vaccinations give a license to premarital sex and sin.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
I'm pro-choice and anti-abortion. And that's not a contradiction.
The issue that GP had was not with the terms themselves, but with the inflammatory undertones that have been attached to them. Much like how the term "liberal" is now used as an insult in conservative circles. Sure the term may be an accurate description of someone, and have a specific meaning, but it's been given another meaning in popular discourse that's intended to be inflammatory.
Please tell this the people, who lost their loved ones because of this reason. Would you? No? Then don't tell here. Big mouth, but if you're in the situation, you would be desperate as well.
This is semantic manipulation on the part of pro-choice groups. The term is pro-life, not anti-choice, anti-abortion. Otherwise, we may well refer to pro-choice as "anti-life, pro-murder," etc. It was actually documented by Steven Pinker that the Democratic party has hired linguists to shape their rhetoric using conceptual semantics, of which this is a manifestation.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
Some may feel that abortion is similar to murder.
those women are the women who never even consider getting abortions.
You say there is an "opposing idealogy". There is an idealogy which opposes offering help and encouragement to people who are facing difficult challenges?
yes, there is. have you see what protesters write on their signs at abortion clinics? they don't right, "we want to help you," they write shit like, "murdering whores burn in hell" which i feel is exceptionally unhelpful.
Is that YOUR ideology? If so, you've been unusually honest, probably unintentionally.
you've taken a benign comment and attacked me out of personal zeal for your point of view. i hope you can learn some self-control because the world does not need more people lashing out emotionally.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
"Murder" is a very specific kind of killing — executing a lawfully-condemned prisoner does not qualify.
Plenty of crimes do deserve death-penalty — the only valid argument against it can be based on the imperfections of the justice systems. Because, unlike a prison-sentence, death penalty is irreversible — the wrongfully accused can not be compensated upon exoneration.
But the fetus has not committed any crimes. So, if it is a human being, then it is wrong to deliberately kill it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm used to opponents contradicting themselves, but usually it takes them longer to complete the circle. Congratulations!
Conception? Birth? Cutting of umbilical cord? First sound made? First tooth? Death of the father (or explicit emancipation) — as in ancient Rome? These are all "clear bright lines", that lawyers love so much.
Yep, and that is, how it is usually done.
Just when a blob of cells becomes a human being is the subject of the debate. That it is wrong to kill it once it happens is uncontroversial and there is nothing wrong in opposing any "choice", where such killing is an option.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
However this debate is about the existence or otherwise of options if an abortion doesn't occur. By definition this generates an unwanted infant, which is the wanted type.
I've heard the claim that pro-lifers should do more, and in this context it's clear that it's a false argument. There's a much more complex debate as well about providing ongoing quality of life for the poor, but that's not strictly relevant given the adoption option.
This is a farce and you know it. After growing up in one of these religious families, protesting, and volunteering for five years at one of these centers, these organization are fooling you. It is an emotional draw to influence political opinion and nothing else. These centers provide vague and borderline false information to these struggling you children who generally get into this situation because nobody ever told them about how things work. Sorry. Abstinence works when it can be enforce or theory, but not in real life. So, you give them some diapers and some formula. That's going to help a lot. What's this young mom going to do in 2 weeks when she has to go back to work. She already dropped out of school for the semester. You going to provide child care? Health care? I think not. That's when we dump them on the welfare rolls and then call them worthless because they can't afford the time to better themselves because we lied to them about some personal feel good agenda. We never stop to think of how the consequences truly affect things. Now we've just caused a promising you life to be relegated to some second rate citizen that we scoff at because they got pregnant. Hypocritical much?
You fail to understand that the law pushed the exact reverse of that - as in fuck the mother, let her die, just save the baby because The State wants it that way. In my opinion having either way mandated by law is really fucked up. Let the medical staff do what they can and get the government out if the way. Putting the choice of who is to live or die in that situation in a law is ridiculous and dangerous micromanagement.
Slashdot just ain't the Slashdot of yore
Yawn !!
By this logic, the permanently incapacitated are no longer humans either. Are they?
But, stipulating the equality between a fetus and a young child, are you saying, it should not be a crime (or less of a crime) to kill a schoolgirl, than an adult?
And that anyone seeking to unquestionably ban killings of schoolchildren, is "anti-choice"?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.