In a letter sent Tuesday to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google
parent Alphabet, the lawmakers express concern that if abortion were to become
illegal in the US, the company'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.”
If the US Supreme Court upends the 1973 decision that
legalized abortion — as a draft opinion suggests it may in the coming weeks —
pregnancies could be surveilled and the data shared with police or sold to
vigilantes, privacy experts fear.
Google, specifically, stores "historical location
information about hundreds of millions of smartphone users," the letter
notes, "which it routinely shares with government agencies."
Representatives for Alphabet did not immediately respond to
a message for comment. Tech companies have largely tried to stay out of the
abortion debate.
Meta, which owns Facebook, has reportedly reminded employees
that they are prohibited from discussing abortion in workplace communication
channels. Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
In their letter, the Democrats, who were led by Senator Ron
Wyden from Oregon, asks Google to stop collecting and keeping records of their
customers' every movement.
Law enforcement officials routinely obtain court orders
forcing Google to turn over its customers' location information, the letter
notes. This includes “geofence” orders, which are requests for Google to provide
data about everyone who was near a specific location at a specific time.
Google received 11,554 geofence warrants in 2020, according
to the company. It has not said how many of those it complied with.