Systems of Dehumanization: The Digital Frontlines Bodily Autonomy War

### Overview In this talk, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) explores how digital surveillance and tech-enabled oppression increasingly threaten bodily autonomy. Tracing the intersections across reproductive rights, sex worker rights, and transgender liberation, the speaker argues that the lens of criminality is steadily expanding. Technologies designed for surveillance—ranging from commercial data brokers to street-level hardware and school monitoring software—are weaponized by both state and non-state actors to criminalize healthcare, identity, and personal self-determination.

### Key Topics - **Historical and Legal Context:** The talk traces a legal continuum including the 150-year-old Comstock Act, the establishment and overturning of *Roe v. Wade*, HIPAA (noting the "P" stands for portability, not privacy), Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and modern legislative trends such as FOSTA and anti-trans state bills. - **Weaponization of Public Records and Doxing:** Platforms such as the historic Nuremberg Files and modern sites like abortiondocs.org and Do No Harm's "Stop the Harm" database collate publicly accessible records, provider identities, and home addresses, enabling harassment and stochastic terrorism. - **Surveillance Infrastructure:** The presentation details how data brokers (e.g., Near Intelligence, Fog Data Science) provide warrantless location tracking, while physical tools like automated license plate readers (ALPRs) and street surveillance towers track individuals seeking healthcare or working in vulnerable sectors. - **Tech Intermediaries and Section 230:** The speaker explains the critical role of Section 230 in protecting online free expression and highlights the devastating impact of the 2018 FOSTA-SESTA carveout, which pushed sex workers into dangerous offline environments and resulted in widespread online censorship. - **Erasure and Surveillance of LGBTQ+ Communities:** The purge of gender-affirming research, safety guidelines, and historical materials across federal websites, paired with device-level student surveillance tools (such as GoGuardian, Bark, and Gaggle), actively endangers queer and trans individuals.

### Technical Details - **Data Brokers and Warrantless Tracking:** An investigation revealed that Near Intelligence sold location data of visitors to abortion clinics to an anti-abortion group that pushed targeted messaging. Fog Data Science was highlighted for offering real-time phone location data to law enforcement without warrants. - **ALPR Sharing and Clinic Tracking:** Law enforcement agencies in California unlawfully shared automated license plate reader data with out-of-state agencies, risking the identification of out-of-state patients traveling for reproductive care. - **Flawed Tech Solutions:** Tools like Thorne's anti-trafficking products and Spotlight facial recognition were criticized for overstating efficacy while being used to arrest consensual escorts. Meanwhile, Google repeatedly failed to fulfill public commitments to delete location history records for visits to sensitive clinics. - **Student Device Monitoring:** Analysis of public records from school districts revealed that software such as Gaggle, Bark, and GoGuardian flags historical, health, and LGBTQ+ content as explicit, disproportionately exposing marginalized youth to administrative and law enforcement intervention.

### Takeaways - **Proactive Corporate and Technical Responsibility:** Technologists, engineers, and product managers are urged to implement strict data retention limits, ensure robust encryption at rest, eliminate unnecessary third-party trackers, consider privacy-focused analytics alternatives like Matomo, and formalize narrow, rigorous procedures for responding to law enforcement subpoenas. - **Cross-Movement Solidarity:** Because reproductive rights advocates, trans people, and sex workers face overlapping surveillance vectors and common adversaries, digital defense groups are increasingly sharing operational security (OpSec) playbooks. - **Advocacy and Resistance:** The speaker urges technologists to challenge legislative carveouts (such as KOSA and EARN IT) via organizations like the EFF and re-evaluate their ethical role in the technology industry.