Google employees demand end to collection of abortion data

More than 650 Google employees have signed a petition calling on the corporate to be sure that customers’ abortion and different health-related data isn’t saved or shared with US legislation enforcement.

The petition comes within the wake of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade in June 2022, which rolled again abortion rights by returning abortion legislation selections to particular person US states, ending a virtually 50-year-old precedent and triggering strict bans on procedures in lots of states that had by no means repealed their outdated legal guidelines.

Sent to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and different key executives by the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) on 18 August, the petition calls on the corporate to instantly institute tighter data privateness controls for all health-related exercise, together with for searches about reproductive justice, gender-affirming care, and abortion entry data.

On 1 July, Google committed to pushing again on “overly broad demands from law enforcement”, and additional promised to delete location historical past data for customers who visited abortion clinics, home violence shelters and habit therapy amenities “soon after they visit”.

However, the corporate’s employees need Google to go additional by guaranteeing that this data isn’t saved within the first place.

“We know companies are often legally required to hand over data, which is why we are demanding that Google stop collecting data on users seeking abortion information – period,” mentioned the AWU on Twitter. “It’s the only way to protect it from law enforcement. Users should be free to search for abortions without fear.”

Bambi Okugawa, a Google datacentre technician and AWU member, mentioned that, having just lately examine Facebook handing over abortion-related information to Nebraska police, main to felony expenses for a 17-year-old over an allegedly unlawful abortion, “it became clear that tech companies are not going far enough to protect workers and users in a post-Roe America”.

Okugawa added: “If tech companies, be it Facebook, Google or Bing, truly want to be an ally to those looking to get an abortion, they need to refuse to share users’ information regarding abortion searches.”

However, Facebook contends that the search warrant it obtained for the data didn’t ask for health-specific data, and didn’t point out something about an abortion.

Okugawa mentioned tech corporations should additionally “do their due diligence to make sure false information that could make users unsafe isn’t circulating the site”, with employees making additional calls for on the corporate to repair deceptive search outcomes about pretend abortion suppliers, and to now not work with publishers of disinformation who violate Google’s promoting insurance policies by pushing unreliable or dangerous claims about abortion.

Another main demand is for Google to lengthen its abortion-related well being advantages to all its contractors.

Although Google’s medical health insurance does present employees with cowl for out-of-state abortion procedures and relocation help, these advantages are restricted to full-time employees, which the AWU says excludes greater than half of Alphabet’s workforce who’re “misclassified” as momentary, vendor or contract employees.

“Google has the money and resources to ensure that all its employees, contracted or not, have access to abortion,” mentioned Alejandra Beatty, AWU Southwest Chapter lead and a technical program supervisor at Alphabet subsidiary Verily. “They emailed us right after the ruling to affirm their support for their full-time employees getting abortions, but did not address how contracted workers, who tend to have more marginalised identities, would be supported in trying to exercise their right to choose. Google can and should do better.”

The petition added that, so as to meet these calls for: “We call on Alphabet to create a dedicated task force with 50% employee representation, responsible for implementing changes across all products and our company, just like Alphabet did for handling the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Computer Weekly contacted Google concerning the petition however obtained no response by time of publication. The AWU has equally obtained no response from the corporate.