Alisyn Camerota welcomed California Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs to CNN Newsroom on Wednesday to discuss the fallout of the demise of Roe v. Wade. Camerota gave credence to Jacobs’s conspiracy theorizing about officials using period tracking apps against women by labeling it “Big Brother” and “Handmaiden’s Tale.”
Camerota had asked Jacobs to “give us a real world example of how all of our private health data could come back to haunt us, how it could be used against us.”
The example Jacobs settled on was a period tracking app, which she claimed “you can use that data to see when I am supposed to be pregnant, but aren’t and a state attorney general, local law enforcement could use that against me for potentially.”
After some technical difficulties, Jacobs added that a “mass surveillance architecture” could “be able to track people who are traveling out of state, who should be pregnant but aren't, searching, as you said for abortion pills or for clinics or how to get to California, for instance where I represent.”
Camerota should have pushed back. Even before Dobbs there were varying levels of restrictions in the different states and nobody used period tracking apps to see who was pregnant and who was “supposed to be,” but wasn’t.
Unfortunately, this line of thinking is quite common at CNN and Camerota embraced it, “I mean, Congresswoman, this sounds so Big Brother, it sounds so Handmaiden's Tale, it's just, you know, dystopian what you're that your -- you believe that tech platforms would hand over information like that to, you know, some sheriff who came calling.”
Jacobs, no doubt thrilled to not have to answer for her conspiracies, responded by declaring that companies have said they will not provide data, but Congress should not leave it up to their “goodwill.”
Camerota also surely knows that all these pro-life laws target abortion providers, not women, but again she could not be bothered to fact-check Jacobs’s fearmongering.
This segment was sponsored by Liberty Mutual.
Here is a transcript for the June 29 show:
CNN Newsroom with Alisyn Camerota and Victor Blackwell
6/29/2022
3:43 PM ET
ALISYN CAMEROTA: Can you just explain this, I mean, give us a real world example of how all of our private health data could come back to haunt us, how it could be used against us.
SARA JACOBS: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know as a young woman myself, I use a period tracking app, so let's use that as an example. My period tracking app tells me when I'm supposed to be getting my period and when I'm not, and so you can use that data to see when I am supposed to be pregnant, but aren’t and a state attorney general, local law enforcement could use that against me for potentially [audio problems] and not only about me personally, it can take everyone's data and create mass surveillance architecture to be able to track people who are traveling out of state, who should be pregnant but aren't, searching, as you said for abortion pills or for clinics or how to get to California, for instance where I represent. Right now, there are no protections for how that data could be used by law enforcement at the state or local level or by non-profit groups like local right-wing non-profits, small right-wing non-profit groups, who could be buying or getting that data in order to, you know, be able to take part in the bounty law that's part of the Texas anti-abortion legislation.
CAMEROTA: I mean, Congresswoman, this sounds so Big Brother, it sounds so Handmaiden's Tale, it's just, you know, dystopian what you're that your -- you believe that tech platforms would hand over information like that to, you know, some sheriff who came calling.
JACOBS: Well, right now there's no federal prohibition from them doing so. So, we know that there are a lot of companies who are saying that they wouldn't, that they are trying to do what they can to protect data, but it shouldn't be up to the goodwill of individual companies. This is some of our most sensitive data, our reproductive and sexual health data, and it's our job as a government to put in place protections at the highest level for that very sensitive data.
