Roe's overturn is tech's privacy apocalypse • Hacker News Board

Re: Roe's overturn is tech's privacy apocalypse

#91

Post by orwin » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

Teknoman117 wrote: post #57

Toxygene wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] why was it never codified in law? The findings of the SCOTUS in Roe v. Wade was: The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's liberty to abort her fetus. [1] In other words, *the SCOTUS finding said* abortion was codified in law -- the U.S. Constitution. Edit: clarified the summary to attribute the findin…

> that protects a pregnant woman's liberty to abort her fetus. Unfortunately the 14th amendment does not explicitly say that. Therefore we've been operating off of the court's previous interpretation of the 14th amendment, which has now changed. So unless Congress can pass legislation legalizing it federally without any ambiguity, it's going to be left up to the states.

I don't really understand the ramifications. If you have a vegetative child, are you obligated to keep them on life support for the rest of his life?

My grandmother died last month. We chose to keep her under morphine despite the fact that she couldn't take her heart medecine anymore, and to not install another IV (she refused to be taken out of her home and to be sent to a hospital the day prior). Would we have been able to do that?

I know worse! a very young and talented violonist, friend of my parents when i was a kid, suffered a weird disease that would excite her nerves, hurting her even when staying still. The pain was so high her brain was shut down most of the days until she took her own life. If this disease triggers in an infant not able to speak yet (and who won't be able to learn, ever), what happen? I'm pretty sure this is debilitating, so the infant would need life support for at least ten years, and then be unable to learn anything, only suffering or being dosed with morphine. Would letting this infant off life support be prosecuted?

This is really interesting philosophically. I am a negative utilitarist of sort (Karl Popper is the base of half my opinions tbh),so the answer to all the questions are evident. For classical utilitarists or deontologists though, those should be really interesting. Where do you draw the line?

Re: Roe's overturn is tech's privacy apocalypse

#92

Post by StewardMcOy » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

mvdwoord wrote: post #25

Plenty of uproar after Roe v Wade overturning, even here in the EU but.. The real shame is leaving lawmaking to the courts due to political opportunism. I am fully in favor of legalized abortion, but why was it never codified in law? Not a priority according to democratic politicians. Not a priority. So, you reap what you sow if you ask me. I learned that many countries, including my own, made, and make that mistake…

American here. I think it's important to not characterize judicial review in the Row case as lawmaking. Although lots of anti-abortion advocates criticized Roe as legislating from the bench, the court was actually doing was checking the power of various state governments to take away individual rights. Judicial review has certainly been misused by the court in other cases to legislate, and the concept is anti-democratic to a problematic degree, but it is an important check on governments taking away individual liberties in the US constitutional system, at least in theory.

In Roe, the court didn't write a law saying abortion was legal. It struck down laws stating that it was illegal. That's an important difference.

It's also worth remembering that there was never a realistic chance of a nationwide right to abortion being passed through congress. There are a few reasons for it. Only about 15% of the country is against abortions in all circumstances, but they're a loud minority. Similarly, 20-30% of American are pro-choice under any circumstance. But the majority of Americans support abortion only in certain circumstances, and they tend not to care as much about it. [1]

In cases where a majority doesn't have strong opinions, the US government doesn't really need to pay attention to the will of the voters. Politicians are rarely if ever punished for it. A similar dynamic played out with net neutrality during the last administration. Despite the public, including Republicans, being overwhelmingly for it, it was an issue they hardly cared about, and so the FCC was basically free to do whatever they wanted.

The other reason is that voters who are anti-abortion are not equally distributed amongst the population. Some, mostly smaller states are vehemently anti-abortion. As such, the senate would never muster the 60 votes needed to pass legislation protecting the right. Without Roe, for the last 50 years, we'd basically have been in the situation we're in now: legal in some states, illegal in others, with states fighting each other over whether or not residents can cross state lines to get an abortion.

1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

Re: Roe's overturn is tech's privacy apocalypse

#93

Post by cato_the_elder » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #86

cato_the_elder wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, so I don't know about that, but one would hope that the judiciary isn't too dumb.

The fact that people are willing to conflate visits to those facilities with seeking abortion is itself a clear justification to discard all data about visits to those facilities!

There is no conflation on my part, it's just clearly evidence in that direction.

Re: Roe's overturn is tech's privacy apocalypse

#94

Post by SllX » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #85

mvdwoord wrote: post #25

Plenty of uproar after Roe v Wade overturning, even here in the EU but.. The real shame is leaving lawmaking to the courts due to political opportunism. I am fully in favor of legalized abortion, but why was it never codified in law? Not a priority according to democratic politicians. Not a priority. So, you reap what you sow if you ask me. I learned that many countries, including my own, made, and make that mistake…

The US's constitutional system doesn't work well in a polarized environment. There are too many veto points, two conflicting branches that can each claim to be "legitimately elected", and even the elected branches don't represent the popular will due to compromises made in the pre-modern era. We've papered over the effects of this paralysis by delegating power to the executive agencies and the Courts, but this era is…

The most law that affects the most people day to day has always been State law. I wouldn’t expect any kind of legislation coming out of Congress on this (but many attempts both ways regardless), and I think if there were any that passed that would not actually help our politics. Not everything need be an Act of Congress. Every State has an elected legislature.

Re: Roe's overturn is tech's privacy apocalypse

#95

Post by mvdwoord » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

StewardMcOy wrote: post #92

mvdwoord wrote: post #25

Plenty of uproar after Roe v Wade overturning, even here in the EU but.. The real shame is leaving lawmaking to the courts due to political opportunism. I am fully in favor of legalized abortion, but why was it never codified in law? Not a priority according to democratic politicians. Not a priority. So, you reap what you sow if you ask me. I learned that many countries, including my own, made, and make that mistake…

American here. I think it's important to not characterize judicial review in the Row case as lawmaking. Although lots of anti-abortion advocates criticized Roe as legislating from the bench, the court was actually doing was checking the power of various state governments to take away individual rights. Judicial review has certainly been misused by the court in other cases to legislate, and the concept is anti-democra…

Thanks for this...

I should read a bit more on this, but also wonder, what would be the problem with people deciding it is illegal in some states, and illegal in others?

Although I find it should be legal, within certain limits, what's holding people back from voting, or moving to another state which more closely matches their politician views?

Similar to the EU it is low friction to move state, right? When plenty of people apparently oppose abortion, why not let them..

Re: Roe's overturn is tech's privacy apocalypse

#96

Post by adolph » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #31

notinfuriated wrote: post #23

I still don't understand how the Roe = privacy take has been legitimate when the US has completely ignored the privacy of its citizens in many other contexts, including decades of the NSA and other alphabet agencies spying on us. Granted, I would love there to be an explicitly stated right to privacy from government (up to some limitations determined by the courts, e.g. when government needs to investigate, say, an a…

The constitutional right to privacy is, specifically, a right to government non-interference in matters considered to be private. That the surveillance apparatus might know you visited a doctor, and what you discussed, does not grant the government the ability to prosecute you based on that information - because it is considered to be a matter of the private activities of a citizen. i.e. who or how you have sex is be…

> That the surveillance apparatus might know you visited a doctor, and what you discussed, does not grant the government the ability to prosecute you based on that information - because it is considered to be a matter of the private activities of a citizen.

I'd be swayed by this except that post-Snowden we know that the surveillance apparatus can be used for "parallel construction" where the evidence to charge/try/convict a person may be based on evidence that hides the fact of illegal surveillance.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial.

https://web.archive.org/web/20151204025156/http://www.reuter...

Re: Roe's overturn is tech's privacy apocalypse

#97

Post by arolihas » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #74

arolihas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women have been prosecuted for miscarriages before, it's not baseless. https://www.npr.org/2022/07/03/1109015302/abortion-prosecuti...

> One of California's senior legal officials has shown his support for a young mother charged with murder after her stillborn baby boy was found to have toxic levels of meth in his system, reports Daily Mail. https://meaww.com/who-is-chelsea-becker-jailed-for-killing-u...

Yeah, this is one of the examples of the mother being prosecuted mentioned in the article, thanks for emphasizing my point!

Re: Roe's overturn is tech's privacy apocalypse

#98

Post by chris11 » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #21

cato_the_elder wrote: post #16

Google clearly thinks it is above the law.

Which law in this case? Be specific, what law requires them to not treat particular healthcare facilities differently with regards to data collection?

And if abortion is going to be decided by the states, what state law is Google violating? CA isn't going to make not sharing this data illegal.

Re: Roe's overturn is tech's privacy apocalypse

#99

Post by titzer » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

cwp wrote: post #89

titzer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The revenue difference I have heard, ballpark, for targeted advertising (based on tracking) on the web, en masse is 2x. So the gajillion dollar online ad industry would only be set back by 4 or 5 years. So, 2018? Not bad. I say, do it. Ban targeted advertising on the web.

It's not the ad industry that would suffer, but small businesses that buy ads. Targeted advertising is how new products and services can bootstrap themselves into existence. As scale increases, targeting accuracy declines, so larger companies don't benefit as much. But if you want to put your product in front of 1000 people who will be highly likely to try it, targeted advertising is superb. If that goes away, it's t…

Targeting doesn't have to be done via tracking. It can be done by content, you know, the way it's been done since the magazine era.

Re: Roe's overturn is tech's privacy apocalypse

#100

Post by XorNot » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #96

XorNot wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The constitutional right to privacy is, specifically, a right to government non-interference in matters considered to be private. That the surveillance apparatus might know you visited a doctor, and what you discussed, does not grant the government the ability to prosecute you based on that information - because it is considered to be a matter of the private activities of a citizen. i.e. who or how you have sex is be…

> That the surveillance apparatus might know you visited a doctor, and what you discussed, does not grant the government the ability to prosecute you based on that information - because it is considered to be a matter of the private activities of a citizen. I'd be swayed by this except that post-Snowden we know that the surveillance apparatus can be used for "parallel construction" where the evidence to charge/try/co…

You've managed to completely miss the point: the issue is not whether someone knows about it. The issue is that it is your personal private business - the government can be aware of it all it wants, but the "right to privacy" is the right not to be interfered with.

This would include surveillance, but also includes legislation and prosecution on matters which do not involve anyone but the parties they pertain too.

"parallel construction" has no bearing here, because again, this is not about whether what you're doing can be known or even is known (this is also not at all how it works, but its beside the point so I'm not going further into it).