Googling abortion? Your details aren’t as private as you think

Googling abortion? Your details aren’t as private as you think
theguardian.com

I don't think it should, not any more than somebody looking up "where to buy shoes" should be noted. Simply by looking at the phrase somebody typed into a search engine we can't ascribe any kind of motivation. Are they looking for particular song lyrics, doing research for a novel they're writing, looking up something they are talking about with some friends, actually thinking of killing someone? We don't know.

Even if they have taken leave of their senses and are looking such a thing up with intention of acting on the information they find, that doesn't mean that they are actually going to act on it when the fit of irrationality blows over. How often do people think to themselves "I'm going to buy a motorcycle," or "I will start eating healthier," or some such without ever acting on it?

And how many murders happen unpremeditated? Simply by throwing everyone who looks up "murder" online we won't prevent all homicide, and we would simply set a bad precedent: "look up information we don't want you to look up and we'll toss you in the clink."

This assumes that the zygote or fetus — if it were sentient and capable of choice — would want the particular future into which it would be born.

It also assumes that legislators and, ultimately, voters should peremptorily impose a Procrustean-bed rule [0] even before viability.

The "least bad" option (pre-viability) is for the pregnancy-continuation decision to be made by the mother and her doctor, with the father being consulted.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes

The bottleneck is investigative manpower, not low quality leads. Assuming the goal is to enforce the law (which is farcical but useful for the purposes of this discussion) there is no reason for any law enforcement agency from a town police department up to the NSA to be building a dragnet. Building a haystack is not an efficient way to find needles.

Those abuses are ignored, or worse, reported as a good thing: https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-google-geofence-warrant-janu...