Tech in a post-Roe future

Presented by Connected Commerce Council: How the next wave of technology is upending the global economy and its power structures

Jun 24, 2022 View in browser   By Derek Robertson Presented by Connected Commerce Council A celebration outside the Supreme Court, Friday, June 24, 2022, in Washington. The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years — a decision by its conservative majority to overturn the court's landmark abortion cases. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) The Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has obviously far-reaching policy implications, not least when it comes to both current and future technology. POLITICO's Ben Leonard has a report out today on implications of the decision for virtual abortion care, where providers often prescribe abortion pills via telehealth visits. That type of care was already banned in 19 states before today's decision, and now those seeking abortion in red states will have to contend with governments that privacy and abortion activists fear might seek out data with which to prosecute both abortion-seekers and providers. "The easiest people to enforce it against would be patients doing these searches on their phones or laptops," Mary Ziegler, a professor at the Florida State University College of Law and an expert on the legal battle over abortion, told Ben. "States at the moment … are saying they're not going to punish patients, but they'll find it would be easier to punish patients and therefore might ultimately decide to change their minds on that subject." Ben and Ruth Reader told us last month how telehealth providers have been preparing. And in a report last week, POLITICO's Sam Sabin described how abortion rights groups were already ramping up their digital privacy protections and cybersecurity defenses ahead of Roe's overturning. As Sam wrote in DFD, digital surveillance scenarios like police placing facial recognition cameras outside abortion clinics and harvesting data from health apps are very real worries. (She also answered questions from readers last month on data privacy and digital surveillance around abortion.) Informational services like Repro Legal Helpline have implemented secured messaging through services like Tor, Signal, and ProtonMail, as experts warn that existing law enforcement practices for combing through seized devices could yield mountains of incriminating data in states where abortion is now illegal. Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Sam that "The most likely situation right now is that a person gets reported by a relative or ER nurse, and then if they are in a state like Texas, the state simply shows up and searches their phone." That means that some abortion rights activists are attempting to go even further in shielding patients' data privacy — including turning to the blockchain. That might not seem like a promising approach, considering the many high-profile recent examples of authorities tracing so-called untraceable transactions, but some activists believe the tech could serve another function: organizing grassroots fundraising campaigns, via an "abortion DAO" (or decentralized autonomous organization). When the draft opinion of the decision overturning Roe was leaked last month, the New York Times interviewed crypto-enthusiastic abortion activists who speculated that members of such a DAO could rapidly pool funds that they would then organize to distribute to abortion-seekers with limited access to care, citing examples such as ConstitutionDAO and UkraineDAO that served similar functions. Molly Dickson and Madison Page, two artists in Texas who launched a line of NFTs aimed at raising funds for abortion in the wake of the draft opinion, were straightforward about the technology's attention-getting efficacy in an interview with Reuters, pointing out how the hype around the technology might be used as a leverage point for activism. "So much money is pouring into crypto," they said. "We get a lot more attention." A message from Connected Commerce Council: Small businesses face big consequences from overregulating tech. By breaking up integrated services, it gets harder and more expensive for smaller shops to reach customers. That's why 87% of small businesses are concerned that antitrust legislation is going to make digital tools more expensive and less useful. Say yes to supporting small business success. Vote NO on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S.2992).   mo' meta news Mark Zuckerberg was very busy this week. In a series of Facebook posts, the Meta honcho announced a batch of new policies with implications for his company's version of the metaverse: Making subscriptions from other services "interoperable" with Facebook, introducing NFTs to Facebook, and in a separate announcement turning the Facebook Pay service into Meta Pay, a "digital wallet for the metaverse." Many of the company's recent developments call back to high-profile stumbles from its past — the digital wallet to the company's ill-fated cryptocurrency experiment; its endless tinkering with various VR headsets an attempt to right its long-ago mobile debacle . Meta has made broad gestures toward a cooperative, collaborative approach to building the metaverse, but its size gives it an immense amount of power to set its own rules, regardless of what regulators might want (or other companies, for that matter). While developments like this week's founding of a Metaverse Standards Forum point in that collaborative direction, the company's flurry of activity makes it clear who's in the driver's seat. afternoon snack The firing of the Google employee who claimed its AI was "sentient" inspired a new round of public hand-wringing, with most serious AI researchers discounting his claim. In his thoughtful, accessible book "Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy," published earlier this year, the Australian philosopher David J. Chalmers tackles that very question in a chapter titled "Do simulated lives matter?" Chalmers begins by citing the 2021 film "Free Guy" where AI-powered characters in a simulation go on strike, asking "Is it morally permissible to 'play God' by creating virtual worlds containing conscious sims? What moral responsibilities do we have toward the sims in those worlds?" Without recounting Chalmers' entire argument, he ends up extending Immanuel Kant's Principle of Humanity to simulated beings, writing that "we should never treat sims merely as means to an end but as ends in themselves." Food for thought if your brain drifts in a sadistic direction while wasting time playing "The Sims".   A message from Connected Commerce Council:   The Future In 5 Links Solana, one of the biggest blockchain companies, announced it's developing a Web3-based smartphone. Is the U.S. chip manufacturing revolution over before it even began? The AI that solved protein-folding also knows a little bit of chemistry. Everyone's a critic: The Lummis-Gillibrand crypto bill is now posted for comment on GitHub. Harvard computer scientists have developed a system to map global nutrient deficiencies via satellite. Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger (bschreckinger@politico.com); Derek Robertson (drobertson@politico.com); Konstantin Kakaes (kkakaes@politico.com);  and Heidi Vogt (hvogt@politico.com). Follow us on Twitter @DigitalFuture. If you've had this newsletter forwarded to you, you can sign up here. And read our mission statement here. A message from Connected Commerce Council: Small businesses run on tech. Integrated digital tools help Frank DiCarlantonio at Scaffidi's Restaurant reach customers, scale up, and compete. In fact, 75% of small business leaders say digital tools are important to their operations. But Congress is aiming to break up the digital tools and services that small businesses rely on—making them more expensive and harder to access. It could be the difference between success and closing their doors for good. Don't forget about small businesses. Vote NO on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S.2992).     Follow us on Twitter Ben Schreckinger @SchreckReports Derek Robertson @afternoondelete Konstantin Kakaes @kkakaes Heidi Vogt @HeidiVogt   Follow us

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