Tag: Technology

Affirmative Action Backlash Is Coming for Your Business. Here’s What You Can Do.

Emboldened by the Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down the use of affirmative action in college admissions, conservatives are setting their sights on their next target: corporate America. As the CEO of Girls Who Code, a nonprofit dedicated to diversifying the tech industry, I worry about what this means in the fight to create a more representative and equitable workforce.

Rather than staying silent, corporations should follow the lead of companies like Microsoft and Salesforce which have both taken a stand against anti-affirmative action litigation. This is not a question of feel-good altruism—it’s good business, too.

Need a Safe, Private Abortion? Ask Charley.

On Tuesday, Sept. 12, reproductive health experts launched a new online chatbot named Charley to help abortion seekers in all 50 states find quick, accurate and confidential abortion information, tailored to their individual needs and circumstances.

Charley only asks for a user’s zip code and date of their last period to determine how far along they are in their pregnancy. Charley also makes referrals to medical and legal support services, as well as community support networks. Co-founded by former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards and the former head of Planned Parenthood’s digital department Tom Subak, Charley launched in partnership with INeedAnA.com, Plan C and the Miscarriage + Abortion (M+A) Hotline.

“There’s a lot of fear and confusion out there about how abortion is available, especially in restricted states, and there are different resources out there. But there hasn’t been a single resource that includes all the information. Charley does that,” said Elisa Wells, co-director of Plan C. “Charley walks people through their options and then directs them to the resources that are available to help them find more specific information.”

Abortion Snitching Is Already Sending People to Jail

Last month, Celeste Burgess was sentenced to 90 days in prison because she took abortion pills when she was 17 years old. The story of Celeste and her mother—who helped her get the pills and will be sentenced in September—went national.

This case was seen as a harbinger of intimate privacy violations to come. But this case also exemplifies a disturbing phenomenon in the genesis of abortion prosecutions: friends and community members reporting on each other.

Supreme Court Decision on Reckless Speech Will Cost Victims of Stalking and Harassment

The Supreme Court issued a ruling on June 27 in Counterman v. Colorado, holding that a speaker’s subjective intention must be considered when determining whether speech is a “true threat” and thus punishable notwithstanding the First Amendment. The decision requires that a speaker must have been aware of the “threatening character” of the speech but delivered it anyway, and was thus reckless in their actions. The holding will limit protections for victims of stalking, verbal abuse and online harassment and increase the burden on prosecutors who must now provide evidence of the speaker’s state of mind.

The Court’s decision will have a disproportionate impact on the mostly female victims of stalking and verbal abuse who turn to the legal system for protection.

The Anti-Abortion Movement Is Pumping Resources into Promoting Fake Clinics—And Google Is Helping

and

Abortion opponents are now targeting states where abortion remains legal, such as Massachusetts, by pumping resources into a spider web of anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs) that work to entrap people searching for reproductive healthcare. And Google made $10.2 million over the last two years running deceptive advertisements for these fake clinics.

“Google … is more than willing to allow advertisers to lie, deceive, limit users’ rights to good information and to healthcare, as long as they get paid in the process.”

How AI Puts Elections at Risk—And the Needed Safeguards

and

Next year will bring the first national campaign season in which widely accessible AI tools allow users to synthesize audio in anyone’s voice, generate photo-realistic images of anybody doing nearly anything, and power social media bot accounts with near human-level conversational abilities—and do so on a vast scale and with a reduced or negligible investment of money and time.

Voters need some level of transparency to promote safe AI use when it comes to elections.

Here’s How Companies Can Protect the Privacy of People Providing or Seeking Abortion Care

and

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Center for Democracy & Technology has released a set of best practices for companies to adopt in order to better protect the privacy and safety of people seeking, providing or otherwise supporting abortion care.

Without transparency, companies could sell data to law enforcement and civil litigants—which could help prove a person sought, received, aided or provided an abortion. The best practices call on companies to consider and closely review the types of individual user data they have access to, and minimize the collection of revealing information.