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Know yourself. that it An old adage has new resonance in the digital age. Today you can buy Smart devices That monitors your heart rate, blood pressure, exercise habits, water intake, sleep, mood, menstrual cycle, sexual activity, and meditation patterns, not to mention your poop. The Internet of Things has morphed into what academic and author Andrea Matwyshyn calls the “Internet of Objects” with the promise of selling you insights into your “quantum self.”
The desire for self-awareness is not new, but these data offer a different twist to the Enlightenment. Millions of Americans live with Smart watch Which reminds them to stand up, breathe and take a few extra steps to achieve their daily exercise goals. This helpful (and healthy) algorithmic prompt, of course, only works because your smart device is tracking your physical activity. It literally knows you’re breathing, which can be useful to police if you stop for some reason. The data we produce – from our step counts to our DNA – is increasingly being monitored.
Not all of this surveillance is unwelcome. Many medical professionals have embraced digital tracking to help their patients. Smart defibrillators measure heartbeats. The digital pill records the last time someone took their medication. Smart bandages could warn of early infections These innovations offer the potential to improve medical outcomes by linking data in and on our bodies with our digital health records. They rely on small sensors that can be placed in watches or implanted in medical devices, allowing you to monitor your vital signs or check on friends and family members who have health problems.
Of course, there are potential downsides to making medical data available. Digital pills may let your doctor (or parole officer) know that you have stopped taking your psychiatric medications; It is no coincidence that the first such pill approved by the Food and Drug Administration treats schizophrenia and other mental health disorders. In addition to helping you train for a marathon, data from your smartwatch can pinpoint when you use cocaine or have sex.
Recent laws criminalizing abortion increase the risks of collecting this type of information. Nearly a third of women use menstrual trackers to monitor their reproductive health. Many of these apps — like Flo, which is used by 48 million women — collect information about the user’s mood, body temperature, symptoms, ovulation, and sexual partners, as well as their location. Even if a user kept her pregnancy test result outside of the app, the absence of her period, combined with weeks of logged nausea, would provide a very good idea of her condition. In states that have restricted access to abortion, prosecutors can use this data as evidence of a crime.
And in states where abortion remains legal, reproductive information may find its way into the hands of marketers instead. In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission fined “femtech” company Premom for selling data to third parties, including Google and companies in China. Premom, like Flo, which also settled an FTC complaint, did not disclose the fact that it was sharing this personal data — which, in Premom’s case, included information about “sexual and reproductive health, parental status and pregnancy, as well as other information about an individual’s physical health conditions and status.”
Some femtech companies have tried to protect personal data by limiting the amount they collect and localizing it to the device, refusing to log IP addresses, or creating an anonymous mode, but companies and users remain at the mercy of court orders. US companies are bound by US laws, and when abortion is criminalized in a state, data that could provide evidence of abortion is subject to warrant requests by investigative agents. The only way to avoid handing over data is to not collect it, which is difficult for a company that collects data.
The rise of mental health apps and online therapy has exposed another vector of self-monitoring. Online therapy company BetterHelp has more than 2 million users who utilize online and mobile mental health services. You can sign up and answer questions about your mental health issues (such as depression, intimacy issues, or medications), and they offer connections, advice, and resources to help. They then sell your personal data to Facebook and other targeted advertising companies — or at least they did until 2022, when the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against BetterHelp and its affiliates to stop the practice and eventually imposed $7.8 million in fines.