248
British Police are Using Period Tracker Data and Blood Tests To Investigate Patients Who Miscarry
(www.themarysue.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
248 points (82.3% liked)
Privacy
32130 readers
809 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is a shit article from a shit source. It references itself, which, in turn, references guardian. There's no mention of police pulling data from period tracking services. The only related thing I could find in OP was a quote from whatever tortoisemedia is:
And it sucks, but this is not a dystopian surveillance bullshit OP is trying to sell. Put a password on your shit and you're good to go.
Yes, and I despair only at this steaming pile of trigger bait having got so many upvotes. I expected some degree of critical thinking on Lemmy, not the same sort of knee-jerk conspiracy bullshit that abounds on Reddit and Twitter. Silly me.
You're totally downplaying the tortoisemedia quote by not mentioning it's from the co-chair of the British Society of Abortion Care Providers, a totally legitimate and mainstream body.
If you think this is a shit article, tell me what you think it gets wrong. Or are you basing your opinion on the fact you weren't previously aware of tortoisemedia?
You're being disingenuous.
What it gets wrong is ethics. If you're writing about one thing, but giving it a title of another - you're a shit publication.
They're writing about the Police using tracking data and that's what the title of the article is. You keep saying they're a shit publication based on absolutely nothing aside from your opinion.
You also stated this is a shit article, when I asked you to say why, you chose not to, instead saying they're a shit publication. So I'll ask you again. If you believe this is a shit article, tell me what they're wrong about.
I think the issue is with what is implied by the headline as well as the context of being posted on a privacy community. I as well as many others probably ready that headline assuming the police somehow had access to that data from the app outside of the person's phone. I know that also makes some assumptions, but probably the ones most people on a privacy community are thinking/making. Most of us would be assuming that if the app was sharing this data with police, or the police had some back door way of accessing it, then this would be a big privacy news item. The fact that they viewed the data on an unlocked phone and app is much less a privacy concern, more of a policy concern that they are allowed and able to do that (admittedly, still privacy related but to me this is like 80% policy concern and 20% privacy related). Also what actually happened is pretty different from what the headline on a privacy community implies which is where people are having issue. Some examples of this to make it even more clear...
The statement isn't technically false. The first sentence is true, the second sentence can absolutely be the opinion of the poster. But the combination implies that she died from the vaccine, something totally different from what actually happened.
If it was posted to a non privacy related community, the assumption that there was a privacy concern may be much less, but I think the headline would still be misleading. In the facebook example the person was misrepresenting what happened to push a political agenda that vaccines are bad. In both the murder example and in the article linked in your post, the headline is trying to misrepresent what happened to increase engagement.
There are very clear reasons why the headlines weren't the following:
Since this got really long, it's important to say I was just trying to show how the headline is misrepresentation of what happened. I don't think you posted it with any ill intention or that there aren't other moral and political issues with what is happening.