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Humanistic on the World Episode 24, Privacy Matters, Abortion, LGBTQ, Rights, and more.

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Welcome to the episode of Humanistic on the World. This is our 24th episode since the rebranding, so...

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This is a topic that I've wanted to cover for a while, but I tried a couple times and there was the right stories this time.

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To help talk about it, so to help get my thoughts on it all worked out for how to present it on the show.

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So, hopefully this is all good. With the new stories, I'm glad that I have chapters enabled for the show now.

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So, if you are using a podcast app that supports chapters, then if one of these stories is upsetting, you can just skip to the next chapter.

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If you don't, you might want to look into some other options that do support that, but at this point, most apps should be supporting chapters.

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So, I guess we should go ahead and get started.

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For our first news story, Catholic laity and clergy for renewal, which is a Catholic organization set up in Colorado, spent $4 million buying data from data brokers that was primarily according to their claims, sourced from grinder and other gay dating apps, to try to track down all the gay priests.

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If this story sounds familiar, back in 2021, this group did the same thing to out on senior Jeffrey Burrill, prompting him to resign his post.

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The people behind this are allegedly philanthropists, Mark Bonham, John Martin, and Tim Reichert.

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And the Washington Post even has recordings of their closed door meetings and leaked documents from them and found that it's really shady what they're doing.

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Grinder has claimed that their claims about a state are invalidated and that it's not possible that the data that they claim they got actually could have come from it, because they made a bunch of changes in 2020 to cut down on how much data was being harvested and sold off.

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Grinder spokesperson Patrick Linahan did say, quote, grinder has and will continue to push the industry to keep bad actors out of the ad tech ecosystem, particularly on behalf of the LGBTQ community.

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All that group is doing is hurting people end quote.

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However, to a certain extent, everybody using the ad tech ecosystem is a bad actor.

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This is just a case of people trying to get the people they view as bad out of the clergy, because they don't want men who have sex with consenting adults to be priests.

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Now, on the other hand, you have for profit corporations who just care about profit, who are using all this ad tech to try to manipulate people into buying their products and services.

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The fact that grinder is taking part in that means they are making a lot of their users data available to anybody who wants it.

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And realistically, this group didn't actually get the data directly from any of the ad tech stuff. That's what the data brokers do.

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They put in fake bids in the ad market for targeted personalized ads and get access to all of the data, which they save and then sell off to anybody who's wanting it.

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When you consider that this group spent $4 million on this data, I'm going to guess they've got a lot more than just gay priests.

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So I fully expect there will be more on this.

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Also, with grinders claims that they couldn't have gotten all that data from what grinder shares, no, probably not.

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And that doesn't matter, because that's what the data brokers do.

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They take the data they get from grinder, they combine it with the data they're buying from the cell carriers so that you've got constant data about when you're using the app and where your location is at that time.

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And afterwards, and well, all of the rest of the time, the data brokerage market is terrifying.

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And this is a prime example of even if a company does less data.

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If they're still sharing that data on the ad tech ecosystem, then that data will be pooled with all of the other data and create incredibly detailed, effectively dossier's on everybody with way more detail than there should be on anyone.

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Now, as far as as far as gay Catholic priests getting outed, I don't really care.

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But as an example of how much data is out there and can be misused and relevant to this story is all of the anti trans laws that are getting passed in Republican controlled states.

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And here pretty soon, we'll probably start seeing some anti gay laws and the state is out there. It's available.

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Cops can use it.

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Moving on to the next story, and this one is from last summer, but it's one I've been holding on to for the covering this topic.

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There was a, there were a couple cases of dads who took pictures of infections on their toddler's groins to share with the doctor for a telehealth visit that were, and in both cases,

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because the phone was automatically uploading all pictures to Google servers, the pictures were uploaded to Google photos processed and flagged as child's sexual abuse material.

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In both cases, Google then closed the accounts and filed reports with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which then passed it along to local police.

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And the police and both cases determined this wasn't child porn. This was a parent trying to get medical care for their child.

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In both cases, they were using Google Fi as well for their phone service.

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So when they, their accounts were terminated, they lost their phone service.

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And one of the dads was in the process of trying to close on a house, and that got screwed up because he couldn't get phone calls anymore, and a house that he was trying to buy fell through.

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The moral of the story with this one, if you're taking pictures of your kid or the doctor, if your kid's doctor asks for a picture, tell them that's not a good idea and to just cover it in the video appointment.

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Because, yeah, this is at least if you use Google photos, definitely.

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For our next story, we are going to be talking about women getting abortions in states that have banned it, getting in trouble.

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Feel free to skip this if it's too upsetting. This and the next story.

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A woman named Jessica Burgess and her daughter will be standing trial in Nebraska on the charges of performing an illegal abortion.

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The primary evidence for this charge came from Facebook.

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Burgess helped her daughter find and take abortion pills, her daughter being a teenager,

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and the teenager also has charges of illegal disposing of fetal remains.

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Meta, the new name for Facebook parent company, claims that they got a legal warrant from law enforcement that did not mention abortion

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since it was specifically about the disposal of fetal remains, and thus it didn't violate Meta's promise that they wouldn't respond to any cases in mentioning abortion.

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Well, cops know this when they put in that request, they're not going to use that word.

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They will discuss disposal of fetal remains. They'll talk about illegal importation of medication or something else.

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They won't use the word abortion.

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So, this mother and daughter were chatting about this on Facebook Messenger.

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Facebook Messenger Facebook then handed over that data.

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If you are going to be discussing something that is sensitive, something that is potentially illegal, or something that is illegal in your state, do not do it on Facebook Messenger.

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What you should be using instead, we will be discussing later, but don't use Facebook Messenger.

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And in the final story, the first Texas civil lawsuit over an abortion has now happened.

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Marcus Silva is suing his ex-wife for getting an abortion.

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He is being represented by Jonathan Mitchell, who is the former Texas Solicitor General and the one who wrote Texas's abortion prohibitions, as well as a sitting member of the state legislature.

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The allegations are that his now ex-wife found out she was pregnant.

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The month after Roe vs. Wade was overturned.

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Basically, the month after they split up and conspired with two friends to get the medication to terminate the pregnancy.

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She and her friends texted, it doesn't say specifically what messaging service they were using, but the term text messages does get used, so these were probably standard SMS or group text would be MMS, but standard text messages.

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And they shared with her information about aid access, which is a group that will mail abortion-inducing medication.

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They then instead found a way to get the medication in Houston, where the first two women lived, and then a third woman delivered the medication, and then the then pregnant woman managed the abortion at home on her own.

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And the lawsuits have screenshots from a group chat.

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One that even expressed concerns that Silva, the plaintiff in this lawsuit, would quote,

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Snake his way into your head, end quote.

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The pregnant woman said, quote, I know either way he will use it against me.

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If I told him before, which I am not, he will try to use it as a way to try to stay with me.

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And after the fact, I know he will try to act like he has some right to the decision, end quote.

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One of the other women later said, quote, delete all conversations from today.

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You don't want him looking through it, end quote.

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And now he looked through it.

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He took screenshots and sent them to himself to use for a lawsuit.

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There are ways to get around that.

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In all of these stories, they could have been avoided.

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The gay priests getting routed by grinder and various other, probably various other data.

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If they had been smarter about compartmentalizing parts of their lives, they could have avoided

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that. The dads had gotten trouble because of their photos going to Google.

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If they had thought about where their photos were going, they could have avoided that.

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If they didn't have auto upload on, they also could have avoided that.

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And with the women getting in trouble over abortions, with various chat services and text message options

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being used, there are ways to avoid that as well.

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When talking about online privacy or any kind of privacy or security, the primary concept is your threat model.

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The threat model is something that is personal for everybody.

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It is individualized.

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Your threat model is unique to you.

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And your threat model today might be totally different from what it is tomorrow.

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And as more and more draconian laws are passed, as we move closer and closer to the handmaid's tail or any other

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dystopian future being reality, threat models have to change.

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And you need to adjust to that threat model.

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When it comes to text messages, if you are discussing something that if it became public would get you in trouble

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with the law or your employer, you should be using an encrypted service.

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And it should be self-destructing.

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And you should have it locked down.

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I would suggest using Signal as the most secure and most private.

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If you're into a situation where you want to be able to use text messages to talk to a friend about something

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and your reasonably shouldn't be comfortable doing it over the way you normally text with that friend,

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call the friend up, ask them to install Signal and sell Signal on your phone

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and just move the conversation there.

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Set the conversation to auto delete and set Signal to using a pen or biometrics.

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If you are in a situation where you are in the process of leaving a spouse, make sure your spouse doesn't have access

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to your phone. Make sure it has good locks.

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Change pens if you need to.

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If you have an iPhone, there are new provisions in place.

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It's called Safety Check, where you can lock down access to your Apple account.

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Change passwords if you need to.

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Change pen codes.

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Make sure that you're the only one who has access to it.

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If you're visiting an abortion pill website, use a VPN.

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They all have trackers on them.

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If you're not using a VPN, then that website will track it to your IP address, which will track it to you personally.

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Now, of course, at the point that you're buying it and having it shipped to you, that's a little harder to hide,

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but they should keep that more private than the analytics.

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So at least make sure they don't get your IP address so that visiting that site can't be tracked back to you.

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I know money is often a concern.

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Proton has a free VPN plan.

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Don't abuse it. This would be a case where it would be prudent to use.

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And if you're in a state like Idaho right now, which is in the

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state, considering a bill that would make traveling across state lines to get an abortion, be counted as human trafficking,

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turn off your phone before you cross the border.

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I know there's that's very problematic on its own, but at the very least, make sure before you go to the exact

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place where the abortion will be done that your phone is off so that that data isn't being sold as well.

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And if you're using any kind of a period tracker app, check the privacy policy, make sure they aren't selling that data.

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It's been possible for more than 10 years for algorithms to be able to figure out that somebody is pregnant.

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That happened when Target figured it out and sent coupons for diapers to a pregnant teenage girl's home, which her dad saw and figured out that she was pregnant based on.

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The amount of data we produce has greatly increased since then.

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The amount of data that's out there has greatly increased and the accuracy and raw power of these algorithms to process that data has improved.

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Do what you need to to stay safe and do what you need to that you can afford.

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I would say that traveling across state lines would be the one case where getting a burner phone would be probably a really good idea and shut off your primary phone before you cross state long before you even leave on the trip.

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But there are good free tools. There are a lot of really bad free tools.

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Proton and signal can be trusted. There are others that can be trusted. There are a lot that can't.

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If you're using some other kind of messaging app for conversations like these that got people in trouble.

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Yeah, definitely don't use Facebook Messenger. Don't use SMS text messages. Apple iMessage WhatsApp signal and a handful of other apps use end to end encryption.

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So you're safe. In the case of WhatsApp, they would still be able to tell the authorities who you were talking to and when but not what you were talking about.

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And be sure to delete those conversations and make sure your friends do as well.

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If your app like signal has the option for auto deleting messages in particular conversations, turn it on for those conversations.

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And that's a weird place to leave it, but that's where I'm going to leave it.

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All right, we have feedback. Lauren, not my wife and sometimes cohost, but madam atheist on Instagram.

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Use the contact form on the website to send us a message saying hello. I just want to drop a line and say how much I love your show and I'm only five episodes in.

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And I want your questions. Keep them appropriate. Be nice. But I'd like to get some listener questions for Kylie.

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And until next time, remember, not all those who wander are lost.