The Roe reversal showed the need for data privacy laws. Will that be enough to get them?
Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) uses a period-tracking app. So do many of her friends and constituents, who messaged her about those apps after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked. Major privacy concerns with period tracking apps emerged earlier this year, as the possibility that abortion could become illegal in certain parts of the country loomed. That’s when Jacobs realized many people didn’t know what they were supposed to do to keep their online data private.
“I realized each individual person shouldn’t have to figure this out on their own,” Jacobs told Recode. “It’s our job as a government to protect this very sensitive and personal data.”
In response, she introduced the My Body, My Data Act in June. The bill requires that reproductive and sexual health data collection be minimized, that users are able to access and delete the data about them that has been collected, and that consumers have the right to sue companies they believe have violated those rules and their privacy. Period apps would be covered by the law, but so would a lot of other things — which is good, because the health privacy problem extends well beyond period apps.
“It becomes really scary to think about all of the ways this data can be used and the fact that we have no protections against it right now,” Jacobs said.
Her bill is just one example of how the reversal of Roe and subsequent criminalization of abortion in several states may have put the biggest spotlight on online privacy since Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. It’s been less than a month since the Supreme Court’s decision came down, but the other two branches of government have already taken action. Congress is investigating apps and data brokers whose information could be used against abortion seekers and providers, and a federal consumer privacy bill that has been years in the works is making unprecedented progress in Congress. Meanwhile, President Biden addressed digital privacy in an executive order aimed at protecting reproductive health care. And some states, which have led the way on consumer privacy laws, are considering new or stronger privacy laws.
“I do think it is kind of a turning point,” Caitlin Seeley George, campaigns and managing director of digital advocacy group Fight for the Future, said. “Congress should see this as an opportunity where they have public attention, they have a directive from the executive, they should absolutely be doing all they can on this issue.”
Some lawmakers, like Jacobs, weren’t previously known as data privacy advocates. Others who have been beating the privacy drum for years see the Roe reversal as a way to make the public more aware of the problem and supportive of laws that could solve it.
“I’ve had a huge response from Oregonians and allies here in Congress since the draft opinion was first released,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a longtime privacy hawk who, with Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), sponsored a Senate version of Jacobs’s bill. “The movement to secure personal information against political prosecutions will only grow as the fallout from Republicans’ crusade against women becomes clear.”
Joining Jacobs’s bill in the post-Roe digital privacy fight is the Health and Location Data Protection Act, which would ban data brokers from selling or sharing health data and location data. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a recent letter that House Democrats were considering legislation that protects data stored in reproductive health apps.
Alongside the president’s executive order, the Biden administration has made digital privacy part of its post-Roe reproductive health agenda. The Department of Health and Human Services issued new guidance that included best practices for finding and using private and secure online services. And the Federal Trade Commission issued a statement saying the agency will “will vigorously enforce the law if we uncover illegal conduct that exploits Americans’ location, health, or other sensitive data.” This week, the Federal Communications Commission also announced a probe into mobile carriers’ privacy practices and how they handle consumers’ location data (the agency did not say if this was a response to the decision).
And while Republicans aren’t likely to sign onto any privacy legislation introduced as a direct response to a Supreme Court decision their party supports, some of them do support another data privacy bill that was introduced last month: the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA), a bipartisan, bicameral bill that just became the first consumer privacy bill to make it out of a full committee markup, and with a nearly unanimous vote. If nothing else, that’s an indication of just how difficult it has been to get anywhere on such laws, even after years of trying. It may also be an indication of how motivated some lawmakers are to pass a law this time around.
But some experts aren’t so sure that even this will be enough to put a federal consumer privacy law on the books. India McKinney, director of federal affairs at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said online tracking and surveillance has been “so creepy and so weird for so long” that she’s not sure if the fallout from the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision will be the thing that makes the dangers of having few privacy protections click for the American public.
“I suppose that if something good does come out of Dobbs, it would be that it leads to increased privacy awareness [or] legislation,” Jen King, privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, said. “That said, because Dobbs only directly implicates half of our population, I’m slightly skeptical that will be the end result.”
A bipartisan, bicameral federal privacy bill is making progress
Tech companies have been able to build entire business models and ecosystems around tracking people online and off. It’s not just Big Tech, either. There’s also a world of data brokers and app developers that, in the absence of federal privacy legislation, track us in ways many people don’t understand or expect. Those companies are facing new scrutiny as reports detail how marketplaces sell aggregated data about visits to abortion clinics or lists of devices that have period apps installed. Some companies have tried to smooth things over by changing certain data practices around sensitive information like reproductive health. But without an actual law, we’re left to rely on the same companies that built their businesses around tracking us to keep their promises to stop doing so.
“We can’t rely on the goodwill of Big Tech to protect sensitive information that may affect women’s access to abortion and reproductive health care services — or worse, lead to their prosecution,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who introduced the Health and Location Data Protection Act (of which Wyden is a cosponsor). “We need federal legislation with strong privacy guarantees, and my bill would do just that.”
But any federal privacy bill needs some Republican support to pass. ADPPA has that support and has been heralded by many as the best chance yet that Congress has to pass a privacy law. Both sides have made concessions on things that prevented them from putting out a bipartisan privacy bill before. Some privacy and consumer advocacy groups, like Consumer Reports and EPIC, are cautiously optimistic about the bill. ADPPA doesn’t explicitly address the Roe reversal, but many of its provisions would protect health privacy just the same.
“This is an area where Congress should be able to come together to get something done,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who wrote an Internet Bill of Rights in 2018. “I’m hopeful that renewed momentum on this issue will catalyze Congress to act.”
Rep. Suzan DelBene, a moderate Democrat from Washington state who has proposed several privacy bills over the years, said a national consumer privacy law would better serve the American public than legislation like Jacobs’s, which targets specific types of data.
“We should not be playing whack-a-mole with narrow privacy policies,” DelBene said. “We need a strong national foundational privacy standard so we are forward-looking and not just reactive.”
But ADPPA faces significant obstacles, even with the momentum the Roe reversal may have provided. Many California Democrats have said they won’t support a bill that weakens their state’s privacy law. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) currently opposes the bill, and as chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, her support is necessary for the bill to go anywhere. Sens. Wyden, Brian Schatz (D-HI), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) have also spoken out against the bill. A Senate aide close to the discussions who was not authorized to speak publicly told Recode there’s a chance that the Dobbs decision could make some lawmakers less willing to compromise on what they see as a weaker bill now that the need for a stronger one is more apparent than ever.
While most members of Congress avoided the subject, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) mentioned the Supreme Court decision during ADPPA’s markup, saying: “The legislation should take head-on the new world women are living in since June 24.” She added that the law should close a loophole that would allow law enforcement to access data to help prosecute people for getting abortions. Eshoo was one of just two members of Congress to vote against advancing ADPPA to a House floor vote. The other, Nanette Barragán, also represents California.
Time is also running out to pass ADPPA this session, and there’s no guarantee it will pass in the next one. If Republicans attain a majority in the Senate, it’s likely that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) will be heading up the Commerce committee. His priorities might not be the same.
States may continue to take the lead on privacy
Some states have already done what the federal government hasn’t. Thanks to the Roe reversal, more might be on the way.
“The vast majority of privacy laws that have passed over the past 10-20 years come from the states,” Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program of the ACLU of Massachusetts, said. “I expect that that is going to continue to be the case in the short-term future.”
McKinney, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, Vermont’s Data Broker Act, and California’s Consumer Privacy Act and Privacy Rights Act were examples of states that passed privacy laws in lieu of federal action. New York is also trying to ban controversial geofence and keyword search warrants, where law enforcement orders companies to turn over a list of devices that were in a certain area or a list of devices or accounts that searched for certain terms, respectively.
Rep. Jacobs says that, even after all the outcry over period apps and privacy issues, she has yet to delete hers. Why? Because, she says, she lives in a state that has a strong, comprehensive privacy law.
“I am very grateful to live in California,” Jacobs said.
Even when your brain feels like mush.
I doubt you need to be told you should be reading more. There’s a good chance you struggle to make time for reading, and it feels like just another obligation, like hitting your daily step goal, or drinking more water.
You’re not alone. In early 2021, nearly a quarter of Americans told the Pew Research Center that they hadn’t read any books at all the previous year. Earlier this year, a Gallup poll revealed that even those who were reading books were reading fewer than ever.
“So many people tell me that they used to be a reader and then they just fell out of it,” Lynn Lobash, the New York Public Library’s associate director of reader services, told me, recounting conversations from the past few years. “It’s hard to get back into a practice once you’ve lost it.”
Because, look, it’s not easy! Books require sustained attention, something few of us have (and some of us have lost altogether) in these pandemic-riddled, anxiety-inducing times. Given some free time, you’ve probably got a million other things you could be doing: shows to binge, movies to half-watch, browser tabs to skim. Even if you loved to read as a child, when adulthood hits, reading can go out the window, relegated to beach reading on vacations and maybe a couple of books crammed into the corners of life.
Even if you do manage to pick up a book, you might feel lingering guilt if it isn’t an important book, or at least an improving one. “There is no such thing as the correct book to read,” Allison Escoto reminded me over Zoom, a bookcase looming behind her. Escoto is the head librarian and education director at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn. The canon of “important books” — what they are, and who gets to choose them — has been in a vibrant state of reexamination and expansion in recent years, she reminded me, and that means the “notion of the correct book, or the right book, or the acceptable book is itself under scrutiny.”
In fact, numerous studies seem to suggest that when it comes to the psychological benefits of reading, just doing it might matter as much or more than the content. Researchers have found that people who spend a few hours per week reading books live longer than those who don’t read, or who read only articles in periodicals; the sustained act of cognition that books demand seems to be the deciding factor. Other research finds a vast array of social-cognitive benefits that come with reading, particularly reading fiction, aiding the brain’s development in understanding others and imagining the world.
Some studies have suggested that reading fiction can increase empathy. But a perhaps even more surprising finding comes from researchers who discovered a short-term decrease in the need for “cognitive closure” in the minds of readers of fiction. In brief, the researchers write, those with a high need for cognitive closure “need to reach a quick conclusion in decision-making and an aversion to ambiguity and confusion,” and thus, when confronted with confusing circumstances, tend to seize on fast explanations and hang on to them. That generally means they’re more susceptible to things like conspiracy theories and poor information, and they become less rational in their thinking. Reading fiction, though, studies have found, tends to retrain the brain to stay open, comfortable with ambiguity, and able to sort through information more carefully.
These all sound like great reasons to develop a practice of reading. But how? The key, as with most everything in life, is to build a habit of reading. What you’re trying to do is practice sustained attention. Like any habit, the trick is in figuring out what works for you.
There’s a bit of willpower involved, of course. “The hardest part about reading is actually picking the book up,” Lobash says, and we both laugh knowingly. To start reading, you have to sit down and pick up a book, or cue up an audiobook in your headphones. You’ll never become a reader by wishing you read more, listening exclusively to podcasts, or sitting next to a book while you scroll Instagram. (Even buying books doesn’t make you a reader, as I have, unfortunately, found out.)
If money is tight (or even if it isn’t), libraries are stellar resources, with easy systems in place to borrow not just physical books but ebooks and audiobooks (through apps like Libby and Overdrive) — often without even having to go to the library. And there are ways to train yourself to read. “I always have a book next to wherever I put my phone,” Escoto tells me. “So if I have the urge to check my phone for another useless doomscrolling session, I physically can see the book there. Nine times out of 10, I will choose the book, because I know what’s in store for me if I get on my phone.”
That kind of physical proximity, making it easy for yourself to read, is a great way to get back into the habit. Years ago, I had a colleague who would purchase cheap paperback copies of lengthy books he needed to read, and then he’d physically rip them down the spine and carry pieces of the book with him. I was horrified the first time I saw him do it, but I eventually came to realize it was his way of making sure that the heft or width of a book wouldn’t be a barrier to reading it.
Like Escoto, I prefer a paper book to an electronic one (and research suggests we remember what we read on paper better than ebooks). Sometimes, though, I’ll purchase the electronic version just so I can tap open the app on long commutes and read it on whatever device is at hand. Not ideal, but it gets the job done. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Another obvious barrier is time, and this is where audiobooks can be a godsend. “That is reading!” Escoto says. Audiobooks are great for occupying the mind while you’re commuting, washing dishes, mowing the lawn, or lifting at the gym. “Investigate other formats that are more comfortable for you so that it doesn’t feel like I have to sit here and read,” she says. And if you save particularly exciting or juicy books for particular activities — logging miles on the treadmill, for instance — then you train yourself to crave both activities.
Sometimes the best way to make sure you read is to lean into whatever personality quirks you know you have, and make use of them. In the summer of 2020 — you remember that summer — I felt like I was both grasping for sanity and desperate to walk away from screens. I could barely sit still, let alone read a few pages without subconsciously picking up my phone. Yet I needed to read, because I was writing a book, and that required me to plow through dozens of books for research.
So I exploited my love of tasks and assignments. I made myself syllabi, determining which books I would read during which weeks. I’d count the number of chapters or pages in each book, divide them as evenly as possible into daily reading, and schedule those into my task list. Then I’d pair the day’s reading with my hammock or, later, a trip to the local beer garden.
That’s just the way that worked for me. Others might decide to read while sipping morning coffee. Or, as Escoto points out, making reading a communal event can be helpful, whether through virtual or in-person reading groups (like Vox’s Book Club), or just picking a book to read with a friend.
Whatever you need to do to reestablish a reading habit is a net benefit, and that should extend to what you read, too. That might require divorcing yourself from the notion that books have to be important or educational to be legitimate. “Just give yourself permission to read whatever you’re interested in reading,” Escoto says.
If that doesn’t ring any bells, your Netflix queue might be a clue. “If someone came into a library, and I said, I don’t know, I don’t really like to read, it feels like a chore, I would ask them, ‘Well, what do you like to watch?’” Lobash says. “I think using other media is a really good doorway to finding something that you will like to read.”
An algorithm or a Google search might help you here, but both Lobash and Escoto emphatically remind me that librarians are probably your best resource. “A lot of what’s involved in librarianship is recommending books, and part of how we do that as professionals is to suss out what the person’s interested in,” Escoto says. Lobash echoes this, saying that librarians “know all the right questions to ask.” Plenty of adults come to the library with their children, she says, but it’s rarer for them to come for themselves — and they’re a resource that’s just waiting to be tapped. Booksellers at your local bookstore can fill the same function, too.
And if you’re really stuck, but yearning to get back to your youthful reading bliss, maybe just revisit your old favorites, Escoto says. There’s no shame in rereading the books that made you fall in love with reading in the first place. If the science is right, then recreating that sustained attention is really what you’re after, at least as much as the stories themselves. Regaining the practice of reading is a little like hiking or playing an instrument or picking up painting: It takes some work to get in the groove, but once you do, the results are beautiful and immensely satisfying.
Even Better is here to offer deeply sourced, actionable advice for helping you live a better life. Do you have a question on money and work; friends, family, and community; or personal growth and health? Send us your question by filling out this form. We might turn it into a story.
Much of it comes down to dissatisfaction with the economy.
In recent months, Democrats have been increasingly concerned about President Joe Biden’s low approval rating, fearing it will hurt their party in the 2022 midterms.
As of mid-July, survey after survey has shown his approval ratings floundering amid dissatisfaction with his handling of the economy and ongoing concerns about inflation and gas prices. To top it off, a poll from the New York Times and Siena College found that just 26 percent of Democrats thought he should be renominated in two years, while 64 percent would be open to someone else.
The backlash that Biden is experiencing isn’t entirely unusual: Most presidents see some loss of support within their first two years. His approval ratings have fallen lower than those of his recent predecessors at the same point in their presidency, however, fueling worries that Biden’s unpopularity could weigh down Democrats this fall.
Here are nine charts that explain just how bad things are for Biden, and how bad they could be for his party.