The team behind menstrual health and period tracking app Clue has said it will not disclose users’ data to American authorities, following Donald Trump’s reelection.
The message comes in response to concerns that during Trump’s second presidency, abortion bans that followed the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 will worsen and states will attempt to increase menstrual surveillance in order to further restrict access to terminations.
I don’t know if they’re already doing this, but they need to find ways to make security so robust that it is architecturally impossible for the business to handover useful data.
And here’s hoping courts continue to allow people to plead the 5th and not fork over passwords. If that protection falls, I don’t know how you’d design a digital workaround that would keep people out of contempt of court charges.
They could do it by not uploading any of the data, or if they do, uploading it encrypted with the only key being on the user’s device or a passcode.
Both are well established ways to secure data, but the company itself would not be able to interact with the data at all past storing it, so any features/revenue there would end.