Whatever we can find in a retail market we are most likely to find online. This time E-commerce is going to be a game changer when it comes to female health. Ever since Supreme court decided to overturn Roe Vs. Wade abortion seekers are turning to online resource to seek care they need. Telehealth abortion traffic has skyrocketed past few weeks Visits to telehealth abortion platforms soared to 436,727, up 2,585% from the day before the decision was released.
Choix, Hey Jane and Just the Pill, which were introduced few years ago to offer women in a limited number of states abortion prescriptions via telemedicine and delivered by mail has benefited a lot from this platform. The demand of the pills has more than double when compared to last month average.
Numerous states are moving to ban all forms of abortion, including 19 states that have already banned telemedicine abortions, but this is a largely unregulated space.
The availability of telehealth and mail order abortion makes an outright ban incredibly difficult to enforce. Those looking to acquire abortion pills in the currently hostile legislative climate are increasingly using the many telehealth options popping up online.
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As you have pointed out, traffic to telehealth termination platforms has skyrocketed successful the past respective days and weeks, up 456% erstwhile the draught sentiment was leaked successful May compared to the erstwhile period and an further 20% period implicit month in June erstwhile the last Supreme Court verdict was announced, according to Similarweb data.
These platforms reached 5.3 cardinal web visits successful June, pushing termination pill startups to rapidly grow to lucifer increasing demand.
It’s just another avenue of getting abortion when someone decided to abort a pregnancy as standard legal avenues are closing out post Roe v. Wade. What concerns me more is about improper usage and related consequences on someone.
As I said that, it’s only one another avenue, there will be more shady avenues will open up over time to facilitate abortion, in the country or just across the neiboring borders,
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Hi Hamza, great summary of the article: Online abortion pill interest soars after the demise of Roe v. Wade. I had not considered the market implications of overturning Roe vs. Wade. Online contraception providers will have the best opportunity for profits at the expense of this decision.
An increase of Telehealth, will require an increase bandwidth for those systems used to support Telehealth. Similar to how VPNs are used in free speech restrictive countries, I assume that VPN usage in the U.S. could also increase to mask the source of the Telehealth session. I wonder if the FCC will then require ISPs to restrict the use of non-business related VPN connections.
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Discussion Thread 2 : TikTok Responds to Senators’ Concerns Over User Data. Meghan Bobrowsky. July 1 2022. Wall Street Journal
The article reports that that Nine Republican senators this week issued a later to TikTok following a report last month claiming that employees of ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) were able to access private data of American users from their work location in China. This raised many concerns as TikTok has been under a lot of scrutiny after many users reported that their deleted account could still be accessed after years of deleting the account and that the FBI could actually gain access to deleted TikTok accounts.
The company said it’s now storing all U.S. data by default in Oracle’s cloud infrastructure, following threats from former US president Donald Trump to ban the app, an agreement made in 2020. The CEO also assured that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has not asked the company for access to the data of its U.S.-based TikTok users and that the company would not provide that data upon such a request.
I think TikTok needs to be ban for awhile for investigations to be made and then the app, once cleared of any legal demands, could be put back on the app stores.
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I completely agree that Tiktok needs to be banned until the federal agencies completely investigate whether the allegations are right. I am sure they do track the data and I would love to see it banned. It should have been banned a long time ago but the Government got busy with COVID, 2020 elections. It should have been banned during the previous administration but it never happened since the court turned down the effor made by Trump Administration. ” Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” that’s the game china is trying to play here by tracking the sensitive info of American.
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Discussion Thread 3 : Can Crypto’s Richest Man Stand the Cold?
This is an article posted in Businessweek. It’s concerning the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, and the trends in cryptocurrency in recent years. Overall, the article is highly critical of Binance, and to an extent cryptocurrency in general. Certain coins have lost most of all of their value, while even the mainline coins like Bitcoin have lost “70%” of their value, in what can only be described as a market crash. Beyond this occurence lies a discussion of the role of cryptocurrency in general.
Is it legitimate? Critics have long held that the currency is worthless or some kind of legal loophole for otherwise illegal activities, whereas proponents would tell you it’s an alternate means of finance outside the control of governments. Regardless, it’s a large market, even after the financial hit it’s taken recently.
Binance and other similar companies are an interesting question for IT/IS, considering that these platforms are centralized centers for a decentralized commerce. It raises questions about what obligations these platforms have to their users; certainly many legal concerns have been voiced, with the article explaining that Zhao has claimed he has been addressing these issues. It also raises questions of financial legitimacy, as the article raises, since certain coins have lost up to “99.96” percent of their value. What role do you think cryptocurrency will have in the future for IT/IS, concerning systems, legal issues, etc?
Thank you,
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Cryptocurrencies are an interesting and polarizing topic. I personally question their legitimacy/value given most (maybe all?) of them are not backed by a tangible asset. Recently, several large exchanges have had to pause transactions involving certain coins or even shut down because they simply couldn’t afford to pay out users that wanted their funds.
I understand the desire for a decentralized financial system, and blockchain technology certainly has many compelling use cases outside of cryptocurrencies, but I think these currencies will struggle until a couple of things happen: 1) participating securely must get less complicated (many people are intimidated by the steps needed to do things like set up a physical wallet) and 2) it needs to become easier to buy tangible goods with crypto directly.
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The cryptocurrency space is one that I have failed to fully grasp since first hearing about it years ago, but I obviously wish I had paid more attention to it. However, with the recent decline in value of numerous coins and tokens, I am proud of myself for not “following the herd” and investing when everybody else was during the pandemic. I still believe that the entire concept of cryptocurrency is the wave of the future, but the amount of uncertainty is too much to handle for a risk-averse investor like myself.
As AJ mentioned in the comment above mine, the process of storing and protecting your cryptocurrencies is unstable, and I hear about hackers stealing millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies all the time in the news. It will be interesting to see where these comments stand in five to ten years. I may be eating my words and have missed out on one of the most lucrative investments of all time, but I will stay on the sidelines for now.
I enjoyed reading your responses! Great work!
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The Binance coin has played a major role in the cryptocurrency platform because it has supported its operations to create a viable ecosystem. In addition to paying listing fees, exchange fees, trading fees, and other charges an exchange user might incur on the exchange, this coin may also be used for other purposes. The Binance coin has several benefits, including the ability to trade multiple cryptocurrencies, it is safe and trustworthy, and it offers discounts on trading.
On Binance, users have access to a powerful matching engine, which can support many orders per second, whenever they buy or sell a Binance coin. Numerous cryptocurrency users and traders trust Binance’s security and safety features and rely on its platform. Binance also offers a fast, secure, and affordable trade matching system for trading more than 150 cryptocurrencies on their exchange.
Discussion Thread 4: We’re Living Through A Digital Privacy Catastrophe: It’s Past Time For A Serious Nationwide Privacy Law
When it comes to safeguarding the privacy of its residents, the United States trails behind a lot of other countries. Companies have claimed that they do not sell customer information, yet surreptitiously share it with various partners. In addition, they assert that everything they share is confidential and not a big problem. This is often not the case as that data can be traced back to the customer anyway. One of the most well-known examples of such a scenario involves the dating app Grindr. For a considerable time, the dating app Grindr provided access to its users’ geolocation to third-party advertisers.
Many mobile apps today are created in a way that makes it necessary for users to reveal their location. The only drawback is when apps abuse this privilege by disclosing user information to their acquaintances. Apps within this category include but are not limited to, weather applications, transit apps, restaurant review apps, and dating apps. Existing rules, such as HIPAA, which prohibit hospitals from disclosing an individual’s health information but permit any technology business that gathers an individual’s health information to use and distribute it at will, have further contributed to the violation of data privacy.
As far as data privacy violations are concerned, the government hasn’t been left out. In many cases, law enforcement can circumvent warrant requirements by requesting commercial entities like a person’s cell phone carrier to sell them information about their movements, calls, and internet visits. The government has also been rumored to be buying data for widespread monitoring. One example is the Trump administration’s purchase of location data to identify Black Lives Matter protesters.
To put an end to this, the United States requires a federal privacy law that is constructed based on the following central pillars: the pillar of a duty of care for security and privacy; people first, corporations second; eliminating the problem of warrant bypass; and the enactment of meaningful penalties.
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The exploitation of personal data powers the internet in various ways. The scandal lies in the prevalence of such agreements, not in semantic disputes over whether a particular terms of service agreement or partnership program is exploitative. Giving your personal information away is a standard practice for using the internet.
Even though the transaction seems straightforward, it is incredibly complicated, especially given how quickly innovations might alter what can be done with our data. This explains why discussions regarding data privacy are so challenging and so frequently result in outrage and criticism but very little actual change. The great privacy reckoning has occurred, but it still begs the question of how we are to have a real, impacting conversation about this when we are so obviously ignorant of it.
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Through a vast system of algorithms, Digital privacy has been a major issue for a while. Users are profiled based on data about their health, finances, location, gender, race, and other personal information. I agree that a digital privacy law is way overdue because these practices tend to be harmful for marginalized and multi-marginalized communities, fostering discrimination and inequities in employment, government services, health and healthcare, education, and other life necessities. Some of laws that can be implemented include.
· Limiting the collection and use of personal data
· Prohibiting discriminatory uses of data
· Establishing a data protection agency
· Requiring algorithmic fairness and accountability
· Banning manipulative design and unfair marketing practices
· Limiting government access to personal data.
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Great article. I think with the overturn of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court more people are awake to the fact that privacy needs to be thought about and the right to it. I cannot even reliably use my technology or a website without them asking to take my data, and then (assumably) sell it for a profit to data miners or other parties. It’s time we have some serious thought about what privacy we are willing to give up, and what privacy we can protect: whether that is through regulation or technology itself.
All interesting concepts to think about.
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As you observed, privacy laws are still very much a complex topic because many organizations and government agencies who claim to safeguard these rules are also in violation of it. We willingly provide our private information to some of the service providers assuming that our privacy is safeguarded, whereas some of these companies benefit from selling the information. Have you ever wondered why you go to a government agency to apply for something or subscribe to a service provider and the next day you start getting spam emails, junk mails, phone calls, and text messages?
The dating app and GPS are worse-case scenarios. Most cybersecurity standards requirements like NIST, ISO, SOC, and the HIPAA you mentioned require that data in transit and at rest be encrypted such that your Personal Identified Information (PII) is not visible in plaintext to even the employees of the service provider. Since data continues to be exposed despite all the regulatory controls, individual efforts are now also needed to ensure our privacy. We should practice strong information security and ethics in our individual daily life.
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Great article post
I enjoyed reading it as this is something near and dear to my heart. Data Privacy laws in the US are sparse you mentioned but I can’t understand why we’ve not made it a priority. I strongly feel that creating such laws in the US can be much more complex due to the shared nature of how America works. But all the same, it seems crazy to me that this is still ongoing and something hasn’t been implemented at the federal or state level. Another thing I would say is that it is really up to the user. There are some users who don’t mind sharing their data because they may feel some sense of responsibility to the organization and want to help as much as they can. The most important thing is for users to understand what kind of information they are sharing and at which organization.
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