Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google
Anindito Mukherjee | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Google said late Friday it would work to quickly delete location history for people visiting abortion and other medical sites after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week.
“Today, we’re announcing that if our systems identify that someone has visited one of these locations, we’ll delete those records from Location History soon after they visit,” Jen Fitzpatrick, Google’s senior vice president of core systems and experiences, wrote in a post on blog.
Fitzpatrick noted that visits to places like counseling centers, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics and fertility centers “can be particularly personal.” Alphabet, parent of Google, owns many popular devices and data services, including Android, Fitbit, Search and Google Maps. This has become a greater concern since the Supreme Court ruling because of the uncertainty surrounding whether sensitive data could be used to target what is now potentially criminal activity.
Google’s post said: “Fitbit users who have chosen to track their menstrual cycles in the app can currently delete menstrual logs one at a time, and we will release updates that allow users to delete multiple logs at once.”
The ruling by the nation’s highest court overturned nearly 50 years of legal precedent, overturning its original ruling that women had a constitutional right to an abortion. For weeks, Google and other tech companies have avoided answering questions from the media and lawmakers about their data storage and practices, and how they would comply with potential law enforcement requests.
Google, which emailed employees with resources for its own employees amid the ruling, also faced questions about search results in addition to data privacy.
Even before the ruling became official, lawmakers called on Google and the Federal Trade Commission to ensure that data about online consumers seeking care would be protected in the event the landmark ruling is overturned.
In May, a group of 42 Democratic lawmakers urged Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a letter to stop collecting and storing unnecessary or non-aggregated location data that could be used to identify people seeking abortions.
Google’s Friday announcement did not say how it would respond to potential requests from law enforcement. Instead, the company said it would “continue to oppose claims that are overly broad or otherwise legally objectionable.”
Google also said responsibility is shared by many institutions.
“Given that these issues concern healthcare providers, telecommunications companies, banks, technology platforms and many others, we know that protecting privacy cannot depend on individual companies or countries acting individually,” says in the post.
WATCH: Roe v. Wade decision sparks nationwide confusion
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