404 Media: “On a computer screen a map shows the movements of smartphones around the globe. Zooming into an abortion clinic in the south of the United States, the online tool shows more than 700 red dots over the clinic itself, each representing a phone, and by extension, a person. The tool, called Locate X and made by a company called Babel Street, then narrows down to the movements of a specific device which had visited the clinic. This phone started at a residence in Alabama in mid-June. It then went by a Lowe’s Home Improvement store, traveled along a highway, went past a gas station, visited a church, crossed over into Florida, and then stopped at the abortion clinic for approximately two hours. They had only been to the clinic once, according to the data.  The device then headed back, and crossed back over into Alabama. The tool also showed their potential home, based on the high frequency at which the device stopped there. The tool clearly shows this home address on its map interface. In other words, someone had traveled from Alabama, where abortion is illegal after the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, to an abortion clinic in Florida, where abortion is limited but still available early in a pregnancy. Based on the data alone, it is unclear who exactly this person is or what they were doing, whether they were receiving an abortion themselves, assisting someone seeking one, or going to the clinic for another reason. But it would be trivial for U.S. authorities, some of which already have access to this tool, to go one step further and unmask this or other abortion clinic visitors. The demonstration, performed by a group of privacy advocates that gained access to the tool and leaked videos of it to 404 Media and other journalists, shows in the starkest terms yet how Locate X and other tools based on smartphone location data sold to various U.S. government law enforcement agencies, including state entities, could be used to monitor abortion clinic patients. This comes as more states contemplate stricter or outright bans on abortion. Alabama wants to prosecute people who help others get abortions out of state, Idaho and Tennessee have passed “abortion trafficking” laws that have been blocked by courts from going into effect but which anti-abortion politicians want revived, and cities in Texas have considered an unconstitutional law that would ban people from using city roads for traveling to get an abortion. Last month, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton sued to block federal privacy rules that stop investigators from accessing the medical records of people who travel out of the state to seek an abortion…”