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Texas’s Flocked-up abortion laws
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of “lo and behold, the dystopian thing that women and activists warned would happen ends up happening”. This time the issue is automated license plate readers (ALPRs), which capture (no prizes for guessing!) license plate data and allow law enforcement to build a picture of where a particular vehicle has been. There’s no opting out of being tracked: if you drive, you should simply assume that these cameras, which are sometimes hidden in objects like traffic cones, are logging your movements. And you should assume that this license plate data can be combined with other surveillance data to paint a very detailed picture of your life. Privacy only exists for our billionaire overlords these days. The rest of us are just data points.
There are obviously plenty of legitimate uses to ALPRs. Their proponents will wax lyrical about how they can help solve carjackings and kidnappings. But, like all technology, they are ripe for abuse. They are particularly ripe for abuse in an increasingly authoritarian US, full of lawmakers who want to control women’s bodies.
Back in 2022, a few months after Roe v Wade was overturned, the Guardian published a piece on ALPRs warning that “an expanding web of license plate readers could be ‘weaponized’ against abortion”. It focused on a company called Flock, one of the big players in this space, which promises a “holistic solution to crime”.
Flock’s technology could be used to “criminalize people seeking reproductive health and further erode people’s ability to move about their daily lives free from being tracked and traced”, one expert told the Guardian at the time. Another civil rights expert warned that Flock, which has stated that it is happy to provide technology to help enact whatever laws have been passed, “illustrates how surveillance isn’t actually about benefiting society or protecting people – it’s about enforcing the political goals of those in power”.
Unfortunately, all these experts have been proved right. This week 404 Media reported that a Texas police officer used Flock to perform a nationwide search of more than 83,000 ALPR cameras while looking for a woman who had had an abortion. Abortion is almost entirely illegal in Texas but law enforcement reportedly looked at cameras in states such as Washington and Illinois where abortion is legal.
Anti-abortion voices love to argue that they’re not trying to control women, they’re trying to protect women. Funnily enough this same talking point came up in this case. Sheriff Adam King of Johnson county, Texas, told 404 Media that the woman had self-administered the abortion “and her family was worried that she was going to bleed to death, and we were trying to find her to get her to a hospital.” He added: “We weren’t trying to block her from leaving the state or whatever to get an abortion. It was about her safety.”
Perhaps this was true in this case. Many of the details are still unclear so it’s hard to tell. But even if this was purely benevolent surveillance, you can certainly see where all this is headed. “This incident is undeniably a harbinger of more AI-enabled reproductive surveillance and investigations to come,” Ashley Emery, senior policy analyst in reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women & Families, told 404 Media. “Especially for women of color who are already over-surveilled and over-policed, the stakes couldn’t be higher.”
“Texas is the land of freedom,” Governor Greg Abbott recently proclaimed. If you’re a woman in Texas, however, “freedom” seems to have quite a strange definition. Not only are you not allowed freedom over your reproductive decisions, a number of Texas city councils (some of which are composed entirely of male lawmakers) have been trying to pass travel bans that would stop Texans from driving to abortion appointments in other states. Abortion bans, attempted travel bans, and a network of surveillance technology that can be used to enforce these bans: this is what “freedom” for women in Texas looks like.
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Women and girls in Sudan’s Darfur region are at near-constant risk of sexual violence
“Sexual violence has become so widespread in Darfur that many people chillingly speak about it as unavoidable,” Médecins Sans Frontières states in a horrifying update on the crisis.
Saudi Arabia’s secretive rehabilitation ‘prisons’ for disobedient women
“While Saudi Arabia celebrates being awarded the Fifa men’s World Cup and meticulously promotes itself on the global stage as reformed, women who have dared to publicly call for more rights and freedoms have faced house arrest, jail and exile,” the Guardian reports. Saudi Arabia, it should be noted, has had a lot of help promoting itself as “reformed” by the US media, which has run numerous puff pieces on Mohammed bin Salman – also known as the “bone saw” prince.
She was watering flowers when she was killed in an airstrike.
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The charred bodies of seven of Dr. Alaa al-Najjar’s 10 children arrived at her hospital. Two others, including a seven-month-old, remain missing, presumably under the rubble. Despite pretending to be outraged about the slaughter in Gaza, the UK has sent its trade envoy to Israel to boost commercial links. Meanwhile US lawmakers are cheering the killing on.
There’s been a decline in mental health among US mothers
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Criminology lecturer turned shoplifter calls herself the ‘UK’s poshest thief’
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Kate Nash releases a feminist pro-trans anthem that shouts out the Guardian
The lyrics include the following: “Kathryn Bromwich from the Guardian states that Trans people make up roughly 0.5% of the UK population and are twice as likely to be victims of crime than cis people.” Nash told Attitude that she came out with the song because of JK Rowling’s anti-trans activism. “I just wanted it to be on record, in music history and in feminist history, for there to be somebody else in culture that is saying that I just don’t believe that’s feminism,” Nash told Attitude.
Sydney Sweeney is selling used bathwater
The Euphoria actor, who has spoken out about being objectified by fans, is now selling soap made with her used bathwater.
Woman says ‘I don’t like cheese’ after winning cheese rolling race
Would you like to see some beatboxing nuns?
Here you go! You’re welcome.
The week in pawtriarchy
Doug the Pug, a canine influencer with millions of followers, has received an honorary degree from the University of New Haven in Connecticut in “Furensic Science”. He’s already got an unofficial dogtorate in cuteness.
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Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
