Cycle-Tracking Apps and Data Privacy in the Post-Roe Climate

This past summer, the United States Supreme Court passed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and explicitly overturned the precedential abortion frameworks set forth in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. Under Dobbs, abortion is not a right protected by the United States Constitution and states are therefore able to regulate abortion legality and access within their borders.

In addition to impassioning women’s rights advocates across the United States and bringing additional attention to the world of women’s healthcare as a whole, Dobbs has left many attorneys in apprehension as they wait to see how the decision will affect traditional privacy law frameworks, considering Roe v. Wade and Casey were both based on finding a place for abortion within the privacy protections of the Constitution.

While privacy attorneys wait to understand this potentially broad restructuring of existing law, consumers have begun to consider how their current data habits and application usages may be affected by the Dobbs decision. In particular, apps that track menstrual and ovulation cycles have become a topic of important discussion.

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Give Attention to Concerns About Privacy Close to Home, Author Suggests

Yes, the furor over data from millions of Facebook users being used for political purposes is important. But just driving down the street raises important privacy issues also. And whether you can make sense of the Facebook issues, you could and probably should give attention to high-tech monitoring of your daily life.

That was the thrust of an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program Thursday in Eckstein Hall featuring Cyrus Farivar, author of a new book, Habeas Data: Privacy vs. the Rise of Surveillance Tech. Farivar is also a regular contributor to Ars Technica, which covers news related to technology.

Gousha introduced Farivar by saying that talking about technology and privacy is “a conversation that is perfect for our times.” In the week when great attention focused on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying at length before congressional committees, Farivar agreed.

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Changes to Wisconsin’s CCAP Shortens the Time that Some Records are Online

This semester in Professor Lisa Mazzie’s Advanced Legal Writing: Writing for Law Practice seminar, students are required to write one blog post on a law- or law school-related topic of their choice. Writing blog posts as a lawyer is a great way to practice writing skills, and to do so in a way that allows the writer a little more freedom to showcase his or her own voice, and—eventually for these students—a great way to maintain visibility as a legal professional. Here is one of those blog posts, this one written by 2L Grace Gall.

“How do you spell their last name?”—That is often the question my mother used to ask me when I was a kid and asked to spend the night at a new friend’s house. Like many Wisconsin parents or employers, my mother often would use the public record cite called CCAP to search criminal and civil records of individuals. As a child, I simply got used to my mother’s question and as I grew older and started working in the legal field myself, I became more and more acquainted with CCAP. Recently this year, I heard about changes being made to the CCAP record system. The Director of State Courts voted in March of this year to change the time limits for dismissed or acquitted cases to have them removed from the public record site after two years from the final order.

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