We want Texans to know their rights

206

aamarcheschi about 21 hours ago 67 commentsRead Article on eff.org

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Discussion (67 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

pton_xd•about 21 hours ago

"Last May, EFF reported that a sheriff’s office in Texas searched data from more than 83,000 automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras to track down a woman suspected of self-managing an abortion."

These people really have nothing better to do?

monksy•about 20 hours ago

I've got distant family members in law enforcement. They brag about the reach of their equipment to surveil. Yes, they enjoy being overly suspicious.

estearum•about 17 hours ago

Suspicious? The word is abusive. Of the law, of their uniform, of their fellow citizens.

jkahrs595•about 21 hours ago

They literally think they are doing the work of some divine creator. They have plenty of time to ruin the lives of other people because they think it saves their own.

estearum•about 6 hours ago

Really insightful comment. Couldn't agree more.

And many of these people really do need their Good Works on the force to do the saving, because God knows what they do to their wives and kids back home.

cucumber3732842•about 20 hours ago

>These people really have nothing better to do?

Making examples out of some number of unlucky peasants over otherwise trivial deviance that harms nearly nobody is one of the key jobs of men at arms.

Now, they may spend more time on "real crime" or collecting taxes by other names, but make no mistake this sort of stuff is stuff they (as an agency) must do if they are to properly serve the interests of their master.

paytonjjones•about 18 hours ago

> from more than 83,000 automated license plate reader

This feels purposefully misleading. Did they manually watch hours and hours of footage, or is this the equivalent of "I searched an online corpus of hundreds of millions of documents" (I Googled it)

cosmicgadget•about 17 hours ago

Doesn't feel misleading at all, "searched data from" is pretty much your "I Googled it" without branding.

The inclusion of 83,000 seems more intended to quantify the scope of the surveillance accessible to these sheriffs.

morkalork•about 16 hours ago

Sure, call it that. They Googled it on their comperensive, nation-wide, unlimited access, fully indexed and integrated surveillance network (with 83,000 edge nodes)

godwinson__4-8•about 20 hours ago

There is no rest for the wicked.

nine_k•about 20 hours ago

They have a law to enforce. The law enforcement activity is as good as the law :(

BigTTYGothGF•about 19 hours ago

Every minute spent tracking down a lady getting an abortion is a minute not spent tracking down a murderer or a rapist or similar.

andsoitis•about 19 hours ago

> getting an abortion is a minute not spent tracking down a murderer

but see, there are people who believe abortion is murder, and perhaps one of the worst forms of murder because of its victim’s extreme innocence since it has not caused any harm in this world.

ai_critic•about 19 hours ago

(amazing username.)

You assume that a lady getting an abortion is not committing murder--these folks clearly think she is.

(We don't need to argue about whether it is in fact murder, or whether if it is that the murder is justified or not--just understand that there are people that believe differently, and apparently they're willing to expend police resources on it.)

nine_k•about 15 hours ago

As I said, the law is the problem. Since the law demands to track and investigate ladies suspected of destruction of embryos inside their own bodies, the police's direct job is to do just that, even to the detriment of other activities.

The police themselves may consider it stupid and counterproductive, but their opinion does not count until the next elections.

8note•about 18 hours ago

within the US context, the government isnt allowed to just have any law it wants, and it isnt allowed yo enforce laws that breach individual rights

JoshTriplett•about 20 hours ago

"I was just enforcing the law" is no better than "I was just following orders".

dodger-dog•about 19 hours ago

Seems like sheriff was searching for missing person. Was concern about her welfare and mental health, thus the use of the cameras. You can buy Mifepristone at CVS, Target, Walgreen's and the like. I don't think they were trying to track which CVS she was going to.

The article is misleading, but that should never get in the way of righteous rage that helps a person form identity and purpose in an otherwise existential and empty vacuum of meaning.

fhdkweig•about 19 hours ago

The above article is https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/07/we-want-texans-know-th... .

That article links to https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-te... which links to https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flock-safety-and-texas...

The second article states what you are saying, but the third article says that the information given in the second article was a lie.

dodger-dog•about 18 hours ago

They lie to you constantly and they know it. You are being rage-baited to farm you votes, clicks, views, and likes:

According to internal Johnson County Sheriff's Office files released under the Texas Public Information Act, the entire "self-administered abortion" narrative was fabricated by a violent felon:

https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/crime/article31451... https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/feb/04/eastern-wa-flo...

The Ex-Girlfriend's Account: The woman later informed investigators that she had actually suffered a natural miscarriage after her ex-boyfriend physically assaulted her.

The False Fetus Evidence: The ex-boyfriend—seeking to deflect blame for the assault—collected a blood clot from the miscarriage, presented it to the police, and lied by claiming his ex-girlfriend had intentionally taken illegal abortion pills to end a pregnancy.

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-police-cameras-us...

The Intent of the Search: The police reports later clarified that while the deputy typed "had an abortion" into the Flock Safety tracking system, they were actually attempting to locate the woman and her children because she was fleeing from this domestic violence situation.

Because the initial report was based on a malicious and fabricated claim by an abuser, an official clinical timeline of the pregnancy was never established or verified in the official "death investigation" file.

belZaah•about 14 hours ago

We had a lady down here in Estonia working for police. She used their extensive databases for non-work related reasons and got, very publicly, fired. She decided to appeal and lost. Through all levels of court up to the EU one. So for years, there would be a newspaper headline “remember that person who invaded your privacy? Still guilty”. Could not wish for a more impactful public execution.

belviewreview•about 17 hours ago

One reason the government surveillance is important is I've read there is a growing movement among the right-to-lifers to hold women who abort criminally liable.

Trasmatta•about 21 hours ago

It's no longer safe to even use a period tracking app in many US states now. The women I know are all cautioning each other to go back to pen and paper, and ditch anything app based.

Cider9986•about 19 hours ago

Correct and you shouldn't use any health apps that don't take your privacy seriously.

Here are privacy respecting ones: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/health-and-wellness/#menstr...

jonhohle•about 19 hours ago

Apple offers this in Health and it stays on device or encrypted in backups. I’m not sure why anyone would want this in the cloud.

jmclnx•about 21 hours ago

Most of us here knows ways around this, but many people are not educated.

One method is get off your smart phone and boot tails and do the searches there. Maybe that is something EFF can make known. Like list trusted onion sites that have information where women can go and get help.

dodger-dog•about 19 hours ago

You boot tails to track your period?

stackghost•about 16 hours ago

If rights can be capriciously and arbitrarily curtailed by armed agents of the state while effete judges yeet sternly-worded letters into the void, then those "rights" are worth about as much as the USA's signature on an international treaty. Which is to say, nothing.

Joker_vD•about 12 hours ago

I don't know if you've ever read any Bill/Declaration of Rights, but they all have "this right shall not be violated unless the law allows it" provisions. Many of them even have "oh, and requiring state licensing to exercise such right is not violating it" provisions (see e.g. "This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises" in Article 10 of ECHR).

impish9208•about 7 hours ago

> …while effete judges yeet sternly-worded letters into the void…

You, sir, have a way with words.

stackghost•about 2 hours ago

In going to choose to take this as a compliment :)

throwawalien•about 21 hours ago

wild that it took abortion for people to notice. the same cameras have been feeding ICE lookups across 5,000+ towns, quietly, for the last couple years

t-writescode•about 20 hours ago

Education is often best achieved through spaced repetition and cross-discipline integration, especially with the intent of connecting something with someone’s personal life to sink it deeper.

A single news article ever, or 1000 news articles that don’t impact “you specifically” are less effective than measured repetition across multiple fronts.