A watershed privacy moment in the United States

In July of 2023, a Nebraska court convicted a teenage girl and her mother after the mother assisted her daughter in procuring an illegal abortion. Both had been arrested the previous year in June—the same month that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Though they were charged with crimes, which occurred before the fall of Roe, the way the evidence against them was collected proved more broadly alarming in that moment. Nebraska authorities had procured Facebook chat messages between the two from Meta, messages which described the pills the mother had purchased for her daughter and her instructions for using them.

And so, in a post-Roe United States, a whole swathe of the country woke up to a new—or incredibly heightened—privacy concern: How might their online activity be used against them if they determined they needed to procure an abortion, but the state they live in has banned it?

What’s the big deal? I’ve got nothing to hide!

For many people, online privacy has never proven to be a particularly troubling issue for them. “I’ve got nothing to hide” is a pretty common reaction for many, accompanied by a shrug. But, as with many rights, sometimes we don’t understand the need for privacy until it affects us, personally. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the FTC reported that identity theft in the United States doubled from 2019 to 2020, making privacy issues more relevant to more people than ever. I was a victim of fraud, theft, and impersonation during the pandemic myself. It proved a rather torturous and humbling experience. That spike in identity theft serves as a great reminder that privacy isn’t really about being secretive. It’s about maintaining control over your own information.

As designers, though, we have a particular responsibility. Even if we’re not concerned with privacy issues, personally, we’re not designing for ourselves. If we’re designing with empathy, we’ll consider the needs of people not like…