(Welcome to the new subscribers – come for the nature, stay for the rest!)

Want to come on a hike with me? Follow along, explore the beauty of the Lacamas Heritage Trail!

At least that’s what I thought two weeks ago when we still had night frosts and the mornings were cold, with brilliant light. All long shades, blues and golds, a balm for the eyes.

Some source – PDX Monthly or The Mercury or some such – had recommended the hike as an easy start to hiking season. Located in WA, some 40 minutes north by car, it’s not exactly around the corner but I thought, give it a try!

As the photographs will show you, looking on one side of the trail, there’s plenty of beauty to see. The path winds along a small lake through some old growth forest, including Madrona trees, and occasional glimpses of Mt. Hood on a cloud-free day.

What they don’t tell you: on the other side of the trail, you pass right by a golf course, plenty of condos and then McMansion after McMansion overlooking the water, with fences and signs for private property, both sheltering the property owners and their access to private docks for water sports. I don’t call that a hike. The seven miles (it’s a there and back) really are a stroll through suburbia on steroids, although a nice one if you live close by and want your daily exercise. Which countless people did, so that it was more like a group walking event. Not my idea of a day in nature. (Note, though, the path was so groomed that it is really wheelchair accessible and easy for people with limitations on walking, a big plus.)

The whole concept of what we see and what we don’t, or what we don’t know if the telling is in the fine print or there’s no telling at all, was on my mind this week for a number of reasons.

Take data protection, for example.

In general, we have little protection against the abuse of private data. Just last months, three state A.G.s brought a lawsuit against Google that claims the company deceived customers into giving up sensitive data. While customers were told they could avoid location trackers by choosing the right account setting, their data were nonetheless syphoned through a backdoor. In addition, rules favoring the company are often hidden in legalistic language that no-one bothers to read, or provided with opt-out options for notice and consent that are often obscured enough that the average consumer doesn’t have a clue.

I don’t know if you use a health app, for instance, one of those things that track fitness, nutrition, sleep and other health-related metrics. According to a Gallup poll conducted 2 years ago, in the United States about one in five women between the ages of 18 and 49 currently use them. At this point the numbers might even be higher. Some of the most widely used tools are apps that track your menstrual cycle – period trackers like Flo or Clue, which have 50 million and 10 million downloads respectively. Apple has its own cycle tracking for the iPhone and the Apple Watch.

The advantages of these tracking systems are obvious. You can track fertility if you want to get pregnant, you are warned about missed periods, you might discover patterns to be discussed with your doctor, and so on.

What they don’t tell you, though, is that there are huge red flags regarding your privacy. Generally, and this might surprise you, consumer health apps do NOT have to comply with a federal privacy law called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, which specifically covers patient data collected by and shared among doctors, hospitals, labs and health insurers in the U.S. Europe, by the way, is way ahead of the game, they have stricter controls. (Ref.)

Many of these apps tell you, indeed, promise you, that your personal data will be protected. Yet the Federal Trade Commission has revealed how many of the data collected by these firms are nonetheless illegally shared with third parties. Once received by Facebook or Google, these data are used to send specifically targeted ads to you. Pregnant? Buy maternity clothes! Oily skin around your period? Buy this pimple cream!

Ok, maybe being showered with cringe-inducing ads is the price you’re willing to pay for having the practical advantages of health apps. What about this, though? In 2019 the state of Missouri monitored the Planned Parenthood health apps, looking at women’s menstrual cycle to identify those who had (failed) abortions. In a world of changing laws, data might very well be used for surveillance of criminalized behavior. Reproductive surveillance is theoretically and practically as possible as contact tracing or any other set of data used by agencies that you never dreamt would get their hands on your information.

And just yesterday we learned, that women’s most personal data, their DNA, collected to help solve a case when they were the victim of a rape crime, has been used, without any information or permission, to identify them if there is suspicion that they themselves were involved in a crime at some point.

San Francisco’s DA Chesa Boudin made it clear that if DNA from a rape kit was used without consent for purposes other than investigating the underlying rape case, it may be a violation of constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures as well as California’s Victims’ Bill of Rights. As of now, nobody has a clue how often and how long this has been going on.

Rape is one of the most underreported crimes of all. Women are hesitant to come forward for numerous, justified reasons, shame, vile treatment in trials, dreaded accusations of being a liar if the defendant is not convicted, among them. If you add to that the possibility that the preservation of your DNA opens you to arrest in an unrelated situation, it functions as a huge deterrent to reporting and cooperating with law enforcement.

It really is no longer just about what they don’t tell you, or in such small print that it is easily overlooked. We have to decide, fully aware that data might be illegally distributed or analyzed, if we really want to share them at all. Reverse from a what they don’t tell you to a determined: What I won’t tell you!

Music today are the energizing four seasons by Piazzolla – getting ready for spring hikes on this end!