Shareholders of Google parent Alphabet Inc. are asking the search giant to take more steps to protect user privacy over reproductive rights and disclose more about its algorithms.
Alphabet said shareholders should vote against those proposals, which were listed Friday in a proxy filing for the company’s annual shareholder meeting on June 2. The board argued in the filing that Alphabet already had strong privacy controls and disclosure policies surrounding its advertising and search practices.
Arjuna Capital, on behalf of Elizabeth Bartle, plans to submit for consideration the proposal on reproductive rights at the meeting. That proposal argued that after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Google left users seeking information on abortion or other reproductive-health services vulnerable to tracking by law enforcement, as more states race to ban abortion.
“As one of the nation’s largest technology companies, these developments could have a significant impact on Alphabet’s subsidiary, Google, which has been described by tech watchdogs as ‘the cornerstone of American policing’ with respect to government digital data requests,” the proposal said.
“Law enforcement data demands may seek evidence of consumer acts concerning their reproductive health that were legal in the state where they occurred, but illegal in the consumer’s state of residence,” the proposal continued. “Although Google pledged to protect abortion-related data, research shows that the Company still retains location search query by default and location history data for certain users.”
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