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As of last Wednesday, the State Department has suspended a gender-affirming identification option on all American passports. According to a memo obtained by NBC News, Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed the State Department to suspend any passport applications seeking to either change a sex marker or requesting an X sex marker. In the memo, Rubio cited an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on January 20, which states that it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Rubios memo to the State Department noted that the executive order specifies government-issued identification documents shall refer to an individuals immutable biological classification as either male or female. Heres what to know about how the new passport rules will impact trans and nonbinary Americans: What is the X gender marker? The Biden administration officially added an X gender marker to passports in April 2022 as an alternative to the standard male and female designations. At the time, the State Department explained that the X was added to ensure that non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming persons would have a gender-affirming option to select on their passport. The X marker came around a year after the Biden administration began allowing transgender Americans to select their own gender on passports without a letter from a doctora policy that was celebrated by queer advocacy groups as a small step toward greater acceptance of trans communities. Now, it seems that the Trump administration is aiming to both roll back the X gender marker and prevent trans Americans from self-selecting the gender listed on their passport. What does this mean for pending and future passport applications? Per the memo sent by Rubio, the State Department has been instructed to suspend pending applications that seek either an “X” gender marker or seek to change their sex marker from that defined in the executive order. Given the contents of Trumps executive order, this wording would seem to mean that trans Americans are currently barred not only from choosing the X option, but also from changing their listed gender within the male/female binary. Fast Company reached out to the State Department for clarification on this point, and will update this story will any new details. The memo noted that future applications under those listed parameters should also be suspended, and added that further guidance for staff would be forthcoming. On X, queer advocates are warning their followers that attempting to change the gender listed on their passport could present major difficulties. PSA: If you are trans, do NOT mail in your passport to attempt to change your gender marker, wrote Ari Drennen, LGBTQ program director at Media Matters for America. The State Department is currently collecting them unchanged and will not give a public timeline for returning them. You could be without a passport indefinitely. Fast Company also requested further information from the State Department on what might happen to suspended passports. What does this mean for existing passports with the X gender marker? In a statement to the publication NOTUS, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified that the new passport rules will not retroactively invalidate passports that have already been issued. However, she added, if individuals with an “X” marker were to renew their passports in future, they just have to use their God-given sex, which was decided at birth. What are experts and trans rights organizations saying about the new mandate? The LGBTQ+ legal advocacy group Lambda Legal helped to secure the first-ever passport with an X gender marker. Early last week, Lambda Legal CEO Kevin Jennings released a statement promising to fight the new passport regulations: Lambda Legal secured the first U.S. passport with an X gender marker for our brave client, Dana Zzyym, and well continue to stand with Dana and all intersex, nonbinary, and transgender people to defend their right to identity documents that accurately identify who they are, and their equal protection rights against targeting and exclusion by their own government, Jennings wrote. ACLU attorney Chase Strangio emphasized in an interview with the publication Them that new passport regulations were always going to be one of the easiest ways for the Trump administration to act on its so-called gender ideology executive order. Strangio added that, just because we are seeing immediate action on this part of the [executive order] does not mean that the rest of the EO is going to be immediately implemented across the government. In response to Trumps overarching executive order, the ACLU also published an article titled, Trump’s Executive Orders Promoting Sex Discrimination, Explained. “For decades, feminist legal scholars and womens rights advocates have opposed efforts to define gender based strictly on biology,” ACLU communications strategist Gillian Branstetter writes. “Recent state laws that use these definitions to discriminate against transgender people have resulted in invasive and traumatizing efforts to determine who counts as a man or as a woman, targeting youth who are even suspected of being transgender because they do not conform to sex stereotypes.” The order, Branstetter continued, “likewise ignores the existence of intersex people and others with variations in sex characteristics beyond the overly-simplistic definitions Trump endorsed.
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DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial intelligence company whose technology has rattled both Silicon Valley and Wall Street, said Monday it would temporarily limit new user registrations due to “large-scale malicious attacks.” Existing users can log in as usual, it added in an incident report on its website. The attack coincides with the company’s rapid success. Its latest model appears to put it alongside peers like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, but at, what it says, a much lower price point. Founded in 2023, DeepSeek introduced its specialized model, R1, last week. Deepseek R1 is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs Ive ever seen, Trump advisor and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said in a post on X. DeepSeek’s mobile phone app hit No. 1 on the Apple App store’s free app list on Monday, surpassing ChatGPT. That success also stoked investor fears and led to a deep tech selloff Monday. Shares of Nvidia, which designs chips for major AI firms, were down more than 15% in midday trading Monday.
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Long before Roe v. Wade was overturned, reproductive justice advocates had been sounding the alarm about the increasing number of women subjected to criminal investigation for suspected abortion, stillbirth, or miscarriage. These cases were often initiated by healthcare providers and bolstered by state laws used to prosecute women for having abortions. Newer laws, however, incentivize people outside of healthcare, including friends and family members, to report someone they suspect of having an abortion or helping someone else with an abortion. Coupled with the unprecedented access that authorities now have to digital information, these laws create new avenues for prosecution. In the post-Roe era, people capable of pregnancy face growing threats. Healthcare providers, family, friends, information on personal devices, and virtually any activity that can be observed or recorded pose privacy risks that can lead to prosecution. I study online privacy. This vast scope for potential surveillance and privacy intrusion is a key focus of the research my colleagues and I conduct. In a recent paper, we surveyed reproductive healthcare providers about their privacy and security practices. We used the results to map the path of a hypothetical Jane to illustrate how people can identify privacy risks in their own situations. This choose-your-adventure approach helps readers navigate the potential legal, digital, and personal challenges involved in accessing reproductive healthcareand reveals the grim stakes. Privacy protections Historically, healthcare providers who opposed abortion have been the primary sources for reporting patients suspected of seeking abortions. While they remain a significant threat, additional risks to patient privacy have emerged. For example, state laws increasingly compel providers to hand over medical records. This circumvents new Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act protections meant to shield protected reproductive health information from use in investigations when people seek abortions in states where the procedure is legal. Authorities might also be able to access records across state lines where abortion is legalfor example, when different electronic health record systems can share data. It is also possible that, in the future, electronic health records could be seized across state lines. Last year, in a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 19 state attorneys general protested the new federal data privacy rules. Texas followed up with a lawsuit against the Biden administration over the rule. Even so-called shield laws adopted by some states meant to protect people seeking abortions from record seizures have loopholes. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services added a privacy rule to protect reproductive health data. Privacy vulnerabilities Despite some protections offered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, additional gaps in safeguarding reproductive health information persist. Data captured outside medical portals, such as from apps or pharmacy transactions, often falls outside the federal laws scope. Its important to note that apps that capture consumer reproductive health data, like period trackers, do not necessarily pose a greater risk than informants. But the dystopian potential of governments reaching into personal intimate data, and the simplicity of the remedydeleting an appdraw disproportionate attention. While its not entirely clear whether period trackers are definitively good or bad from a digital privacy perspective, they do offer potential benefits, such as helping people prevent unwanted pregnancies and thus avoid prosecution. Once reported to authorities, activities conducted on personal devicesbrowsing history, purchases, location data, and messages with friends or familycan become evidence in prosecutions. Authorities have shown a willingness to subpoena records from social media platforms, and they frequently access personal devices. Additionally, laws that incentivize family, friends, and partners to report suspected abortions create a threat of surveillance from intimate associates. These dynamics are exacerbated by new laws that criminalize trafficking minorstransporting them across state linesfor abortion services. Providers role protecting privacy In our research, my colleagues and I found that reproductive healthcare providers can play a critical role in guiding patients on adopting privacy strategies and helping them navigate an increasingly complex landscape of privacy threats. Clinics are trusted spaces for affordable, progressive care that often shield patients from judgment or harm. Based on our interviews with reproductive healthcare providers, the protocols they use to manage communications, billing, and other aspects of patient interactions have proved effective at protecting privacy, especially for vulnerable populations like minors or people with abusive partners. Hoever, people seeking abortions face more nuanced threats. Providers tend to overlook digital risks and threats of prosecution tied to patients devices and records. This gap in awareness leaves patients without critical guidance for protecting their privacy. Our initial research conducted in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision revealed that people capable of pregnancy express profound concerns about reproductive privacy, yet often feel inadequately prepared to navigate its complexities. Findings from our forthcoming research suggest that many patients take extensive precautions, yet its not clear how effectively they can prioritize their digital strategies. At the same time, these people place significant trust in their reproductive healthcare providers, especially because they often deem existing guidance on privacy untrustworthy or insufficient. Although providers may currently be less attuned to the newer privacy risks, they could play a crucial role in addressing them. By incorporating digital privacy and threat modeling into their care, providers can help patients navigate a complex landscape of threats in an environment of pervasive surveillance. Nora McDonald is assistant professor of information technology at George Mason University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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