SafeGraph: Data Mining and Surveillance of Reproductive Health

The Bay Area has a reputation for being a hotbed of progressive ideology, and leftist politics. The Bay Area is associated with the counter-culture. However, there has been a counter-counter-culture that is funded by venture capitalists, pouring their obscene wealth into companies who have been building the silicon framework for their techno-fascist visions.

As reported by Vice and other outlets, a relatively little known company called SafeGraph had gathered the cellphone geo-location metadata of people who associated with reproductive health clinics all across the country. In their San Francisco offices at 182 Howard Street (they have since moved to Denver Colorado), tech employees were compiling the movements of doctors, support staff, patients, and other visitors to these clinics. This data was packaged for sale.

SafeGraph claims the data was anonymized, and therefore specifics persons could not be identified. However, the spacial metadata tracked cellphones from clinics to places of employment and residential areas. Using the collected data points, a significant percentage of the data could, with time and effort, be linked to specific persons with a substantial degree of accuracy.

People might be shocked to learn that Safegraph's CEO Auren Hoffman was educated at UC Berkeley, graduating in the late 1990s. It seems incongruous with the university's reputation. However, those who are familiar with the misogynistic conservative culture within the Bay Area tech community, would not be surprised that a Cal EECS graduate would by midlife have a compiled the cellphone metadata of persons who work at or have visited reproductive health clinics.

Auren Hoffman has not been shy about his friendship with Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist who believes that Democracy is not compatible with contemporary society. Hoffman, who is about 6 years younger than Thiel, has promoted Thiel's book 'Zero to One'. (https://www.bookschatter.com/books/auren-hoffman) Thiel made his wealth in Silicon Valley, but has recently relocated to Florida to be closer to Donald Trump's sphere of influence. Coordinating with far-right politicians, Thiel put $25million of his own money into GOP campaigns for the 2022 midterms and November election. Thiel has been financially supporting the DarkMAGA movement, an combination of Dark Enlightenment philosophy and Donald Trump's MAGA politics. Included in this agenda is the end of abortion access in the United States. One of the politicians Thiel has financed, is Blake Masters, another former Bay Area venture capitalist who co-wrote 'Zero to One'. Part of Masters' platform is to federally ban abortion. Thiel has been a financial backer of SafeGraph, and organized venture capitalists to invest $45million into the company last year.

The company that has the metadata of people who provide abortion advice and/or services --- and their patients --- is directly linked to the politicians who want to outlaw such services. Ultra-wealthy, Dark Enlightment venture capitalists are the middlemen between the brokerage of this data, and the politicians who are seeking to criminalize abortion. Some key players in the ultra-conservative agenda were educated in UC Berkeley and Stanford, were part of the Silicon Valley scene and San Francisco startup techboom. Companies like Peter Thiel's Palantir (https://www.projectpm.wiki/index.php?title=Palantir) and Auren Hoffman's SafeGraph were developed in the "Lefty" Bay Area, but not for progressive purposes.