The IDH’s Current Campaign

The Institute for Digital Humanity is a bipartisan, student-run, digital ethics organization started by Dr. Aaron McKain and some North Central University students back in 2019. This organization has done incredible things for the city of Minneapolis, such as leading the way in banning racial recognition technology in our city which has historically wrongly accused minorities of crimes they never committed. 

Currently, Dr. McKain and his students are seeking to launch a new campaign for the community of Minneapolis and beyond. This campaign aims to bring about awareness to a new problem concerning our personal and intimate medical data. Let’s dig in! 

The Dobbs decision, which supports the right to life for children in the womb and has revoked the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, 49 years after its institution. The Roe supreme court decision has led to the tragic deaths of approximately 63,459,781 children since 1973 (National Right to Life) according to the National Right to Life organization. 

The Dobbs decision seeks to protect life and empowers states to pass laws concerning abortion. However, the IDH has now seen that this decision, rather than just protecting life in the womb, has resulted in the unfortunate revoking of our medical data privacy.

Under the banner of the U.S. Constitution and the 9th amendment, we previously had the protection and right to medical data privacy. Since the Dobbs decision has revoked all of Roe without re-instituting our medical data privacy we have seen a wave of U.S. Citizen’s medical data no longer be protected. Such as, period tracking apps gleaning data from their users and selling it to third party data brokers and advertisers (The Guardian). 

The IDH is working to build up a coalition of people on the right and left side of the political aisle who will work together to fight for our right to medical data privacy and it has been an honor to be a part of it. Together we can protect life in the womb all-the-while protecting our right to medical data privacy. 

I would encourage you to learn more about the IDH, its mission, and its accomplishments on the IDH website. The Northerner website has past articles we have done on the IDH you can also take a look at!