The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) would like your opinion on how it should regulate facial recognition. The agency issued draft rules on 8 August with a one-month comment period. The rules follow several years of court battles over private companies’ widespread use of the technology: Public toilets and zoos have sparked debate and lawsuits over their use of facial-recognition technology.

However, the main driver of the tech so far may be public security forces, according to recent studies. And even under the new rules, security forces will not need permission to identify individuals with facial recognition. Indeed, while people may find it humorous or galling when a toilet paper dispenser requires facial recognition, a police force’s use of facial recognition to identify protestors and quell local protests is a more weighty and controversial matter.

The wheels of justice may turn slowly, but tech ramifications sometimes turn around on a shorter timetable. 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 overruling of its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision—alongside subsequent state-level prosecutions for abortions—provoked a proprivacy backlash now wending its way through administrations and legislatures. At the same time, though, there may be a catch. Between industry lobbying and legislative mistakes, some of the proposed or recent rules may leave room for data brokers to still profit and for buyers to still continue obtaining people’s locations without explicit consent.

At the moment, unlike in the early 1970s when the previous Supreme Court precedent was set, broad-sweeping digital tool kits are widely available. In states tightening their abortion laws and seeking to prosecute women seeking or obtaining abortions in defiance of those laws, prosecutors have access to mobile-phone location histories—currently available on the open market throughout the United States.

“I think there is increased anxiety that is being spurred in part by the overruling of Roe v. Wade,” says Alex Marthews, national chair of Restore the Fourth, a civil-society organization in Boston. “There is anxiety about residents’ browser and location information being subject to information requests in states that have essentially outlawed abortion,” he says.