Fitness Trackers Are a Subpoena Away: EFF Finds Only Apple Encrypts Health Data
An Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) investigation reveals that most wearable health device companies lack transparency regarding law enforcement data requests. Apple is currently the only company among those surveyed that provides end-to-end encryption for stored health data.
Why it matters
The lack of legal protection for intimate health data collected by wearables poses significant privacy risks as law enforcement increasingly uses this information for investigations.
The Oura Ring on your finger is logging your body temperature as you sleep. The Garmin on your wrist is recording every GPS coordinate of your morning run. The Whoop band around your forearm is reading your heart rate at 2 a.m. That data is intimate, continuous - and for the roughly 40 percent of Americans who own a consumer wearable health device, almost entirely unprotected by federal law when law enforcement comes asking, according to EFF's July 2026 investigation.
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