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Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges (www.theverge.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1874605

A 17-year-old from Nebraska and her mother are facing criminal charges including performing an illegal abortion and concealing a dead body after police obtained the pair’s private chat history from Facebook, court documents published by Motherboard show.

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[–] 29 points 3 years ago (1 child)

They are just complying with the law here. As much as I don't think Meta are great people I'd rather that they follow the law than make their own decisions. Of course we should also consider fixing these laws, but that isn't really Meta's responsibility.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Law enforcement will knock on the doors of Fediverse servers and there will need to be some monetary fund for legal fees.

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  • [–] 30 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    If law enforcement knocks on my door with a valid warrant I'm going to comply. It would be nice to have some legal assistance to help validate the warrant but at the end of the day in this case it was almost certainly valid.

    If this was about a murder rather than abortion people would be applauding Meta for helping catch the murderer. I think what people are actually mad about is the law, and they are using Meta as a scapegoat.

    But at the end of the day E2EE is the best solution here. Don't give private data to others, they can't be trusted because they can be compelled by the law.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    And this is one thing that people don't seem to understand about Lemmy et al. If you post messages (including DM's) on any one host, that message will be duplicated to any federated hosts. In most cases the only encryption would be in transit, so all it takes is for one of those hosts to be in a jurisdiction where the local authorities can seize the data, hackers can infiltrate poorly secured server, etc

    If you are worried about the privacy/security of your data, it's not really any safer here then on Reddit or Facebook etc. It may be more resistant to corporate influence but at the same time a kind citizen running a node is less likely to have money to fight legal action and warrants.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago

    Yes. You really should treat anything you post on Lemmy (or anywhere else that isn't E2E Encrypted) as public.

    This is also why Lemmy recommends against using Lemmy direct messages and recommends Matrix with E2EE instead.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (2 children)

    Just wondering (INAL): if these women would have been using e2ee, could the police not legally require them to let them read it

    Edit: I mean would the women not be required to let the police read the e2ee?

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago

    IANAL but it depends. In the US there is strong protection for the contents of your mind and self-incrimination. So if your keys were locked behind a strong password the legal system wouldn't be able to access it. But if you had no password they would be able to seize the device and read the messages.

    So basically if the messages are inaccessible other than a secret that you know them yes, they wouldn't be forced to reveal it.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago*

    (Also not a Lawyer) I’m not familiar with the laws in Nebraska, but they wouldn’t be able to get the messages from Meta. They would need to get on the devices, but it seemed like the people charged themselves tipped off about using Messenger to the police. The only other way to get E2EE message from a device without consent is with the use of force.

    From the article:

    However, campaigners note that Meta always has to comply with legal requests for data, and that the company can only change this if it stops collecting that data in the first place. In the case of Celeste and Jessica Burgess, this would have meant making end-to-end encryption (E2EE) the default in Facebook Messenger. This would have meant that police would have had to gain access to the pair’s phones directly to read their chats. (E2EE is available in Messenger but has to be toggled on manually. It’s on by default in WhatsApp.)

    (…)

    However, private chat messages are only one component in a whole range of digital evidence that is likely to be used by police to prosecute illegal abortions in the United States. Investigators will be able to request access to many data sources, including digital health records, Google search history, text messages, and phone location data.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    For the murder example, remember Apple being in the news for not providing the FBI access via a backdoor in the OS to the San Bernardino shooter’s phone? There were plenty of people on both sides of that argument saying they should or shouldn’t comply. That’s why it’s essential for E2EE to maintain privacy

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  • [+] -29 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    She was 7 months pregnant. It was a murder.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Single sentence "hot takes" like this help no one. They only serve as dopamine hits for people who agree with your statement already.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    What else is there to add? The baby has been baking for 7 months. If you are okay with aborting babies 7 months into pregnancy there is something seriously fucked up with your head.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Chill, I'm not, but that's not really relevant here.

    People who think it's a fetus and not a baby aren't going to be convinced by you just being upset. If you look at most comments, 7 months vs 1 week is meaningless to anyone who hasn't had a kid.

    Spell it out more if you want any chance whatsoever of getting through to anyone who doesn't already agree with you:

    Fetuses are viable outside the womb at 24 weeks, roughly 5.5 months. This person could have had an abortion legally and safely at any point during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, but instead waited 8 weeks further and did it ad-hoc and unsafely.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    A fetus isn't a person, it was an abortion.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Look, I'm not making a morality judgement here, but this is greatly oversimplifying things. Fetuses are considered generally viable outside the womb at 24 weeks (5.5 months).

    This abortion occurred at 7 months. This could have been a person if labor was induced or a c-section had been performed at the time instead of an abortion. I have a hard time believing that doesn't or shouldn't have an effect on the discussion.

    Hard line, single sentence takes like yours or the comment you were responding to help no one. They offer no room for nuance, for consideration of unique situations, to fit in with the complex reality we all live in. They can't convince anyone on the other side and don't further depth of thought in those in agreement.

    They offer a cheap dopemine hit for people already in agreement with you, further encourage polarization of opinions, and general tribalism. It's useless preaching to the choir that only further entrenches hardline stances and decreases the likelyhood for discussion, compromise, or anything vital to surviving and interacting with others in reality.

    Again, not making a judgement on fetuses, personhood, or abortion one way or another. My partner was born at 6 months and given up for adoption. Conversely I have a close friend who got pregnant from a one night stand nearly a decade ago, decided to keep it despite that being quite possibly the worst choice for her at the time, and her life has been in the shitter since with no signs towards improvement. I see both sides of this.

    I just refuse the idea that anything as complicated as the question of "When does personhood begin?" can be broken down into asinine hot takes by either side.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    The rights of the already birthed person (you know, the one who's body you are trying to police) should have considerably more weight than the rights of an unborn fetus.

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  • [+] -6 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Disagree. No one was hurt here. The fact that the baby could have lived means nothing. The mothers body is her own, and the choice was hers and only hers.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    If the baby is capable of surviving outside of the womb then how is nobody hurt exactly? And she still gave birth to the thing, as it was a still birth. She killed it and then passed it. Literally the only thing she did here was kill the baby, all else is the same.

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