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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@beehaw.org
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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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[–] 11 points 3 years ago (6 children)

I think the argument is that at 7 months that’s a viable human and it has rights on its own.

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  • [–] 18 points 3 years ago*

    It doesn’t have rights until it slides out of the vagina or cesarean section. Until that moment it’s none of anyone’s business but the mother.

    And it’s not the government or Facebook or any fucking one else’s place to criminalize this, or to presume to have a right to have any say in the matter.

    I’m a male white democrat but I don’t even lean as far left as many fellow liberals. I’m close to left center. Nevertheless, it astounds me how many people put a line where the baby “could” potentially survive. So what? It’s still in the mother’s body it’s still part of her body. And it’s nobody else’s right to have any say about it whatsoever - except arguably a minor vote to the father, a little bit. But ultimately this whole criminalization is not about life at all, but about politics and economics.

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

    That's a separate discussion on its own as for some 1 second old human is one with their own rights. But then in Belarus there is a lot of things that are illegal and we consider normal, like saying your leader is corrupt. Should META comply just because it is local law?

    At the end of the day it seems we just can not trust anything that isn't encrypted.

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  • [–] [M] 17 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Jumping in here to say that I don’t feel like the Technology community is the right place to have the debate on the gestational limits for abortion. Let’s keep the focus on technology please.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago

    That's true but that's the problem with technology where law is involved is always the same, law is made by people and their opinions, gestation limit is just secondary thing here really and I wasn't interested in discussing that (I'm strongly pro-choice but as someone said... "We live in a society").

    Facebook will also open and hand out your private messages in many other cases, I remember this case about drugs and whatnot: https://www.govtech.com/public-safety/warrant-for-encrypted-facebook-messages-causes-privacy-worry.html but I don't know how this specific case ended.

    What is worth to note is at the start they give the justification as fight against cartels, exploiters and terrorists but if that is their concern the law should be pointing out these 3 specific things and not used to catch teenagers smoking weed. And also how words like "encryption" and "security" and "private" turn out to be nothing more than marketing buzzwords.

    Funny how abuse of power by the state makes normal people move to the apps used by "shaddy people" for extra privacy only to get in fact the normal level of privacy a normal person would expect to get.

    I think we should first change the law and using end-to-end encryption is only stopgap measure.

    In Poland Pegasus was simply used by ruling party to hack phones of the people they don't like: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/polish-mayor-targeted-by-pegasus-spyware-media-2023-03-03/

    How you can even defend yourself against this? From thechnological standpoint we can try this or that but encroaching legislative changes will sooner or later push us against the wall. At the end of the day if law allows they will phisically take your device and phisically make you give them access and even if you install killswitch they simply will make it illegal and give you 5 years just for having it on your device.

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

    If someone attached themselves to your body transfusion-like, and used your organs, do you think they have the right to do that against your will if they would die by being detached from your body? I.E do you think the state should have the right to lock you in a cell to prevent you from detaching your transfusion tube from that person?

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

    Generally the logic is that once the fetus has reached viability (i.e. capable of being removed and continuing life without the mother), then acts that result in death of the fetus are no longer necessary nor morally valid. It is reasonable to expect the fetus to be removed from the mother and provided life support at that stage.

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