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.
This is an interesting point. If my server is hosted in California where abortion is legal, and some police dept from Alabama wants access to my message database, can I tell them to pound sand?
IIUC no. All of the US and some allied countries respect court orders. In general evidence can be collected worldwide as long as the crime was committed where it is a crime.
But IANAL.
Generally, if in the same country you’d have to comply. As another example though: If your server was in Canada, and some department in Alabama wanted your data, you could tell them to pound sand. Though they may put some sort of warrant out for you for failure to comply (doesn’t matter though if you never go there)