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.
We need to be clear here. Don’t hate Meta/Facebook for complying with a legal search warrant. That’s the law. Hate Meta/Facebook for having the ability to hand over private chat messages at all. End-to-End Encryption is the only answer. It’s not about trust, it’s about the ability.
End-to-End Encryption is the only answer.
With OpenSource, audited, and user-controlled software.
Any software that could be ordered by a third party (like Meta) to send the E2E keys to the server, while sending all the encrypted messaged through the same server, is not to be trusted.
This would be bigger news had they broken WA E2EE. Indeed, the officials might prefer not to disclose the capability if they had it and this wouldn’t have happened. (Except, maybe, via parallel construction.)
Facebook supports E2E encrypted chats but you have to enable it, similar to Telegram. Whatsapp uses E2EE by default.
That’s the law.
Yeah, I don’t buy that, not when you have the obscene money and power that Meta has. They could have fought it and resisted, but they didn’t. This is the same company that literally just stole a trademark and absolutely nothing meaningful happened to them because of it.
You don’t buy that it’s the law?
not when you have the obscene money and power that Meta has. They could have fought it and resisted,
What you’re saying is because Meta is rich, they don’t have to obey the law?
What you’re saying is because Meta is rich, they don’t have to obey the law?
Anyone who’s rich in America doesn’t have to obey the law. That’s not a matter of opinion. There’s a clear and observable imbalance between the rich and poor in regard to the outcomes experienced in the American justice system.
Yes, that is what is happening. But that’s not what I’m asking. I know there’s imbalance between the rich and the poor in the justice system. What I’m asking is, is that how it should be?
You’ve accepted that as an acceptable thing that rich people/companies don’t have to obey the law, and that rich people/companies obeying the law is a bad thing? Because what you’ve said above is that because Meta is rich, so they shouldn’t obey the law.
Hate american legislative / politics instead? Don’t hate the player, hate the game?
You’re right. e2ee is a good thing.
The elimination of Roe has brought many states back to the stone ages…
For all we know these girl could have been raped by a family member, or other bad actor and the mother was just helping the only way she knew how.
I am sure this was extremely scarring and emotional for the mother and daughter, and now the state wants to charge them for murder…
The baby was aborted at 7 months- it was very close to being a fully formed babby, a far cry from aborting in the first couple months.
Afaik abortion at that stage was already illegal in many areas.
formed babby
it was on the news this mroing
A mother in ar who have kill her too kid.
They should do way instain mother’s
Funny how everyone in this thread knows exactly how healthy that foetus was.
Ah shit my bad I did not realize that from the article! I take part of it back hahah.
Yeah a little bit intense in this case
The state this happened in didn’t change their abortion policy when roe v wade was appealed though.
I’m pro abortion, but not at 28 weeks. A baby can survive at 28 weeks. Not only did they cause an abortion, they then illegally disposed of a dead body.
I’m for abortion in emergencies, such as any time an expectant mother feels like it’s necessary. Women are not mindless incubators and shouldn’t be treated like them under the law.
No one is saying they’re “mindless incubators”, but “I want to fit in my jeans again” isn’t an “emergency” and doesn’t give them the right to take drugs to abort a baby that could survive out in the world at its age.
Just so we’re on the same page here - you feel that a woman should be able to abort a 39 week old baby?
Just so we’re on the same page here - you feel that a woman should be able to abort a 39 week old baby?
I support abortion in all circumstances. The rights of the woman supersede that of the fetus, period.
And yes, when you infringe on a person’s right to abortion, you are relegating them to the status of a mindless incubator rather than a person. I find that much more uncomfortable than aborting an unwanted fetus.
Fuck Meta
This quote should be higher. Everyone defending Meta, Elon, or Google obviously has a financial interest in doing so. These companies and individuals are sub human trash
This is an infuriating story for sure, but I just want to clarify for anybody just seeing it for the first time that it happened in 2022.
I knew it sounded familiar. I remember this.
Honestly though, if anything things have only gotten worse not better.
I get very frustrated with the people who side with the govt here because it was a 7 month foetus. Just because it is 7 months rather than 5 or 6 doesn’t suddenly mean the government should be able to coerce the use of someone’s body as an incubator against their will.
Feels like people just don’t give a shit about bodily autonomy and such :/ nya
I think the argument is that at 7 months that’s a viable human and it has rights on its own.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One of the many, many, many reasons to keep Meta out of the Fediverse if it can be managed.
How do we know that Fediverse will be any different? After all if it is a law and you get a legal subponae, you comply with it.
It probably wouldn’t be.
The thing is, Meta has the money and power to fight against injustices like this, but instead, they’re complicit, and I’d prefer their corrupting influence stay far, far away from the fediverse.
Dude it’s not really called complicit anymore they’re effectively a subsidiary of the government.
I work for an agency that works with victims of crime. State and federal laws allow for privileged, confidential communication. We have had people ask for help via social media. This is very concerning.
I would honestly hope you bring it up to your agency to start offering chat channels that are end to end encrypted and have all history wiped clean after certain period of time.
I shared the article this morning and we have all been discussing this. One option is to request they immediately switch to Whatsapp and delete the FB message. The good part, is that our state coalition is already looking into this.
I’m sure this is completely fine.
Not that I’m cool with this, or that awareness isn’t good, but has there really been no new developments and nothing new to say about this in 11 months? Did they get charged? Convicted? Has anyone else faced this issue since then? Facebook hasn’t had a comment since then?
The daughter plead guilty, scheduled to Jul 20th for sentencing. The mother is going to trial on the 14th. If convicted, she’ll get another sentencing hearing.
This is a tough one. Let’s replace abortion with a crime, robbery? If someone stole your grand pappys rolex and talked about it on Meta, I think most would agree that it was proper. If people talked about assaulting someone, most would agree that it’s proper as well. Add a late term abortion into the conversation, it becomes controversial.
Edit*
Others are correct the tech page isn’t the place to debate medical stuff.
I think if a crime is committed via the law, Facebook should comply. If there wasn’t political component, this wouldn’t even be a conversation.
Stupid to talk about anything on Facebook.
If it had been phone company turning over text messages then I’d be livid. But seriously who fucking trusts Facebook with that kind of thing? After everything they’ve done that’s been proven why would anyone trust them with an iota of private information?
