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Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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They had the agency to take care of this for 20 damn weeks into the pregnancy where they were at 100% legally, even disregarding the options we all have to prevent conception in the first place.
On top of that, fetuses are viable outside the womb at 24 weeks, assuming the pregnant woman doesn't kill it at week 28 using medicine as this one did. I can't help but feel that makes 24 weeks a pretty important deadline for when this sort of choice is more than just about the pregnant woman.
I think that misses the point of this story. The fact is, the government has complete access to your digital communications.
Now let's run this scenario in a state with a zero abortion policy
That's a massive oversimplification of things. Intentionally removing nuance doesn't help people.
Even if the difference is largely academic, the police needed a warrant to get this info from Facebook. This info was not directly government owned and directly available to law enforcement.
Proper opsec and infosec is all about controlling for the threat level of your adversary. If you have nation state level adversaries then yes, you're screwed by simple merit of doing things online where the US government has major internet relays tapped at the source. That isn't the case here and black and white statements just muddy the waters and make proper security feel impossible to the average person. Don't help the powers that be to make you and others feel helpless. That helps no one.
The threat level here was minor. They told the police where to look for evidence.
Beyond that, I'm not personally going to continue into the rabbit hole of the current hellscape post the godawful repeal of Roe v Wade. That situation is absolutely fucked.
As always, don't talk with police, and don't discuss illegal activity unencrypted or connected to your real life identity.
You’re right, and there’s two things going on here, one group of people is debating the morality of what these people did in the first place, but the other take is platform compliance with law enforcement and more generally the government’s ability to access your data.
You’re contrasting that a warrant should not really be a concern compared with the government’s ability to perform truly invasive surveillance potentially without any warrant.
I don’t know that you really disagree with person you’re replying to, though. Yeah, if people are doing something their government classifies as illegal, talking about it on unencrypted spaces where it’s subject to a warrant is dumb.
Very few people would be alarmed when Facebook turns over data related to human traffickers. Some would. But for those who are focused on morality, would it matter if the method was, say, the NSA cracking encryption without a warrant? Or tapping communications through an encryption back door?They’d probably be more worried about admitting the evidence than whether the method should be allowed.
It’s certainly worth considering that if governments are criminalizing behavior people believe ought not to be a crime, they need to be more aware that communication security is a thing and there are methods and tools to help with that, and powers the government have to thwart it. But who the government is going after will make people care about the issue differently.
Thinking about hypotheticals where this plays out in other scenarios doesn’t seem like an oversimplification, it’s a valid consideration, at least for public awareness.
In the USA there's due process required for authorities to gain access to your private data, not true in many countries.
A person has to assume anything put out there over the internet or phone network can be inspected under criminal investigation. One has to be a dumb ass not to realize that. I've even seen stories of criminals making social media posts showing off their robbery loot. Also the style of wearing their pants falling down. Make sure to trip and fall when running from the cops. Good thing criminals make it easy for police.
Yeah, always invoke your right to remain silent. I watch a lot of crime shows, actually my wife is more into it than me so I get roped into watching them. It baffles me how criminals will sit there and let police interrogate them until they confess. Maybe it's because they think they can talk their way out of it, but then why confess. As a US citizen you can shut down an interview with police any time you want. But it's good suspects are stupid like that, makes it easy for police. They have a tough job dealing with all the knuckleheads out there.
This is only the case when the data is being obtained by traditional means. As we've seen recently, authorities buying data from data brokers completely circumvents any sense of due process on a technicality.
Oh absolutely. Even if you are entirely innocent, the police use psycological manipulation as routine part of interrogation. They'd sometimes rather you get confused as to whether you actually may have done something wrong, and eventually admit to something you didn't do, than to let you go as innocent. There is absolutely nothing good that can come out of "cooperating" (such a loaded and innacurate word in this context), whether you're innocent or guilty.
Yes you can make yourself a prime suspect by talking too much, even if you're completely innocent. If you don't have a solid alibi and you "know too much" you're it.
I think there used to be a lot more railroading of innocent suspects back in the day, but with modern advances in forensic technology that happens greatly less. Still happens though. You know that cliché about every convict saying he's innocent. After the stuff I've seen watching these crime documentaries for years, I start to think maybe half of them are telling the truth.