this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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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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[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 143 points 1 year ago (5 children)

"Why should I care about my privacy? I don't do anything illegal."

Hmm? Do we now acknowledge that laws and public perceptions of your actions can change with time, and that you may one day become a "criminal" for continuing behaviors that were once legal?

To preempt the "but it should just be legal" whataboutists: Of course it should just be legal, but "criminal charges" suggests that it isn't, and privacy helps you not get caught. Furthermore, this issue contains but is not limited to abortion. It's time that "normal" people wake the fuck up and get on board with privacy rights.

[–] sparemethewearysigh@lemmy.world 53 points 1 year ago (4 children)

This is exactly the point I’ve made to friends and family. They complain I’m not on social media like they are and it makes it more difficult to connect with me on things, but I refuse. I will not use services that blatantly disrespect my privacy.

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Same, They treat me like some tinfoil hat conspiracist because I refuse to sign up for social media.

and all the links to news stories showing how these companies abuse that information, like in the above news story, are met with handwaves and eye rolls.. Cause they wont care or listen until the leopard eats their face.

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[–] TheEllimist@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Laws are such that everyone breaks at least one every single day, which allows for elselective enforcement.

[–] Justice@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Pretty much true. Probably people don’t even consider/realize how many times daily they violate copyrights laws which Congress has empowered the FBI with the absolute discretion and legal justification to pursue anyone for at any time violating some section of the DMCA or other laws which can result in absolutely life destroying penalties. Now of course the FBI doesn’t often pursue individuals for piracy or whatever (they had a stint of doing so in the early 2000s but I think the insanely bad PR + 9/11 distracted them away), but they could. And anyone who has ever skimmed the methods of how the FBI operates just imagine “legalized mafia.” Not more moral, and in a lot of ways worse. If they suspect you or X crime (doesn’t actually matter what it is, “real crime or bullshit crime”) they can lean on your ass with the built-in “well, we already know from your phone and harddrive you had 25 pirated movies and software. We could just charge you with that if you don’t sign this document admitting to [crime some agent wants on his record].” It’s just classic extortion type bullshit. Everyone is a criminal so we can grab anyone for almost any thing “legally” at any time and make them admit to anything we want. It’s insanely fucked up on a billion levels. (And don’t grt hung up on the piracy hypothetical, it can be anything like drug possession for personal use that they’ll easily call “intent to distribute.” Yes, even weed.)

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[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 year ago

Do we now acknowledge that laws and public perceptions of your actions can change with time, and that you may one day become a “criminal” for continuing behaviors that were once legal?

I've been making this argument for years. I know I'll be on a list if my country slips into fascism, as it appears to be hell-bent on achieving during my lifetime.

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[–] animist@lemmy.one 122 points 1 year ago (9 children)

For the love of gods everyone please delete FB now

[–] irlimba@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Wish I could. My family uses messenger :(

[–] Confused_Emus@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago (5 children)

So does mine, I deleted it anyway. You've got their phone numbers for texting and calling.

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[–] animist@lemmy.one 12 points 1 year ago

Lol i told my family and friends if they want to talk to me they have to install signal. Those that want to talk to me did and those that don't didn't. Problem solved.

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[–] twentyfumble@lemmy.world 73 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I don't particularly like Facebook but..

If a country makes it legal to criminally prosecute girls who seek an abortion, and the same country makes it legal to allow police enforcement to demand tech companies to handover their data, maybe the problem is the country and its laws, more than Facebook.

[–] reliv3@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's complicated. Yes, the country is going to shit, but it is also due to meta's "Big brother-like" data collection in the name of profit margins.

As mentioned in the article, Facebook could remove itself from this problem by not collecting data that could possibly incriminate people. The reason why they were able to hand over the data is because they were collecting their private messages.

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[–] frumpyfries@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You're not wrong, but Facebook made no effort to fight the issue and simply handed over data they never should have.

[–] Taokan@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I really don't blame Facebook for not jumping into the abortion debate and martyring themselves. If people don't like the abortion law, or the law that compels facebook to give this information to law enforcement, they need to make that known by voting for representatives that feel the same. Facebook taking a fat lawsuit to the face isn't what's going to change things there - it's women realizing it could happen to them, it's men realizing it could happen to their wife/girlfriend/daughter.

[–] reliv3@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

they need to make that known by voting for representativea that feel the same

Be nice if it was that simple, but the democratic system itself is broken. We have presidents that come in power while losing the popular vote. We have states that gerrymander their districts to reduce the value of certain demographic's vote. We have supreme court justices with life terms that are interpretting laws with political bias. Unfortunately, it is getting less and less likely that America is going to improve by working within it's systems because the system is clearly stacked against us.

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 61 points 1 year ago (17 children)

For all of those saying Facebook was just complying with the law- there is absolutely no reason for Facebook to have access to its users' private information. The company I work for can't do anything with a customer's account unless they give us the password. We can't see anything they have saved there. All of the private stuff they have is private and even if a court ordered us to show it to them, we literally couldn't comply.

We're a small company and we can do it. A company the size of Meta can certainly do it.

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[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 50 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Just as an FYI, since it seems like a lot of folks are just reading the headline and not reading the article:

  • This article was written almost one year ago, so this is not a new development.

  • This alleged offense occurred before any changes to local abortion laws (Nebraska in this case) were made, meaning this is an incident that would have still been illegal under Roe.

  • Meta was served a legal subpoena requiring them to turn over all the data they had. Whether that data should have been E2E encrypted is another debate entirely, but they didn't voluntarily disclose anything.

  • ~~The charges were pressed as felonies, meaning that they were considered illegal at the federal level, and so state jurisdiction did not matter for the purposes of this subpoena.~~

  • Even under California's current sanctuary status (where Meta is headquartered) which protects out-of-state individuals seeking abortions, this was a late-term abortion at 28 weeks, which is still illegal under Californian law.

  • To contextualize that for our friends in Europe, this would have been illegal in every EU country, too (short of it being needed as a life-saving intervention, as in most of the US), so this is not a US-exclusive problem.

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

While this is a mostly great post, I'd point out one error:

The charges were pressed as felonies, meaning that they were considered illegal at the federal level

Felonies exist at both the Federal and State level. Just because something is a felony, does not mean it moves to Federal jurisdiction. And this case appears to have been filed in the Madison County District Court which is part of the Nebraska Judicial Branch. The cases themselves can be found on the District Court's Calendar though you have to put the details in yourself. The cases IDs are CR220000175 and CR220000132 against the woman and her mother respectively. Getting the court documents themselves appears to require paying a fee to do the search and I don't care enough about a random comment on the internet to pay for it.

There seems to be one document uploaded here which shows the charges against the woman. And this shows the sections of Nebraska State law under which the woman is being charged. Of the three charges, only the first is a felony. Specifically it's a Class IV felony under Section 28-1301 of Nebraska State Law. And that law concerns moving buried human remains. The other two charges are misdemeanors for concealing the death of another person and lying to a peace officer.

tl;dr - Felonies exist at both the State and Federal level and jurisdiction is dependent on which laws (State or Federal) are at issue.

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[–] Jackthelad@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This the same company that owns WhatsApp and is so dead against unencrypting messages on that platform? 🤔

[–] Monomate@lemm.ee 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

To be fair, if the mother/daughter communicated through WhatsApp they'd not be caught, because it's an end-to-end encrypted messaging platform. But as they chose FB Messenger, they got vulnerable to a court order forcing Facebook to hand over data.

[–] preacher37@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is WhatsApp open source? Even Signal I'm a bit on edge, why would you trust WhatsApp which is owned by Facebook?

[–] Monomate@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

WhatsApp was not created by Facebook. It used to be an independent company which major selling point was offering free ~~encrypted~~ messaging to the masses, which was mostly relevant to non-US users as they're charged for SMS usage more directly (it doesn't come free and unlimited on most plans).

It was bought by Facebook but they kept the encryption technology intact. There's already various cases of courts around the world trying to compel WhatsApp to hand over messages but they didn't because they simply don't store the messages on their servers, and when the messages pass through their servers they're encrypted by design.

[–] noodlejetski@geddit.social 14 points 1 year ago (5 children)

major selling point was offering free encrypted messaging to the masses

no, their major point was offering free messaging in regions were you were being charged per SMS sent. end-to-end encryption has been introduced in 2016 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp#End-to-end_encryption), seven years after it's been founded and two years after Facebook acquisition.

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[–] alnilam@lemmy.world 37 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Isn't this just "Facebook complied with court order"? I dislike their data hoarding like everyone else, but I also think Facebook doesn't get to decide to ignore court orders.

[–] shinjiikarus@mylem.eu 60 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Facebook does get to decide how they store and encrypt their data. Apple and Signal have received court orders in the past, they did comply with, but there was just nothing than meta data zu turn over.

[–] Jackolantern@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

This is the corrrect answer

[–] moitoi@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not so easy. The fact they are harvesting so many data makes you vulnerable to law enforcement. If you use a service that doesn't harvest data and where you can manage these data's, you will have less tracks.

It's like putting all your money at the same place. If the bank go bankrupt, you risk a lot.

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[–] theyoyomaster@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, there are plenty of things to be outraged with post Dobbs but this isn’t one; Lemmy really just seems to be in a “let me show off that I’m more liberal than you” growing phase.

It was at 22 weeks beyond most states pre-Dobbs limit (and all but 2 places in Europe), her mother illegally procured and provided abortion pills without medical consultation or supervision and then they tried to burn and dispose of the stillborn fetus. Abortion is safe when done properly, this wasn’t done properly and the idiot mother legitimately put her daughter in danger. They also openly told police they planned it on messenger, in direct violation of “shut the fuck up friday” and did not use messengers “private” mode which would have rendered Meta unable to comply with the properly issued court order. The bottom line is this is the extremely rare case that gives any shred of credibility to the pro-life crowd and should be denounced by all.

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[–] thatghostkid64@dmv.social 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did anyone notice that this article is a year old?

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[–] silverbax@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How's that end-to-end encryption working out?

Doesn't matter if the company doing the e2e can get your messages.

[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 1 year ago (5 children)

but fb messenger is not e2e encrypted at all. If the company is doing e2e then they can't read your messages

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[–] Rhoeri@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I’m pretty sure self-aborting and burying a stillborn baby is against the law regardless of the status of Roe.

[–] emperorbenguin@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (6 children)

This is 100% true, but also this is less of a Facebook bad issue and more of a state law issue.

Facebook was subpoenaed to provide this info, they didn't willingly hand it over. I'd be interested to see how many lemmings here jumping down the meta bad rabbithole would have the stones to ignore a subpoena lmao.

[–] SoaringDE@feddit.de 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Well it could have been end to end encrypted leaving no way to turn anything over. It's like turning over someones mail after it has been delivered because you made a copy of everything that came through.

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[–] astral_avocado@lemmynsfw.com 17 points 1 year ago

Filing this under my increasingly long list on reasons why to never record personal information in any messaging or social media app except signal

[–] beard__hunter@lemmy.fmhy.ml 17 points 1 year ago

Oh man.. this is fucked up on so many levels .....

[–] volkhavaar@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

I can’t wait until facebook is integrated with the fediverse.

[–] DocMcStuffin@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The two women told detective Ben McBride of the Norfolk, Nebraska Police Division that they’d discussed the matter on Facebook Messenger, which prompted the state to issue Meta with a search warrant for their chat history and data including log-in timestamps and photos.

Don't talk to the police.

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[–] areefer82@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is why Signal is needed now more than ever.

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[–] butwhyishischinabook@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah no shit, they've been don't this in authoritarian countries from the beginning. Surprise, they'll do it here too. shocked Pikachu face

[–] ZombieTheZombieCat@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Just because it's expected at this point doesn't make it acceptable.

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[–] creamatine@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

“Private chat history”

Nothing you do on Facebook is private. When will people get that through their thick skulls?

[–] dan@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

What the fuck, Facebook?

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