4 ms·

Tech companies are US corporations which are legal entities created under US laws and run by US citizens who are human beings who can be handcuffed and put in p

Tech companies are US corporations which are legal entities created under US laws and run by US citizens who are human beings who can be handcuffed and put in prison. Asking them to break US laws, even bad ones, is unrealistic. What we should be asking them is whether they’re now doing everything they can to scrub their datasets of information that could be requested by police and could be used in abortion cases.

gruez 4y ago
>What we should be asking them is whether they’re now doing everything they can to scrub their datasets of information that could be requested by police and could be used in abortion cases. That sound illegal in and of itself.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  Why? Most of this stuff is personal information from their users and abortion is not (yet) illegal in most states. By this logic no user data can ever be deleted, just in case it becomes relevant to enforcing a future law.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >Most of this stuff is personal information from their users and abortion is not (yet) illegal in most states. That's cold comfort when the AG of those minority states decide to prosecute the company or their executives. >By this logic no user data can ever be deleted, just in case it becomes relevant to enforcing a future law. But it's illegal in 13 states right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_law
    - giantg2 4y ago
      "But it's illegal in 13 states right now." You have to define what is actually illegal and how the data would be used. Most of the laws are about performing an abortion in the state. I'm not up to date on everything, but generally state jurisdiction ends at the state line. For example, someone in CA can look up high capacity magazines and buy them in another state without ever bringing them back into CA. They can't prosecute you for touching a 30rd mag in a different state.
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
      > But it's illegal in 13 states right now. Fair enough, but this data should be getting deleted for users in the other 37 states right now.
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      prosecute the company or their executives Executives can move to a non-extradition state, Boston and MA have already stated they won't cooperate with extradition requests in relation to abortion prosecutions. You might also want to consider the long term cost of being parties to a human rights violation under color of law, vs the short-term cost of not doing that.
- ericmay 4y ago
  What law does it break? And should/does the state have this kind of power to view your private, personal affairs? Can the government also see if I walk 10,000 steps per day?
  - legobmw99 4y ago
    > kind of power to view your private, personal affairs This point is actually a big part of the original decisions regarding abortion, so the current SCOTUS might very well say yes they do
  - gruez 4y ago
    IANAL but to be clear, scrubbing all data personal is probably fine, but specifically looking for an illegal activity (ie. abortion) and scrubbing that data seems like destruction of evidence and/or aiding/abetting to me.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      I generally agree. One thing to point out, they could probably delete it right now before there's any case law that states the information can be used in these sort of cases, and what type of data that is. At this point it's all hypothetical, and much of it hasn't been well defined or tied to the actual act.
    - ericmay 4y ago
      Yes but an illegal activity according to whom? If the company operates out of California, well, state's rights and that activity isn't illegal in California and there is nothing anyone can do about it. If the company operates out of one of the states that is making abortion illegal then yea maybe, except that states such as California or New York may make it a requirement that companies collecting such data must delete it upon request from their citizens in order to operate in that state. At which point nobody is keeping their HQ in an anti-abortion state so it probably doesn't matter because there is nobody who can enforce the law. It will just come down to jurisdiction. But good luck to anti-abortion states in enforcing these laws and trying people for murder or something. State governments are already woefully incompetent at enforcing other laws. I personally will be donating to entities that help fund people who need help covering travel expenses for an abortion.
nocturnial 4y ago
That's not the question. The question is whether they have enough data to provide to law enforcement if one their users underwent an abortion. If they aren't collecting enough data to determine this then they could just state: "we can't and therefor we won't" It's a huge red flag if corps think they have enough data about their users that they think they can provide this data. edit: I'm not talking about social media where people might explicitly say this.
- giantg2 4y ago
  Do you think they don't? We have already seen law enforcement ask for identification of users and other data of all phones in the vicinity of a crime. It's not a leap to imagine them asking for this same data using a geofence around providers and using that to obtain search history, communications, or other records
  - nocturnial 4y ago
    Which country are you talking about? The laws differ between what law enforcement can and can't do.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      The same one that's in the topic - the US. https://johnfbakerlaw.com/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-geofencing/ https://johnfbakerlaw.com/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-g...
      - nocturnial 4y ago
        Then I can't comment on this. I don't live in the US nor know what it is like. I was responding to this from an 'EU' perspective. For the tech companies who do bussiness globally, my objection still stands. In the country I'm living in, the data collected to determine whether someone is pregnant or had an abortion, is data collected beyond what they should be collecting to provide their service. I have no idea why a company who provides: email, vpn, search, etc... should be able to figure out users health data.
31835843 4y ago
Yes. What I want to hear from any company that stores health data is “Health data, including period tracking, is 100% end to end encrypted. We don’t have the keys to this data and are unable to provide it to any law enforcement.” Short of that, I don’t trust them. Having said that, I’m not sure at all how Snapchat, etc enter into this. They are platforms where people post about themselves to the world. If I had a post saying “I am on the way to get an abortion” I am not sure how or why the company would get between me and the law.
- tartoran 4y ago
  If information is published publicly by users LEO should be invited to scrub it from public facing services themselves. Why should companies provide any help surveil its users?
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Sadly, promises of "100% end-to-end unbreakable encrypted" have a long history of receiving "OOPS!..." updates.
- hellisothers 4y ago
  If FB can tell when/if you’re pregnant it can also probably tell how likely you are to get an abortion. What’s to stop LEO from stopping at demanding raw data and start asking for algorithmic data as well.
TimPC 4y ago
Companies should at least commit to challenging this type of data collection in the court system. Also, the minute we agree with tech companies cooperating with bad laws in the US we lose all moral basis for insisting they don't cooperate with bad laws in authoritarian regimes around the world. Do we really want to live in a world where we accept the idea that companies don't have moral obligations beyond "comply with local laws no matter how immoral"? It also means very little that Google and other companies are committing to provide out of state abortions if they are only willing to do so in a way that the insurance provider tracks and reimburses those expenses before handing them over to the state so you can be prosecuted for undergoing a medical procedure. This doesn't actually accomplish getting people safe access to abortion, it's theatre.
- monkeybutton 4y ago
  Corporations that pay employees below subsistence levels are indirectly bailed out by food stamps programs. I wouldn't depend on them for moral anything.
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    Food stamps are a handout to Ag, not Walmart.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >Corporations that pay employees below subsistence levels are indirectly bailed out by food stamps programs I never understood this argument. How are the corporations being "bailed out" in this case? The employees need sustenance regardless of whether they're employed or not. If anyone is getting "bailed out" it's the food stamp programs, because the programs are means tested and receiving income from employment reduces the amount of funds that need to be handed out.
- tssva 4y ago
  Yes, I want to live in a world where corporations' moral obligation is to comply with local laws of the countries they operate in no matter whether they agree with them or not. It should not be left up to corporations to pick and choose which laws they will comply with. If a corporation disagrees with the law in a particular country they either need to live with it, work to get the law changed through the legitimate means available in that country or stop operating in the country.
dfxm12 4y ago
Tech companies are US corporations which are legal entities created under US laws and run by US citizens who are human beings who can be handcuffed and put in prison. Oh, I wish the human beings in big corporations would be handcuffed for breaking US law when they do things like tax evasion, wage theft, have unfair labor practices, etc. I in no way expect these big corporations to do anything for me out of the goodness of their own heart, as the article suggests, but let's not pretend like the law doesn't apply differently to them.
- gruez 4y ago
  >I in no way expect these big corporations to do anything for me out of the goodness of their own heart, as the article suggests, but let's not pretend like the law doesn't apply differently to them. The parent post doesn't imply equal treatment under the law, only that the state can coerce the employees/executives of tech companies into complying.
  - pempem 4y ago
    The parent post also implies that companies are lawful and abiding when infact they continuously attempt to circumvent the law just when its in their own self interest

gruez 4y ago

>What we should be asking them is whether they’re now doing everything they can to scrub their datasets of information that could be requested by police and could be used in abortion cases. That sound illegal in and of itself.

AlexandrB 4y ago
Why? Most of this stuff is personal information from their users and abortion is not (yet) illegal in most states. By this logic no user data can ever be deleted, just in case it becomes relevant to enforcing a future law.
- gruez 4y ago
  >Most of this stuff is personal information from their users and abortion is not (yet) illegal in most states. That's cold comfort when the AG of those minority states decide to prosecute the company or their executives. >By this logic no user data can ever be deleted, just in case it becomes relevant to enforcing a future law. But it's illegal in 13 states right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_law
  - giantg2 4y ago
    "But it's illegal in 13 states right now." You have to define what is actually illegal and how the data would be used. Most of the laws are about performing an abortion in the state. I'm not up to date on everything, but generally state jurisdiction ends at the state line. For example, someone in CA can look up high capacity magazines and buy them in another state without ever bringing them back into CA. They can't prosecute you for touching a 30rd mag in a different state.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    > But it's illegal in 13 states right now. Fair enough, but this data should be getting deleted for users in the other 37 states right now.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    prosecute the company or their executives Executives can move to a non-extradition state, Boston and MA have already stated they won't cooperate with extradition requests in relation to abortion prosecutions. You might also want to consider the long term cost of being parties to a human rights violation under color of law, vs the short-term cost of not doing that.
ericmay 4y ago
What law does it break? And should/does the state have this kind of power to view your private, personal affairs? Can the government also see if I walk 10,000 steps per day?
- legobmw99 4y ago
  > kind of power to view your private, personal affairs This point is actually a big part of the original decisions regarding abortion, so the current SCOTUS might very well say yes they do
- gruez 4y ago
  IANAL but to be clear, scrubbing all data personal is probably fine, but specifically looking for an illegal activity (ie. abortion) and scrubbing that data seems like destruction of evidence and/or aiding/abetting to me.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    I generally agree. One thing to point out, they could probably delete it right now before there's any case law that states the information can be used in these sort of cases, and what type of data that is. At this point it's all hypothetical, and much of it hasn't been well defined or tied to the actual act.
  - ericmay 4y ago
    Yes but an illegal activity according to whom? If the company operates out of California, well, state's rights and that activity isn't illegal in California and there is nothing anyone can do about it. If the company operates out of one of the states that is making abortion illegal then yea maybe, except that states such as California or New York may make it a requirement that companies collecting such data must delete it upon request from their citizens in order to operate in that state. At which point nobody is keeping their HQ in an anti-abortion state so it probably doesn't matter because there is nobody who can enforce the law. It will just come down to jurisdiction. But good luck to anti-abortion states in enforcing these laws and trying people for murder or something. State governments are already woefully incompetent at enforcing other laws. I personally will be donating to entities that help fund people who need help covering travel expenses for an abortion.

nocturnial 4y ago

That's not the question. The question is whether they have enough data to provide to law enforcement if one their users underwent an abortion. If they aren't collecting enough data to determine this then they could just state: "we can't and therefor we won't" It's a huge red flag if corps think they have enough data about their users that they think they can provide this data. edit: I'm not talking about social media where people might explicitly say this.

giantg2 4y ago
Do you think they don't? We have already seen law enforcement ask for identification of users and other data of all phones in the vicinity of a crime. It's not a leap to imagine them asking for this same data using a geofence around providers and using that to obtain search history, communications, or other records
- nocturnial 4y ago
  Which country are you talking about? The laws differ between what law enforcement can and can't do.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    The same one that's in the topic - the US. https://johnfbakerlaw.com/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-geofencing/ https://johnfbakerlaw.com/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-g...
    - nocturnial 4y ago
      Then I can't comment on this. I don't live in the US nor know what it is like. I was responding to this from an 'EU' perspective. For the tech companies who do bussiness globally, my objection still stands. In the country I'm living in, the data collected to determine whether someone is pregnant or had an abortion, is data collected beyond what they should be collecting to provide their service. I have no idea why a company who provides: email, vpn, search, etc... should be able to figure out users health data.

31835843 4y ago

Yes. What I want to hear from any company that stores health data is “Health data, including period tracking, is 100% end to end encrypted. We don’t have the keys to this data and are unable to provide it to any law enforcement.” Short of that, I don’t trust them. Having said that, I’m not sure at all how Snapchat, etc enter into this. They are platforms where people post about themselves to the world. If I had a post saying “I am on the way to get an abortion” I am not sure how or why the company would get between me and the law.

tartoran 4y ago
If information is published publicly by users LEO should be invited to scrub it from public facing services themselves. Why should companies provide any help surveil its users?
bell-cot 4y ago
Sadly, promises of "100% end-to-end unbreakable encrypted" have a long history of receiving "OOPS!..." updates.
hellisothers 4y ago
If FB can tell when/if you’re pregnant it can also probably tell how likely you are to get an abortion. What’s to stop LEO from stopping at demanding raw data and start asking for algorithmic data as well.

TimPC 4y ago

Companies should at least commit to challenging this type of data collection in the court system. Also, the minute we agree with tech companies cooperating with bad laws in the US we lose all moral basis for insisting they don't cooperate with bad laws in authoritarian regimes around the world. Do we really want to live in a world where we accept the idea that companies don't have moral obligations beyond "comply with local laws no matter how immoral"? It also means very little that Google and other companies are committing to provide out of state abortions if they are only willing to do so in a way that the insurance provider tracks and reimburses those expenses before handing them over to the state so you can be prosecuted for undergoing a medical procedure. This doesn't actually accomplish getting people safe access to abortion, it's theatre.

monkeybutton 4y ago
Corporations that pay employees below subsistence levels are indirectly bailed out by food stamps programs. I wouldn't depend on them for moral anything.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  Food stamps are a handout to Ag, not Walmart.
- gruez 4y ago
  >Corporations that pay employees below subsistence levels are indirectly bailed out by food stamps programs I never understood this argument. How are the corporations being "bailed out" in this case? The employees need sustenance regardless of whether they're employed or not. If anyone is getting "bailed out" it's the food stamp programs, because the programs are means tested and receiving income from employment reduces the amount of funds that need to be handed out.
tssva 4y ago
Yes, I want to live in a world where corporations' moral obligation is to comply with local laws of the countries they operate in no matter whether they agree with them or not. It should not be left up to corporations to pick and choose which laws they will comply with. If a corporation disagrees with the law in a particular country they either need to live with it, work to get the law changed through the legitimate means available in that country or stop operating in the country.

dfxm12 4y ago

Tech companies are US corporations which are legal entities created under US laws and run by US citizens who are human beings who can be handcuffed and put in prison. Oh, I wish the human beings in big corporations would be handcuffed for breaking US law when they do things like tax evasion, wage theft, have unfair labor practices, etc. I in no way expect these big corporations to do anything for me out of the goodness of their own heart, as the article suggests, but let's not pretend like the law doesn't apply differently to them.

gruez 4y ago
>I in no way expect these big corporations to do anything for me out of the goodness of their own heart, as the article suggests, but let's not pretend like the law doesn't apply differently to them. The parent post doesn't imply equal treatment under the law, only that the state can coerce the employees/executives of tech companies into complying.
- pempem 4y ago
  The parent post also implies that companies are lawful and abiding when infact they continuously attempt to circumvent the law just when its in their own self interest