13 ms·

Facebook and Google hand over user data, help police prosecute abortion seekers

234 points by manwithaplan 4y ago

manwithaplan 4y ago
User chat logs and search history released by social media companies to police can be used to prosecute people for abortion, even when they are being investigated for other reasons.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > User chat logs and search history released by social media companies to police can be used to prosecute people for abortion, even when they are being investigated for other reasons. Firstly, can you even prosecute a woman for abortion? Aren't they legal? Secondly, if the abortion is illegal, it's not unusual for the state to prosecute someone when the investigation of that person reveals other crimes. What would you propose instead? That any evidence of secondary criminal activity uncovered during an investigation of the primary activity be ignored?
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    > Firstly, can you even prosecute a woman for abortion? Aren't they legal? In case you've been living under a rock for the last while: several American states have banned abortions[0][1] after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade. The federal government failed to implement any laws to safeguard access to abortions so overturning Roe vs Wade was all that conservatives needed. Some states have exceptions for rape and incest, some don't. Texas even offers a sizeable bounty for reporting abortions. This has already resulted in medical care being refused to women carrying stillborn children and other pregnancy complications fatal to either the mother or the child out of fear of prosecution. As for secondary criminal activity: I agree, if the police finds other illegal acts during a legal investigation, they should be allowed to act on that. This is the proof that the whole "if you've got nothing to hide" narrative surrounding state surveillance is dangerous. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-ro... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law_in_the_United_States_by_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law_in_the_United_Sta...
    - markles 4y ago
      > In case you've been living under a rock for the last while: It might surprise you, but people who don't live in America probably don't follow, nor care about the politics going on in specific states.
      - madeofpalk 4y ago
        Seems to be weird to roll into the comment section if you don't follow this, nor care.
      - aunty_helen 4y ago
        This was a big thing my dude. Coverage from all angles in multiple countries outside the us.
      - matsemann 4y ago
        Then they should perhaps read up on the situation before commenting? Like, this is the first sentence in the article we're discussing: > As abortion bans across the nation are implemented and enforced (...) So claiming ignorance is not a valid point.
      - misnome 4y ago
        This ceases to be a valid excuse when those people then jump into the middle of a discussion exclusively about laws and politics in the US.
    - concordDance 4y ago
      > I agree, if the police finds other illegal acts during a legal investigation, they should be allowed to act on that. I'm not sure this principle is a good one. Almost everyone had probably broken a law or two (yes, this meane there are too many bad laws, let me know if youve an idea of how to solve that), so by investigating someone for some random thing they haven't done you've got a good chance of finding something. This de facto gives imprisonment powers to the police and prosecutors office, giving plenty of opportunity for corruption.
      - 4y ago
  - mulmen 4y ago
    You should do the bare minimum to familiarize yourself before wading in to this particular topic. Abortion legality varies by state in the US. This is a recent development. I wouldn’t expect to be prosecuted, or even investigated, for typing “how people get away with bank robbery” into Google. Or for watching The Dark Knight.
    - lelanthran 4y ago
      > You should do the bare minimum to familiarize yourself before wading in to this particular topic. I did, and my understanding is that any secondary crimes uncovered during an investigation of a crime can be pursued. What about that do you disagree with?
      - mulmen 4y ago
        > Firstly, can you even prosecute a woman for abortion? Aren't they legal? This part.
  - OkGoDoIt 4y ago
    In the USA, abortions are now illegal in many states. This was a major change that took place last year.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
DennisAleynikov 4y ago
We did it. We made the dystopia
- favaq 4y ago
  [flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- euroderf 4y ago
  Under His eye.
throwntoday 4y ago
Abortions were a convenient way to keep women locked into the workforce. There could be no escape from wageslaving. Now that the population is in the shitter, they criminalize abortion.
- joaonmatos 4y ago
  Disingenuous. Contraception and abortions freed women from being locked into patriarchal family structures (see the thousands of years of history where women were passed from father, to brother, to husband with no choice in the matter).
  - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
    Not entirely, but it is a contributing factor: Women aren't suck having children and stuck staying with some guy because she can't support herself. It isn't the only benefit nor the only outcome of having these - we've had different sorts of abortion and imperfect contraception for thousands of years. Women are still stuck in such societies. Safe contraception and safe abortions keep women from dying. Women are able to have fewer children, spaced further apart, making for healthier women and healthier children - even in such traditional societies, assuming folks have access to these things.
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    Exactly For men, it was always "pro-choice", child support and paternity tests are a recent invention (and don't compare with how hard it is to raise a kid) If men got pregnant you could have your abortion together with your haircut
    - Y_Y 4y ago
      Are you advocating for the return of the barber surgeon?
    - f6v 4y ago
      > For men, it was always "pro-choice" You dramatically underestimate the number of both men and women who’re against abortion.
numbers_guy 4y ago
It shouldn't be up to Facebook/Google to decide what is a crime, nor in which cases wiretapping should be allowed.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Y_Y 4y ago
  And as far as I know it isn't. At least these companies certainly comply with lawful warrants. They may be more helpful in cases of their choosing (e.g. CSAM) but are they really expected to refuse when a court orders them to assist with an investigation on the basis that they (to the extent possible for a company) disagree with the law in question?
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    I wanted to reply to GP with something along these lines, but I could not tell what the GPs comment actually meant, it was too ambiguous. > It shouldn't be up to Facebook/Google to decide what is a crime, nor in which cases wiretapping should be allowed. Could mean either: 1. FB/Google should be prevented from deciding what is and is not a crime. They don't set the laws. Or 2. FB/Google aren't setting the laws, so can't be blamed when complying with those laws. Maybe it's my sleepiness, but I just cannot decide which of the two statements were intended by GP.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Abortions are now a crime in several American states, close if not equal to murder. These companies just do what they've always done when it comes to murder cases: hand over the data when the authorities demand it through warrants. As they should, in theory. Facebook and Google are not to blame here; they're simply doing what the law demands of them. These companies are not above the law, they cannot refuse warrants. Blame Nebraskan and American federal law for this situation. With a bit of luck, this situation will make these companies put more priority into E2EE. Had these conversations been done through Signal, there was likely nothing to be found or handed over.
DeathArrow 4y ago
Aren't they handling user data for any other case of law breaking?
- aww_dang 4y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/17/pakistan-asks-facebook-twitter-help-identify-blasphemers https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/17/pakistan-asks-... >Pakistan asks Facebook and Twitter to help identify blasphemers >Companies approached in effort to locate Pakistanis at home or abroad so they can be prosecuted or potentially extradited
Semaphor 4y ago
Is this unexpected? Of course, they follow warrants, why wouldn’t they?
- amelius 4y ago
  Because they didn't support E2EE and homomorphic encryption.
  - PradeetPatel 4y ago
    They never claimed that they support E2EE... The users signed the EULA and know what their rights are.
    - psychphysic 4y ago
      That did actually surprise me, I thought Facebook took on WhatsApp/insta messaging which is encrypted?
  - supriyo-biswas 4y ago
    The Techcrunch article[1] (linked in TFA) mentions FB Messenger was used, which does not have E2EE. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/digital-data-roe-wade-reproductive-privacy https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/digital-data-roe-wade-repr...
    - jeroenhd 4y ago
      Tragically enough, Facebook Messenger does actually support E2EE. However, it needs to be enabled per contact/chat. Facebook's bad UX may just have become a driving force behind the conviction. Facebook is improving E2EE according to their blog: https://about.fb.com/news/2023/01/expanding-features-for-end-to-end-encryption-on-messenger/ https://about.fb.com/news/2023/01/expanding-features-for-end...
- lapcat 4y ago
  "An investigation by ProPublica found online pharmacies that sell abortion medication such as mifepristone and misoprostol are sharing sensitive data, including users' web addresses, relative location, and search data, with Google and other third-party sites — which allows the data to be recoverable through law enforcement requests." "we also know that social media isn't likely to stand up to illegitimate law enforcement requests, because of the fact that they fear their own liability, or because of the fact that it's just too costly to stand up."
Barrin92 4y ago
Baffling to me that people still use Messenger. Not even switching the company is necessary, with WhatsApp at least they'd have message encryption.
- dalanmiller 4y ago
  I’d say most WhatsApp users don’t realize they are backing up to Google Drive in clear text.
  - aboringusername 4y ago
    This is key. Both parties need to trust that their messages are staying within the realms of WhatsApp itself, and with the usage of disappearing mode, not leaving any traces of a conversation. They should probably be using encryption within the chat itself (and not, you know, speaking in plain English) to add another layer. Perhaps changing the keys frequently via an agreed method (thinking about how to do that safely without leaving another trace) to render older messages 100% undecryptable. But yeah, chances are all of that data is going to be accessed and they agreed to it! It's right there in the privacy policy people don't bother reading
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    For those using WhatsApp: you can actually encrypt the GDrive backups, and has been for a while now: https://www.androidpolice.com/whatsapp-end-to-end-encryption/ https://www.androidpolice.com/whatsapp-end-to-end-encryption... The default setting is still unencrypted backups, though.
croes 4y ago
Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. Unless they change the laws and suddenly you have something to hide.
- supriyo-biswas 4y ago
  This echoes my sentiment perfectly. Discussions on surveillance and misinformation often involve people advocating for granting more power to the government to prosecute who they believe violate their value system, unless the value system somehow changes and now you become the criminal. As an example, this is why breaking E2EE with backdoors to stop pedophilia, revoking immunity to social platforms for users' speech and the like are bad ideas - some day your values will become abhorrent, and the same tools that you used against others will be used against you.
- b3nji 4y ago
  [flagged]
- andybak 4y ago
  I remember when Schmidt came out with this line thinking the same thing. But back then it seemed like a distant and improbable scenario - I objected to his statement more on point of principle than out of any realistic sense that it was things were going to get that bad in the near future. Turns out they did. (before anyone says it - yeah. Back then there were probably already enough examples of law enforcement overreach - not to mention the decades-long injustice of the "war on drugs". I need to learn to be more cynical)
  - eternalban 4y ago
    > But back then it seemed like a distant and improbable scenario I am trying to understand this perspective. I was there and nothing seemed improbable or remote. The remoteness was merely a function of technical & economic conditions. Historic precedents, domestic and foreign, past or near present, all pointed the same direction, underlining high probabilities. Pessimism is rarely the correct inclination, with the exception of questions concerning freedom, power, security, and control. It is appropriately rational to question and highlight worst case outcomes in such cases. This same pattern is happening yet again ('surprise!') with generative AI. Maybe it is necessary to assure that 'yes, this technology is very cool' as red flags are raised. It is a very simple thought, backed by unassailable historic evidence: Humans enjoy lording it over other human beings. We should never create systems that permit a tiny tiny subset to realize such base desires. A very simple idea, truly.
psychphysic 4y ago
The only take away from this article is that somehow they could read the change logs. Doesn't that fly in the face of metas own claims to not be able to? BI seems to be implying that abortion shouldn't be treated as a crime in places where it is a crime.
- unmole 4y ago
  WhatsApp is supposedly end to end encrypted. Does Meta claim anything similar about its other platforms?
  - mulmen 4y ago
    Is it really? I always assumed it was like Zoom end to end encryption where one of the “ends” is a Facebook data center. How can a user prove the claim of end to end encryption?
    - caf 4y ago
      There was a bit of a song and dance when Whatsapp adopted the Signal protocol. Certainly if you choose not to back up your Whatsapp messages, your old messages aren't available when you switch phones. If they're not end-to-end encrypted, they're engaging in a lot of deception to indicate that they are.
      - jeroenhd 4y ago
        They are if you enable encryption (with your own key, of course). The default backups are insecure, though.
        mulmen 4y ago
        Except you provide the key to the app and the app is controlled by FB. There’s really no way to prove the key stays on your device. Or that your messages aren’t just forwarded without encryption to a FB datacenter.
      - 4y ago
feeela 4y ago
Is this real? This sounds like a weird trip back into medieval times. Who is the head of that modern Inquisition?
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  What sounds like a trip into medieval times? Government control over corporations? Corporation oversight over private lives? Isn’t that what the new generation of enlightened and progressive people wanted?
  - fluxinflex 4y ago
    But wait, isn't that what was happening in medieval times: the church ruled over the peasants, the kings ruled over the states and everyone was happy living in a liberal and free world - well at least they believed that.
    - aww_dang 4y ago
      http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2013/02/decentralization-hidden-in-dark-ages.html http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2013/02/decentralization-... Relatively more liberal than the Roman era and more decentralized than our current era.
    - shakow 4y ago
      That was the theory; in practice, the very limited communication (hard to handle fast-evolving situations when couriers from Rome to Amiens take a few weeks at best) & enforcement means (you have 100 guys with spears? We are 200 with pitchforks, come get us) led to a much more decentralized power structure than what is stereotypically understood.
nurgasemetey 4y ago
What employees will think about their companies?
aboringusername 4y ago
Although it probably sucks for the individuals at the receiving end of the scales of justice I believe this is an important public education campaign which will hopefully raise awareness of the scale and extent of data collection. There seems to be a disconnect between data being collected from a terminal, how rich that data can be, and what it can be used for. If you use a digital keyboard your every keystroke can, and probably is being logged - we used to call this spyware, now even the keyboard app on your phone has clipboard sync (and it's built into Windows too!). People need to be aware for example when activating javascript (and most don't know what that is), how much the various APIs are collecting and storing, which is used to build a "fingerprint" of your device. The web (and digital devices in general) is actively hostile, anyone who uses noscript can attest to that and anyone who goes onto any news media website and opens "network" via web dev console can see how much data is flying to god knows where to do god knows what. If you want to defy the state you need to be a master spy, this means actually thinking how you research, and probably learning a thing or two from Snowden (are you on wifi? open hotspot? is your device logging anything, if so, what? do you need to destroy the device afterwards incase it gets forensically inspected? If you could read /var/log what would be there and would it reveal anything about your situation? If you can't read /var/log then your device is actively hostile and not worth the risk). Privacy is effort, and, in these cases, the 'seekers' are not spending enough effort on hiding their tracks and they are like fish in shallow water, easy pickings. The ones who are clued up are not the ones who end up making the press, because they know exactly how to cover their tracks, and make it impossible to prove or disprove a fact, which, thankfully at least at this moment, is how justice works (for the most part).
Chronoyes 4y ago
[dead]
f6v 4y ago
Is the issue that Meta and Google comply with the law(turning in the data to crime investigators), or that the law itself is medieval? I mean, both are concerning in their own way. But the latter seems like a much much bigger problem.
- diceduckmonk 4y ago
  > comply with the law What concerns you about this?
  - croes 4y ago
    Because they are good laws and bas laws, so some requests shouldn't be given in too easily.
    - mulmen 4y ago
      I’m not comfortable living in a world where FB and Google get to decide what laws are worth following.
    - yyyk 4y ago
      Who decides which laws are bad?
      - ReptileMan 4y ago
        The ideology of the OP usually.
      - falcolas 4y ago
        The courts, and there’s precedent saying a companies can petition the courts to review the law before handing over data. And given Google et.al. actions in other avenues against these laws, it’s sad they aren’t challenging them.
    - diceduckmonk 4y ago
      Right, which is your second point about the law existing being the concern. Companies are simply enforcing the law, right or wrong.
bboygravity 4y ago
Interesting to realize that I now have to equally self-censor whether I'm using WeChat (China) versus any US-based service (Western world) for communication..
- A_D_E_P_T 4y ago
  Unless you're working on sensitive or compartmentalized tech, and talking about it on the platform, I don't even see why you'd need to self-censor on WeChat. The Chinese, for all their faults, don't seem to care what you do in your spare time. That said, I don't know if I'd feel comfortable discussing my medical history over Gmail or Facebook, even if ostensibly "private."
  - Wingman4l7 4y ago
    > The Chinese, for all their faults, don't seem to care what you do in your spare time. No, they'll just dutifully record all activities in a dossier, until something interesting presents itself to be leveraged against you, or until they decide at a later date that what you do is distasteful.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    > The Chinese, for all their faults, don't seem to care what you do in your spare time. I thought pyrography (for example) was illegal in China
    - lioeters 4y ago
      Today I learned about pyrography and a particularly dangerous technique called "fractal burning", where people use high-voltage electricity to burn patterns into wood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_burning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_burning The result is quite beautiful, but I can see why some countries might want to regulate or prohibit it. Personally, I think people should be allowed to take such risks if they choose to do so.
    - projektfu 4y ago
      That would be strange for a traditional Chinese art that's probably sold at airports and gift shops.
ThinkBeat 4y ago
>Facebook and Google comply with the law. >When presented with a valid warrant they hand over the data requested. The article seems to imply that the big social media companies should selectively comply with a valid warrant based on what crime the accused has committed. I think you should either have problem with the entire procedure or agree that the procedure is valid.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > The article seems to imply that the big social media companies should selectively comply with a valid warrant They already selectively comply: "According to internal statistics provided by Meta, the company complies with government requests for user data more than 70% of the time".
  - madsmith 4y ago
    And the other 30% is unknown so we can’t say they selectively comply. It’s quite possible the other 30% are invalid warrants, in which case there’s nothing to comply with.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      Social media companies can't decide that a warrant is "invalid". Only a court can decide that. From the article: > Goldman indicated examples where internet services affirmatively go to court to protect user interest, "but those are the exceptions." "There's thousands of requests for every one of those cases"
      - Shish2k 4y ago
        > Social media companies can't decide that a warrant is "invalid". Only a court can decide that. They can, however, decide “this is worth pushing back against” vs “this is not worth pushing back against” - that 30% represents the number of times that Meta’s lawyers believed it was worth pushing back and they were proved correct
  - 4y ago
aww_dang 4y ago
The framing is inflammatory. What most people can agree upon is that the surveillance state is out of control. I'm sure I'll be flamed into oblivion here, but it is worth considering the headline from the perspective of the anti-abortionists. If we cannot empathize or attempt to understand those who disagree, what is the point of having a discussion? "FB and Google hand over user data, help to prosecute baby killers" Reasonable people can disagree on the topic of abortion or at what stage of pregnancy it is acceptable. HN is not the place where I want to have that discussion. It has already been explored at depth elsewhere.
- concordDance 4y ago
  I've often been puzzled by why the abortion argument is seen as a binary. The majority of people in the developed world feel that the abortion legality line should be somewhere between conception and birth. Honestly, based on my somewhat biased sampling, there's probably a similar number of people who think infanticide should sometimes be legal as people who think a single fertilized egg has a right to life.
  - aww_dang 4y ago
    This is definitely a big part of the problem. Media outlets are looking for outrage. They need only conflate a ban on late term abortion with a blanket ban. For the other side, vice versa.
- emsign 4y ago
  If you would have read the article to the end you would have noticed that is puts the blame on law enforcement and legislation.
- lapcat 4y ago
  Think of it this way though: 50 years of legal precedent was overturned last year. Women who are young enough to get abortions have lived their entire lives not being considered murderers, legally. Abortion was an explicitly protected legal right. Now suddenly, a woman is transformed overnight from a citizen freely exercising their legal right into an illegal murderer — but of course only in certain localities. How are they supposed to deal with this massive U-turn? Can we not empathize with them? It's one thing to make providing abortions illegal. It's quite another thing to prosecute the women.
nl 4y ago
Note that you can turn on E2E encryption in FB Messenger (as well as WhatsApp). It does lose a few features, but people should probably be aware it is possible.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Meta still knows who is messaging whom. Sending a message to a pharmacy or certain doctors would raise flags. E2EE isn't completely safe. Briar is decentralized (no central company or servers to watch) and uses Tor to hide IPs.
dools 4y ago
This is not the story. The story is Roe v. Wade overturned due to heinous corruption of the US political process in favour of the religious right and free market libertarians.
- concordDance 4y ago
  Roe v. Wade was a corruption of the political progress (and I say this as a non-american pro-abortionist). If you want to have a law on abortion make an actual law.
  - krapp 4y ago
    I mean, SCOTUS said otherwise for fifty years. They decide what is and isn't legitimate and it was fair play until last year. I agree with you in principle but AFAIK "actual laws" have never been necessary when the SCOTUS has declared a Constitutional right. Individual states don't need to codify a right to keep and bear arms, or freedom of speech or religion, nor can they choose to re-enable slavery or segregation, because those have all been decided at a higher level.
    - salawat 4y ago
      Yes, but a caveat by SCOTUS has the lifetime of a given group of justices. If you want that law to be effectively immortal, it needs to be implemented through the legislature, not backdoored through judicial fiat. "Legislating from the bench" is considered poor form in legal circles for a reason.
    - concordDance 4y ago
      SCOTUS has said plenty of stupid things (e.g. Dred Scott). Laws are the right way to do things. And it's somewhat unclear to me why this should be a federal issue at all... isn't murder a state issue?
      - krapp 4y ago
        >And it's somewhat unclear to me why this should be a federal issue at all... isn't murder a state issue? That's an odd framing for a self-described "pro-abortionist" to use, but no, obviously federal law against murder exists[0]. But of course the question of whether or not abortion is a matter of murder, fundamental bodily autonomy or both is a quagmire not worth getting into. Not that it's relevant to Roe v. Wade, or its appeal, because that rested on the question of the existence of a fundamental right to privacy and stare decisis. I mean, read the dissenting opinions on Dobbs[1]. I think a good case is made there as to why this shouldn't be an issue left to the states, and why Roe wasn't repealed because it was bad law, but because the court was stacked with ideologues who were opposed to Roe for religious reasons. You should be at least as angry about that as Roe itself, if not more so because that represents a far more egregious corruption of the system, but I suspect you aren't. [0]https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1111 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1111 [1]https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/read-supreme-court-dissent-opinion-on-roe-v-wade-pdf-00042264 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/read-supreme-court-...
aaron695 4y ago
[dead]
mgraczyk 4y ago
IMO the most realistic way to improve this situation is to get more people using E2EE chat apps, and fight against any attempt by government to weaken or ban encryption. Meta the company hates this and is spending money on ads trying to get people to use WhatsApp with end to end encryption for things like this.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Even with E2EE doesn't META know who is messaging who on Whatsapp? This doesn't seem completely secure. Briar is distributed and uses Tor to hide user IPs.
  - mgraczyk 4y ago
    Yes, but it's not realistic to believe people will use apps like Briar. The user experience is not good enough.
learnedSloth 4y ago
Is the next step extending citizen rights to unborn babies?
qwray 4y ago
I miss the good old days when you could just open a telephone book and no one would know what you were looking up. Now everything you do is recorded by a third party. Don't use Facebook or Google.
- npteljes 4y ago
  Since communication was unencrypted, listening in was easy though. Even the instant messengers, up to 2005-2007, sent their messages in cleartext. So listening in was easy, but since storage was much more expensive, I don't think they bothered with recording them too much. Regarding your conclusion, leaving FB and G is not even the hardest part. The hardest part is that your network probably won't follow.
clbrmbr 4y ago
> We do not provide governments with 'back doors' to people's information. PRISM? Serious question. I thought that was still a thing.
31337Logic 4y ago
And they wonder why we don't trust Big Tech.

234 points by manwithaplan 4y ago

User chat logs and search history released by social media companies to police can be used to prosecute people for abortion, even when they are being investigated for other reasons.

lelanthran 4y ago
> User chat logs and search history released by social media companies to police can be used to prosecute people for abortion, even when they are being investigated for other reasons. Firstly, can you even prosecute a woman for abortion? Aren't they legal? Secondly, if the abortion is illegal, it's not unusual for the state to prosecute someone when the investigation of that person reveals other crimes. What would you propose instead? That any evidence of secondary criminal activity uncovered during an investigation of the primary activity be ignored?
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  > Firstly, can you even prosecute a woman for abortion? Aren't they legal? In case you've been living under a rock for the last while: several American states have banned abortions[0][1] after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade. The federal government failed to implement any laws to safeguard access to abortions so overturning Roe vs Wade was all that conservatives needed. Some states have exceptions for rape and incest, some don't. Texas even offers a sizeable bounty for reporting abortions. This has already resulted in medical care being refused to women carrying stillborn children and other pregnancy complications fatal to either the mother or the child out of fear of prosecution. As for secondary criminal activity: I agree, if the police finds other illegal acts during a legal investigation, they should be allowed to act on that. This is the proof that the whole "if you've got nothing to hide" narrative surrounding state surveillance is dangerous. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-ro... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law_in_the_United_States_by_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law_in_the_United_Sta...
  - markles 4y ago
    > In case you've been living under a rock for the last while: It might surprise you, but people who don't live in America probably don't follow, nor care about the politics going on in specific states.
    - madeofpalk 4y ago
      Seems to be weird to roll into the comment section if you don't follow this, nor care.
    - aunty_helen 4y ago
      This was a big thing my dude. Coverage from all angles in multiple countries outside the us.
    - matsemann 4y ago
      Then they should perhaps read up on the situation before commenting? Like, this is the first sentence in the article we're discussing: > As abortion bans across the nation are implemented and enforced (...) So claiming ignorance is not a valid point.
    - misnome 4y ago
      This ceases to be a valid excuse when those people then jump into the middle of a discussion exclusively about laws and politics in the US.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    > I agree, if the police finds other illegal acts during a legal investigation, they should be allowed to act on that. I'm not sure this principle is a good one. Almost everyone had probably broken a law or two (yes, this meane there are too many bad laws, let me know if youve an idea of how to solve that), so by investigating someone for some random thing they haven't done you've got a good chance of finding something. This de facto gives imprisonment powers to the police and prosecutors office, giving plenty of opportunity for corruption.
    - 4y ago
- mulmen 4y ago
  You should do the bare minimum to familiarize yourself before wading in to this particular topic. Abortion legality varies by state in the US. This is a recent development. I wouldn’t expect to be prosecuted, or even investigated, for typing “how people get away with bank robbery” into Google. Or for watching The Dark Knight.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > You should do the bare minimum to familiarize yourself before wading in to this particular topic. I did, and my understanding is that any secondary crimes uncovered during an investigation of a crime can be pursued. What about that do you disagree with?
    - mulmen 4y ago
      > Firstly, can you even prosecute a woman for abortion? Aren't they legal? This part.
- OkGoDoIt 4y ago
  In the USA, abortions are now illegal in many states. This was a major change that took place last year.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

DennisAleynikov 4y ago

We did it. We made the dystopia

favaq 4y ago
[flagged]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
euroderf 4y ago
Under His eye.

throwntoday 4y ago

Abortions were a convenient way to keep women locked into the workforce. There could be no escape from wageslaving. Now that the population is in the shitter, they criminalize abortion.

joaonmatos 4y ago
Disingenuous. Contraception and abortions freed women from being locked into patriarchal family structures (see the thousands of years of history where women were passed from father, to brother, to husband with no choice in the matter).
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  Not entirely, but it is a contributing factor: Women aren't suck having children and stuck staying with some guy because she can't support herself. It isn't the only benefit nor the only outcome of having these - we've had different sorts of abortion and imperfect contraception for thousands of years. Women are still stuck in such societies. Safe contraception and safe abortions keep women from dying. Women are able to have fewer children, spaced further apart, making for healthier women and healthier children - even in such traditional societies, assuming folks have access to these things.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  Exactly For men, it was always "pro-choice", child support and paternity tests are a recent invention (and don't compare with how hard it is to raise a kid) If men got pregnant you could have your abortion together with your haircut
  - Y_Y 4y ago
    Are you advocating for the return of the barber surgeon?
  - f6v 4y ago
    > For men, it was always "pro-choice" You dramatically underestimate the number of both men and women who’re against abortion.

numbers_guy 4y ago

It shouldn't be up to Facebook/Google to decide what is a crime, nor in which cases wiretapping should be allowed.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Y_Y 4y ago
And as far as I know it isn't. At least these companies certainly comply with lawful warrants. They may be more helpful in cases of their choosing (e.g. CSAM) but are they really expected to refuse when a court orders them to assist with an investigation on the basis that they (to the extent possible for a company) disagree with the law in question?
- lelanthran 4y ago
  I wanted to reply to GP with something along these lines, but I could not tell what the GPs comment actually meant, it was too ambiguous. > It shouldn't be up to Facebook/Google to decide what is a crime, nor in which cases wiretapping should be allowed. Could mean either: 1. FB/Google should be prevented from deciding what is and is not a crime. They don't set the laws. Or 2. FB/Google aren't setting the laws, so can't be blamed when complying with those laws. Maybe it's my sleepiness, but I just cannot decide which of the two statements were intended by GP.
jeroenhd 4y ago
Abortions are now a crime in several American states, close if not equal to murder. These companies just do what they've always done when it comes to murder cases: hand over the data when the authorities demand it through warrants. As they should, in theory. Facebook and Google are not to blame here; they're simply doing what the law demands of them. These companies are not above the law, they cannot refuse warrants. Blame Nebraskan and American federal law for this situation. With a bit of luck, this situation will make these companies put more priority into E2EE. Had these conversations been done through Signal, there was likely nothing to be found or handed over.

DeathArrow 4y ago

Aren't they handling user data for any other case of law breaking?

aww_dang 4y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/17/pakistan-asks-facebook-twitter-help-identify-blasphemers https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/17/pakistan-asks-... >Pakistan asks Facebook and Twitter to help identify blasphemers >Companies approached in effort to locate Pakistanis at home or abroad so they can be prosecuted or potentially extradited

Semaphor 4y ago

Is this unexpected? Of course, they follow warrants, why wouldn’t they?

amelius 4y ago
Because they didn't support E2EE and homomorphic encryption.
- PradeetPatel 4y ago
  They never claimed that they support E2EE... The users signed the EULA and know what their rights are.
  - psychphysic 4y ago
    That did actually surprise me, I thought Facebook took on WhatsApp/insta messaging which is encrypted?
- supriyo-biswas 4y ago
  The Techcrunch article[1] (linked in TFA) mentions FB Messenger was used, which does not have E2EE. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/digital-data-roe-wade-reproductive-privacy https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/digital-data-roe-wade-repr...
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    Tragically enough, Facebook Messenger does actually support E2EE. However, it needs to be enabled per contact/chat. Facebook's bad UX may just have become a driving force behind the conviction. Facebook is improving E2EE according to their blog: https://about.fb.com/news/2023/01/expanding-features-for-end-to-end-encryption-on-messenger/ https://about.fb.com/news/2023/01/expanding-features-for-end...
lapcat 4y ago
"An investigation by ProPublica found online pharmacies that sell abortion medication such as mifepristone and misoprostol are sharing sensitive data, including users' web addresses, relative location, and search data, with Google and other third-party sites — which allows the data to be recoverable through law enforcement requests." "we also know that social media isn't likely to stand up to illegitimate law enforcement requests, because of the fact that they fear their own liability, or because of the fact that it's just too costly to stand up."

Barrin92 4y ago

Baffling to me that people still use Messenger. Not even switching the company is necessary, with WhatsApp at least they'd have message encryption.

dalanmiller 4y ago
I’d say most WhatsApp users don’t realize they are backing up to Google Drive in clear text.
- aboringusername 4y ago
  This is key. Both parties need to trust that their messages are staying within the realms of WhatsApp itself, and with the usage of disappearing mode, not leaving any traces of a conversation. They should probably be using encryption within the chat itself (and not, you know, speaking in plain English) to add another layer. Perhaps changing the keys frequently via an agreed method (thinking about how to do that safely without leaving another trace) to render older messages 100% undecryptable. But yeah, chances are all of that data is going to be accessed and they agreed to it! It's right there in the privacy policy people don't bother reading
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  For those using WhatsApp: you can actually encrypt the GDrive backups, and has been for a while now: https://www.androidpolice.com/whatsapp-end-to-end-encryption/ https://www.androidpolice.com/whatsapp-end-to-end-encryption... The default setting is still unencrypted backups, though.

croes 4y ago

Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. Unless they change the laws and suddenly you have something to hide.

supriyo-biswas 4y ago
This echoes my sentiment perfectly. Discussions on surveillance and misinformation often involve people advocating for granting more power to the government to prosecute who they believe violate their value system, unless the value system somehow changes and now you become the criminal. As an example, this is why breaking E2EE with backdoors to stop pedophilia, revoking immunity to social platforms for users' speech and the like are bad ideas - some day your values will become abhorrent, and the same tools that you used against others will be used against you.
b3nji 4y ago
[flagged]
andybak 4y ago
I remember when Schmidt came out with this line thinking the same thing. But back then it seemed like a distant and improbable scenario - I objected to his statement more on point of principle than out of any realistic sense that it was things were going to get that bad in the near future. Turns out they did. (before anyone says it - yeah. Back then there were probably already enough examples of law enforcement overreach - not to mention the decades-long injustice of the "war on drugs". I need to learn to be more cynical)
- eternalban 4y ago
  > But back then it seemed like a distant and improbable scenario I am trying to understand this perspective. I was there and nothing seemed improbable or remote. The remoteness was merely a function of technical & economic conditions. Historic precedents, domestic and foreign, past or near present, all pointed the same direction, underlining high probabilities. Pessimism is rarely the correct inclination, with the exception of questions concerning freedom, power, security, and control. It is appropriately rational to question and highlight worst case outcomes in such cases. This same pattern is happening yet again ('surprise!') with generative AI. Maybe it is necessary to assure that 'yes, this technology is very cool' as red flags are raised. It is a very simple thought, backed by unassailable historic evidence: Humans enjoy lording it over other human beings. We should never create systems that permit a tiny tiny subset to realize such base desires. A very simple idea, truly.

psychphysic 4y ago

The only take away from this article is that somehow they could read the change logs. Doesn't that fly in the face of metas own claims to not be able to? BI seems to be implying that abortion shouldn't be treated as a crime in places where it is a crime.

unmole 4y ago
WhatsApp is supposedly end to end encrypted. Does Meta claim anything similar about its other platforms?
- mulmen 4y ago
  Is it really? I always assumed it was like Zoom end to end encryption where one of the “ends” is a Facebook data center. How can a user prove the claim of end to end encryption?
  - caf 4y ago
    There was a bit of a song and dance when Whatsapp adopted the Signal protocol. Certainly if you choose not to back up your Whatsapp messages, your old messages aren't available when you switch phones. If they're not end-to-end encrypted, they're engaging in a lot of deception to indicate that they are.
    - jeroenhd 4y ago
      They are if you enable encryption (with your own key, of course). The default backups are insecure, though.
      - mulmen 4y ago
        Except you provide the key to the app and the app is controlled by FB. There’s really no way to prove the key stays on your device. Or that your messages aren’t just forwarded without encryption to a FB datacenter.
    - 4y ago

feeela 4y ago

Is this real? This sounds like a weird trip back into medieval times. Who is the head of that modern Inquisition?

LudwigNagasena 4y ago
What sounds like a trip into medieval times? Government control over corporations? Corporation oversight over private lives? Isn’t that what the new generation of enlightened and progressive people wanted?
- fluxinflex 4y ago
  But wait, isn't that what was happening in medieval times: the church ruled over the peasants, the kings ruled over the states and everyone was happy living in a liberal and free world - well at least they believed that.
  - aww_dang 4y ago
    http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2013/02/decentralization-hidden-in-dark-ages.html http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2013/02/decentralization-... Relatively more liberal than the Roman era and more decentralized than our current era.
  - shakow 4y ago
    That was the theory; in practice, the very limited communication (hard to handle fast-evolving situations when couriers from Rome to Amiens take a few weeks at best) & enforcement means (you have 100 guys with spears? We are 200 with pitchforks, come get us) led to a much more decentralized power structure than what is stereotypically understood.

nurgasemetey 4y ago

What employees will think about their companies?

aboringusername 4y ago

Although it probably sucks for the individuals at the receiving end of the scales of justice I believe this is an important public education campaign which will hopefully raise awareness of the scale and extent of data collection. There seems to be a disconnect between data being collected from a terminal, how rich that data can be, and what it can be used for. If you use a digital keyboard your every keystroke can, and probably is being logged - we used to call this spyware, now even the keyboard app on your phone has clipboard sync (and it's built into Windows too!). People need to be aware for example when activating javascript (and most don't know what that is), how much the various APIs are collecting and storing, which is used to build a "fingerprint" of your device. The web (and digital devices in general) is actively hostile, anyone who uses noscript can attest to that and anyone who goes onto any news media website and opens "network" via web dev console can see how much data is flying to god knows where to do god knows what. If you want to defy the state you need to be a master spy, this means actually thinking how you research, and probably learning a thing or two from Snowden (are you on wifi? open hotspot? is your device logging anything, if so, what? do you need to destroy the device afterwards incase it gets forensically inspected? If you could read /var/log what would be there and would it reveal anything about your situation? If you can't read /var/log then your device is actively hostile and not worth the risk). Privacy is effort, and, in these cases, the 'seekers' are not spending enough effort on hiding their tracks and they are like fish in shallow water, easy pickings. The ones who are clued up are not the ones who end up making the press, because they know exactly how to cover their tracks, and make it impossible to prove or disprove a fact, which, thankfully at least at this moment, is how justice works (for the most part).

Chronoyes 4y ago

[dead]

f6v 4y ago

Is the issue that Meta and Google comply with the law(turning in the data to crime investigators), or that the law itself is medieval? I mean, both are concerning in their own way. But the latter seems like a much much bigger problem.

diceduckmonk 4y ago
> comply with the law What concerns you about this?
- croes 4y ago
  Because they are good laws and bas laws, so some requests shouldn't be given in too easily.
  - mulmen 4y ago
    I’m not comfortable living in a world where FB and Google get to decide what laws are worth following.
  - yyyk 4y ago
    Who decides which laws are bad?
    - ReptileMan 4y ago
      The ideology of the OP usually.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      The courts, and there’s precedent saying a companies can petition the courts to review the law before handing over data. And given Google et.al. actions in other avenues against these laws, it’s sad they aren’t challenging them.
  - diceduckmonk 4y ago
    Right, which is your second point about the law existing being the concern. Companies are simply enforcing the law, right or wrong.

bboygravity 4y ago

Interesting to realize that I now have to equally self-censor whether I'm using WeChat (China) versus any US-based service (Western world) for communication..

A_D_E_P_T 4y ago
Unless you're working on sensitive or compartmentalized tech, and talking about it on the platform, I don't even see why you'd need to self-censor on WeChat. The Chinese, for all their faults, don't seem to care what you do in your spare time. That said, I don't know if I'd feel comfortable discussing my medical history over Gmail or Facebook, even if ostensibly "private."
- Wingman4l7 4y ago
  > The Chinese, for all their faults, don't seem to care what you do in your spare time. No, they'll just dutifully record all activities in a dossier, until something interesting presents itself to be leveraged against you, or until they decide at a later date that what you do is distasteful.
- concordDance 4y ago
  > The Chinese, for all their faults, don't seem to care what you do in your spare time. I thought pyrography (for example) was illegal in China
  - lioeters 4y ago
    Today I learned about pyrography and a particularly dangerous technique called "fractal burning", where people use high-voltage electricity to burn patterns into wood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_burning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_burning The result is quite beautiful, but I can see why some countries might want to regulate or prohibit it. Personally, I think people should be allowed to take such risks if they choose to do so.
  - projektfu 4y ago
    That would be strange for a traditional Chinese art that's probably sold at airports and gift shops.

ThinkBeat 4y ago

>Facebook and Google comply with the law. >When presented with a valid warrant they hand over the data requested. The article seems to imply that the big social media companies should selectively comply with a valid warrant based on what crime the accused has committed. I think you should either have problem with the entire procedure or agree that the procedure is valid.

lapcat 4y ago
> The article seems to imply that the big social media companies should selectively comply with a valid warrant They already selectively comply: "According to internal statistics provided by Meta, the company complies with government requests for user data more than 70% of the time".
- madsmith 4y ago
  And the other 30% is unknown so we can’t say they selectively comply. It’s quite possible the other 30% are invalid warrants, in which case there’s nothing to comply with.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Social media companies can't decide that a warrant is "invalid". Only a court can decide that. From the article: > Goldman indicated examples where internet services affirmatively go to court to protect user interest, "but those are the exceptions." "There's thousands of requests for every one of those cases"
    - Shish2k 4y ago
      > Social media companies can't decide that a warrant is "invalid". Only a court can decide that. They can, however, decide “this is worth pushing back against” vs “this is not worth pushing back against” - that 30% represents the number of times that Meta’s lawyers believed it was worth pushing back and they were proved correct
- 4y ago

aww_dang 4y ago

The framing is inflammatory. What most people can agree upon is that the surveillance state is out of control. I'm sure I'll be flamed into oblivion here, but it is worth considering the headline from the perspective of the anti-abortionists. If we cannot empathize or attempt to understand those who disagree, what is the point of having a discussion? "FB and Google hand over user data, help to prosecute baby killers" Reasonable people can disagree on the topic of abortion or at what stage of pregnancy it is acceptable. HN is not the place where I want to have that discussion. It has already been explored at depth elsewhere.

concordDance 4y ago
I've often been puzzled by why the abortion argument is seen as a binary. The majority of people in the developed world feel that the abortion legality line should be somewhere between conception and birth. Honestly, based on my somewhat biased sampling, there's probably a similar number of people who think infanticide should sometimes be legal as people who think a single fertilized egg has a right to life.
- aww_dang 4y ago
  This is definitely a big part of the problem. Media outlets are looking for outrage. They need only conflate a ban on late term abortion with a blanket ban. For the other side, vice versa.
emsign 4y ago
If you would have read the article to the end you would have noticed that is puts the blame on law enforcement and legislation.
lapcat 4y ago
Think of it this way though: 50 years of legal precedent was overturned last year. Women who are young enough to get abortions have lived their entire lives not being considered murderers, legally. Abortion was an explicitly protected legal right. Now suddenly, a woman is transformed overnight from a citizen freely exercising their legal right into an illegal murderer — but of course only in certain localities. How are they supposed to deal with this massive U-turn? Can we not empathize with them? It's one thing to make providing abortions illegal. It's quite another thing to prosecute the women.

nl 4y ago

Note that you can turn on E2E encryption in FB Messenger (as well as WhatsApp). It does lose a few features, but people should probably be aware it is possible.

timbit42 4y ago
Meta still knows who is messaging whom. Sending a message to a pharmacy or certain doctors would raise flags. E2EE isn't completely safe. Briar is decentralized (no central company or servers to watch) and uses Tor to hide IPs.

dools 4y ago

This is not the story. The story is Roe v. Wade overturned due to heinous corruption of the US political process in favour of the religious right and free market libertarians.

concordDance 4y ago
Roe v. Wade was a corruption of the political progress (and I say this as a non-american pro-abortionist). If you want to have a law on abortion make an actual law.
- krapp 4y ago
  I mean, SCOTUS said otherwise for fifty years. They decide what is and isn't legitimate and it was fair play until last year. I agree with you in principle but AFAIK "actual laws" have never been necessary when the SCOTUS has declared a Constitutional right. Individual states don't need to codify a right to keep and bear arms, or freedom of speech or religion, nor can they choose to re-enable slavery or segregation, because those have all been decided at a higher level.
  - salawat 4y ago
    Yes, but a caveat by SCOTUS has the lifetime of a given group of justices. If you want that law to be effectively immortal, it needs to be implemented through the legislature, not backdoored through judicial fiat. "Legislating from the bench" is considered poor form in legal circles for a reason.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    SCOTUS has said plenty of stupid things (e.g. Dred Scott). Laws are the right way to do things. And it's somewhat unclear to me why this should be a federal issue at all... isn't murder a state issue?
    - krapp 4y ago
      >And it's somewhat unclear to me why this should be a federal issue at all... isn't murder a state issue? That's an odd framing for a self-described "pro-abortionist" to use, but no, obviously federal law against murder exists[0]. But of course the question of whether or not abortion is a matter of murder, fundamental bodily autonomy or both is a quagmire not worth getting into. Not that it's relevant to Roe v. Wade, or its appeal, because that rested on the question of the existence of a fundamental right to privacy and stare decisis. I mean, read the dissenting opinions on Dobbs[1]. I think a good case is made there as to why this shouldn't be an issue left to the states, and why Roe wasn't repealed because it was bad law, but because the court was stacked with ideologues who were opposed to Roe for religious reasons. You should be at least as angry about that as Roe itself, if not more so because that represents a far more egregious corruption of the system, but I suspect you aren't. [0]https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1111 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1111 [1]https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/read-supreme-court-dissent-opinion-on-roe-v-wade-pdf-00042264 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/read-supreme-court-...

aaron695 4y ago

[dead]

mgraczyk 4y ago

IMO the most realistic way to improve this situation is to get more people using E2EE chat apps, and fight against any attempt by government to weaken or ban encryption. Meta the company hates this and is spending money on ads trying to get people to use WhatsApp with end to end encryption for things like this.

timbit42 4y ago
Even with E2EE doesn't META know who is messaging who on Whatsapp? This doesn't seem completely secure. Briar is distributed and uses Tor to hide user IPs.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  Yes, but it's not realistic to believe people will use apps like Briar. The user experience is not good enough.

learnedSloth 4y ago

Is the next step extending citizen rights to unborn babies?

qwray 4y ago

I miss the good old days when you could just open a telephone book and no one would know what you were looking up. Now everything you do is recorded by a third party. Don't use Facebook or Google.

npteljes 4y ago
Since communication was unencrypted, listening in was easy though. Even the instant messengers, up to 2005-2007, sent their messages in cleartext. So listening in was easy, but since storage was much more expensive, I don't think they bothered with recording them too much. Regarding your conclusion, leaving FB and G is not even the hardest part. The hardest part is that your network probably won't follow.

clbrmbr 4y ago

> We do not provide governments with 'back doors' to people's information. PRISM? Serious question. I thought that was still a thing.

31337Logic 4y ago

And they wonder why we don't trust Big Tech.