Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges
Unencrypted chat history is a prime target for police
A stark example of how digital footprints will be utilized in a post-Roe America
The article is from Aug 10, 2022 but remains relevant
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Honestly, it does not look like Facebook did something wrong when you read the article. A pregnant woman used a medicine to trigger a miscarriage, then she and her mother got rid of the body. Police knew that they've discussed this in Facebook messenger. They contacted Facebook and received chat messages. Then police used those messages to incriminate women according to existing law. The only problem here is that a woman could go to an abortion clinic and do it properly and legally if not for obnoxious laws in some states. But that's a completely different issue
It is not a different issue. It is an issue of basic human rights.
A woman's right to agency over her body is an unalienable human right. The existing laws violate her human right.
Then police used those messages to incriminate women according to existing law.
"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws. " - Martin Luther King, Jr. in "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (1963)
It is not a different issue. It is an issue of basic human rights.
I don’t believe it’s a basic human right to murder a late term foetus. That’s not a right enshrined in any UN convention or national constitution. That’s something you want.
Yeah but your opinion is total shit and worthless ...... so who cares what you gotta say?
awe seems I pissed off religious extremists how ever would I sleep at night after this, oh yeah just fine.
I mean, I’m pro-choice and I downvoted you because you would rather troll this person and add to the negativity than state your case. I downvoted them too, for the record.
Why make a case to people who have no want to hear said case, have probably heard all the cases already and continue to want to control people? I am done talking to people that want to decide others lives and put them at risk, they don't care about them so why should I care about the person trying to retain control?
I am willing to explain myself to you, but you as stated do not intend to steal rights and you being pro choice already know all the reasons why I am against people taking others rights so I don't have to explain it because it is falling either on ears that know or ears that don't want to hear.
I am sick off pretending malice is ignorance.
I am just telling them to get lost as we should with all people that want to take others rights.
Thanks for your explanation. While I get what you’re saying, the way I see it, a counterpoint against a person who is clearly adamantly anti-choice isn’t about changing the mind of that person you are talking with but, rather, the person looking in and reading the discussion on this case about a hot-button issue. Their minds may be swayed by the tone and evidence from one side or the other. Of course, you can chose to conduct yourself online however you’d like. I just don’t think it furthers the pro-choice cause.
I understand your reasoning and have practiced it before with minimal success, they do not want civil discussion nor do they care about rights or facts, they think you are a murder sympathizer and have no interest in listening to you because reasoning does not matter to them.
IMO teaching people to have and improve the cognitive skills needed to determine facts and to find accurate information is more important in fighting things like this. Which basically mean better schooling, when you can have more of an impact on teaching good behaviors and skills.
Sorry to tell you a comment on a website with all the facts in the world is unlikely to sway a lot of peoples minds on abortions rights when they could already look up all those facts and opinions. it is kinda hard to sway people set in an idea based on emotion when the facts are already out there and they don't care.
Also all of that is again assuming they are not malicious but just misguided, tbh I thing we tend to give a lot of leeway by saying "oh they are just ignorant" eventually ignorance turns to malice if you are unwilling to change it after being told multiple times.
Most do not care to change or care about what helps people with no intent to change, rather just tell them to leave us alone and move on without the trash.
You don't have to be a religious extremist to think you're being an arrogant dick.
oh no
Don't know why you are getting mad at me, I replied to a person against abortion, which I disagree with. Not you, who said it was a human right, which I agree with. So I do care about making sure abortion is legal, I don't care to listen to the religious extremist horseshit ideals on why it should be illegal.
I assume you just got the notification because it's your post and assumed I was talking to you when I am not saying your opinion does not matter, just peoples opinion that want's to take away human rights.
I'm sorry. I completely misunderstood and assumed you were replying to me. I apologize and have deleted my misguided response.
Oh stop, you had a misunderstanding, it's fine, you did not offend me. Have a good day!!
The human right to agency is every human beings right to consent over what happens to and in their body. Denying that right to a woman is against her basic & unalienable human right. Anyone denying a woman that basic right rejects women as human beings.
Human rights are not subject to your belief system.
Do any constitutions or UN conventions give you the right to use the internet? Shouldn't this count as healthcare, for which there are at least 6 UN conventions? Don't 13 states ban all forms of abortion including early, in which not even the heart has formed?
What about the right to one's own body?
Voters in many states have decided that's not a priority for them. They're too busy whining about imaginary college level classes taught in grade schools
who said it was late term
The article.
The chat that FB handed over:
"Ya the 1 pill stops the hormones an rhen u gotta wait 24 HR 2 take the other," read one of her messages.
Celeste Burgess writes, "Remember we burn the evidence," and later, "I will finally be able to wear jeans."
They faced charges of concealing a death and disposing of human remains illegally.
It was a right until a few hand picked Catholic activist judges, chosen by a Christian Dominionist think tank and corruptly paid off by billionaires, decided it wasn't a right anymore.
They need cheap child labour to keep their profits up. Won't you think of the poor billionaires?
There is no such thing as a late term abortion. The fetus would be viable. No person seeking an abortion would wait seven to nine months, bullshit laws or no bullshit laws. An abortion is a termination of a pregnancy, not a fetus. Abortions are typically performed before the embryo even has a chance to develop into a fetus (10 weeks).
As of 2015 in the United States, more than 90% of abortions occur before the 13th week, 1.3% of abortions in the United States took place after the 21st week,[4] and less than 1% occur after 24 weeks.[5][6]
No one is terminating viable fetuses in the third trimester.
it does not look like Facebook did something wrong
Illegal. You mean to say it doesn't look like Facebook did something illegal. It's undeniable (unless you hate women) that Facebook did something wrong in helping a fascist state oppress women.
Illegality and morality are not the same.
It would also be literally illegal for Facebook to have not done this. They were given a legally binding warrant.
If you honestly would personally go to jail rather than comply with a warrant, that speaks pretty highly to your credit, but I don't think most people would find Facebook to be particularly culpable here. Facebook Messenger does actually offer an encrypted messaging service that, to my knowledge, has never been turned over to law enforcement because it is technically impossible for them to do that. That isn't the default setting though, and it's unfortunate that the people involved here weren't aware of it.
Just to be very clear, these laws are reprehensible. However, my anger is largely reserved for the politicians and voters responsible for them. It's a pretty big ask to demand someone personally risk jail time by refusing to comply with a valid warrant.
If you honestly would personally go to jail rather than comply with a warrant, that speaks pretty highly to your credit, but I don't think most people would find Facebook to be particularly culpable here.
This would be more compelling point if FB were a person capable of going to jail and/or did not have a history of taking the user-hostile side of privacy situations, regardless of whether the law agreed with them.
That isn't the default setting though, and it's unfortunate that the people involved here weren't aware of it.
This right here is why I personally believe FB deserves and flak they get from this situation. They could avoid the whole conversation about whether they should turn over the conversations if they made it so they couldn't. They've chosen their data mine over user privacy, and people are right to judge them accordingly.
Facebook may not be a person, but there are people within Facebook who absolutely can and would be held personally liable for refusing to comply with a warrant, up to and including going to jail.
That Facebook Messenger isn't E2E encrypted definitely is something that can and should be criticized, and they could absolutely do a lot more to educate users on how safe their information is or isn't. On the flip-side, to their credit, WhatsApp is, by default, E2E encrypted. I'd honestly be curious how much value they really get out of Messenger not being encrypted, since if it's really that high, the value from WhatsApp would be significantly higher.
I'm not saying that this is the only reason - because I'm sure they do get some financial value out of it as well - but if you wanted to be charitable, you could say that users generally expect Facebook Messenger to be equally available across devices with full message history, which isn't really feasible when you're signing messages with device-specific keys.
It would also be literally illegal for Facebook to have not done this.
And? It's not like they've ever given a shit about the law when they want to do something that benefits them.
Unjust laws aren't worth following, and Facebook has the power to fight them. They choose not to.
I'd genuinely be curious what you'd do if police showed up to your door with a warrant ready to take you to jail if you didn't comply.
Maybe you'd actually refuse, I don't know. But I think there are a whole lot more people who want to think that they would refuse and suffer very real consequences of it than would actually do it.
Thanks to Citizens United, corporations are people. But people are not corporations.
They do not have an army of corporate attorneys, nor do they employ lobbying firms to buy political support, nor do they have enormous wealth to fall back on. People simply do not enjoy the protections corporations do. Yet its regular people who frequently take a stand against wrong, and not multi-billion corporations.
Facebook/Meta, a corporate with tremendous resources, made promises about defending access to reproductive healthcare in a post-Roe world and it should be questioned for failing to keep their word. Getting personal (like you just did with @Kichae) just shifts responsibility away from facebook/meta for its actions.
Regardless, there are very much actual people within Meta that can and would be held legally liable for refusing to comply with a valid warrant, up to and including going to jail.
I agree that there are plenty to things to criticize Meta for. They could do a lot more to educate users about what privacy they do or don't have and the legal consequences of that. They could direct more people to Messenger's private mode, which is end-to-end encrypted. I don't think the act of complying with a warrant is something that I would really hold against them though, because 99% of people would do the same thing.
Why do so many people find it so hard to understand the position of anti-abortionists and invent a fantasy about misogynist fascists?
To them fetuses are babies (which is correct at some point before birth, when is another debate) and therefore subjects of rights, so from their position they are defending a much greater right, the right to life. Essentially, from their perspective they are defending human rights, is it that hard for you to empathize with that?
It's undeniable (unless you hate women)
Oh yep, you seem to have a flexible mentality, open to debate and not demonizing others, the opposite of what fascists typically do.
All the pro life arguments are new. Theyre disingenuous and hypocritical. The modern pro life movement was cooked up by hardcore right wingers when they lost the fight against civil rights , in a transparent attempt to create a new voting bloc. Before the 1960s, the Baptists and Methodists were pro abortion and called it a Catholic issue.
Person hood is a red herring. Even if you accept fetal person hood, no one owes another person the use of their body.
Lastly, legislators have no place in medical decisions. Doctors are not terminating viable fetuses in the third trimester and never have. There were less than 10 third trimester abortions in the US per year and all we're either to save the life of the mother or to remove a fetus that had a fatal defect. Banning the procedure will only have deleterious effects and keep doctors from performing vital life saving procedures. We have already seen this in Ireland and central America.
They are not pro-life. If they were pro-life they would work to make life good/ better for those who they insist birth children and for those who they should be born.
They are pro-slavery, Forcing/ coercing women to be incubators against their will is sexual slavery. They refuse to consider women as equal human beings with equal rights to men, and seek to diminsh women's independence by forcing on her (and only her, men are not held accountable) to the unwanted burden of gestating, birthing, and caring for children, even at the cosf of her physical and mental well-being.
Their call of "fetal personhood" is a tool to emotionally manipulate people ("won't you think of the children?"), while they deny actual living persons their personhood. All their actions & words are geared towards dehumanizing women.
Tellingly, they also are not against child labour ("wont you think of the billionaire's profits?"), once a child is born. Their goal is to deny women their personhood, bind women to sexual slavery, and ensure the wealthy have a supply of cheap & easily available labour.
Oh yep, you seem to have a flexible mentality, open to debate and not demonizing others, the opposite of what fascists typically do.
And there's the DARVO. That didn't take much time.
If foetuses are babies to anti-abortionists (you've dropped the pro-life facade) then anti-abortionists need science lessons, because foetuses are not babies.
Since anti-abortionists don't consider women as human beings possessing equal human rights, they don't care about any baby born or unborn from her. Indeed, they think they have the right to dictate to women on what her rights should be, ignoring that she is born with inalienable basic rights. "Born with" not 'unborn/ in-utero' with.
A right to life without right to agency is slavery. Do you understand that anti-abortionists want women to be slaves?
It's probably a waste of time, but okay, I will be kind enough not to delve into your ignorant slander, delusions, straw men and ad hominems.
Since anti-abortionists don't consider women as human beings possessing equal human rights (...) A right to life without right to agency is slavery. Do you understand that anti-abortionists want women to be slaves?
Let us come to the main issue. As I mentioned, this is a difference of importance, not all rights are equal and when there is a conflict one should prevail over the other. Although nothing is written it is easy in some cases, for example, the right not to be tortured is more important than the right to marry.
If for a moment you are able to consider the premise that fetuses are subjects of rights (say one of 42-week to make it easier), tell me, which is more important, the temporary and partial suspension of the right of agency or the right to life?
(I do not include slavery because I find it fucking absurd, as well as a trivialization of something very serious. You could have said something more coherent like reproductive freedom.)
This is not something like seeing the woman as property to be controlled, only considering the rights and interests of "both". Let us also not forget that it is a self-imposed situation, and the cases in which it is "imposed by third parties" abortion is allowed all over the world.
Thank you for making clear
ps: How is an unwanted pregnancy is a "self-imposed situation"? Is it your understanding that women are capable of parthenogenesis?
Sigh. As I guessed, your reading comprehension is nil and you are not capable of debate or simple mental work, you can only use fallacies. Well, at least I tried.
Fetus does not have the right to life. It's not a person, it does not have rights. Simple as that. People have rights, fetus does not.
Aha, we agree, at least until high fetal development and viability.
However, that's not my point, and it's a pity no one bothers to address it.
Regardless of the politics surrounding abortion, Facebook chat never claims to be encrypted nor secure. Users should be aware that their chats are available in this capacity and should also be aware that platforms like Signal exist which are encrypted and secure.
Facebook Messenger does actually offer an end-to-end encrypted service, though it's not the default setting.
Except it is encrypted, and pretty secure. That's not really related to the issue. Facebook complied with a subpoena as they are legally required to do so. Signal would have to do the same. The only difference there is that Signal doesn't retain decryption keys for your data so subpoenaing them would be pretty pointless except to prove that some conversation happened.
They're exploiting the fact people don't know how it works. They see "https", they think cops can't see anything
The takeaway from this article, IMHO, isn't "Facebook did something terrible" so much as "when you live in a world where the government is terrible, services which compromise your privacy can be exploited against you." It no longer becomes a matter of "advertisers have access to my intimate details" but "people with the power to jail me unjustly have access to my intimate details."
I mean, it's reprehensible for Facebook to have done that, but we kind of never expected them to be the good guys. It's more "the compromise of our basic privacy is more dangerous than you might have thought when it was just being used to advertise to us."
Uh, did you miss this part?
"Since the reversal of Roe, Facebook’s parent company Meta and other Big Tech companies have made lofty promises about defending access to reproductive healthcare,” Caitlin Seeley George, managing director of nonprofit Fight for our Future, said in a statement. “At the same time, these companies’ hypocritical surveillance practices make them complicit in the criminalization of people seeking, facilitating, and providing abortions.”
legal != right
Read this somewhere "If something is banned in EU it likely violates human rights, but if something is banned in a republican state it probably is a human right."
:(