Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges

The Lemmy DM is imo actually quite important. If I want to get in touch with someone about a post, nothing more. It is an easy option, and serves a purpose. It isn't imo meant to be used for anything else.

I mean I agree with Zuck on that one.

Was it Facebook that killed xmpp or Google? Legitimately asking because I've always seen that blamed on Google.

literally killed xmpp a decade ago

This was Google/Alphabet.

That was a quote from 13 years ago when he didn't know how massive his enterprise would become. People change.

As for him, he became more evil.

How on earth did Meta kill XMPP, where is that even from lol. They didn't even have a standalone messaging app until 2011, which is after Google Talk dropped support for XMPP.

General Hux!

Do you have to run your lemmy instance in the US?

Maybe do it in a less backward place

Lemmy promotes using Matrix, which is a separate service, so instance admins don't need to be in the business of hosting private conversations.

Matrix is end-to-end encrypted so even the admins of your Matrix server could not provide your chats to law enforcement.

Complying with the law is less of an issue than keeping that data accessible in the first place.

I totally agree with your sentiment... However they don't have a choice. They are legally obligated to turn that information over if they are served a warrant. Doing anything less is obstruction at the very least and they could be shut down and put into receivership.

The fault here is with the two individuals trusting a corporation to keep data private and to put the individuals interests ahead of the corporation. Neither is a realistic expectation.

If some fuckstick from Nebraska asked me to snitch on my users for something which isn't a crime in my state, I would simply tell them to fuck themselves, go ahead, and try to have me extradited. If my instance were bordering on a trillion dollars market cap, I'd hire a fucking lawyer.

What good is that bloated userbase if it's just dead or abandoned accounts? If anything, they are more likely to just ctrl + C > ctrl + V their users as well as their privacy policy on their client, which doesn't really help anyone. Besides, can facebook really be trusted to play by the rules?

I once heard that "Anyone can be charged with a crime if they can be watched closely enough for long enough."

This is the perfect example of why you should be worried. Because your government can turn into a fascist dictatorship at any time and you ain't getting that data back.

I agree that these people did a crime.

I just don't think their crime should be illegal.

If this was about murdering a full-grown adult and not aborting a fetus, nobody would be talking about privacy concerns. Guaranteed.

I agree with you, but I don't think I could explicitly state what's wrong with that mentality. Can you humor me and state it?

Edit: can someone else take a shot at it? Tge parent comment is essentially saying "people will counter with X, but everyone knows that doesn't make sense". It's clear that something is wrong with that mentality, but it obviously would have a very real benefit of stating it's flaws since the whole premise of this is that some people don't know what's wrong with that mentality.

Good luck with that. The way voting works in the US basically guarantees a 2-party race. With only 2 parties you end up having policies grouped into these huge bundles, so making an actual decision on any particular issue is incredibly difficult. (Unless you are a billionaire and want to lobby a party for a law)

Granted, I’m lucky enough never to have been arrested or questioned about a crime. I don’t know how difficult and manipulative interrogations are outside of what I’ve seen on TV. Even still, I’m amazed by and critical of people who talk to the police without a lawyer present.

Even if you think (or know) you’re guilty, that doesn’t mean you should let the system have its way with you.

I understand what you are saying but I don't think that having every company coming up with their own definition of morality is the right solution. The only goal of these companies is to create profit, and I doubt that their definition of morality will be overall beneficial.

While whatsapp is using e2e encryption it is still owned by meta, as such I trust it just as much as plain facebook messenger. Signal ftw.

Fwiw, Messeger does have e2e encryption, just opt in only afaik. Whether or not you trust meta with that is another matter, but it is there.

We'll keep saying that can't happen here right up until it happens

Women's reproductive rights are strongly supported in Canada, but that doesn't stop one of the main national parties playing coy with a commitment to not reopen the debate.

To be fair, it seems most Americans support women's reproductive rights as well, with a referendum in Kansas passing with 59%.

It's gerrymandering and the Supreme Court that are changing things down there.

This isn't purely anti-abortion pearl clutching in this instance. Where this occurred it is perfectly legal to have an abortion into the 20th week of pregnancy.

Fetuses are viable outside the womb at 24 weeks.

They killed the fetus with meds at 28 weeks, the pregnant 17 year old still went through labor (with no medical supervision due to how they chose to do this), they burned he remains, and then buried them on a farm.

"Less hopeful", maybe?

I mean yeah it should but you gotta follow the old saying "don't write when you can speak, don't speak when you can nod, don't nod if you can wink" or whatever. You have an expectation of privacy when sending physical mail for example, but it's still a bad idea to put a crime in writing if you don't have to. Even if it can't legally be used as evidence it can be read. We've seen that with 'parallel construction' from law enforcement

It should be, I fully agree, unfortunately we live in a digital panopticon.

Law enforcement will knock on the doors of Fediverse servers and there will need to be some monetary fund for legal fees.

EDIT: I though you are replying to the comment about just hosting single-user instances, and assumed that you meant that if everyone had their own single use private instances, it would be against the fediverse idea. Sorry about that.

I wouldn't say that's making the fediverse private - it's only making my personal account and data about what I visit private. That's what the ActivityPub protocol is for, and the more I think about it, the more I hope that some kind of app would show up - one that would be designed to just act as a personal front-end for the Fediverse, which would allow you to interact as a user from your instance with others, but also one that would keep all of your data, which are currently at mercy of your instance admins, at your personal instance.

Of course, you still need people to host instances that are actually made for communities and content, and that's what Lemmy or Mastodon is designed for - but I'd like to see a Fediverse app that isn't made for hosting content, but only for letting you interact with other instances. There's no drawback - quite the contrary, instance admins don't have to deal with and take care of my private data, because my instance is handling all of that, while I still will be providing content for their instance. I think that definitely fits into the idea of what Fediverse should be.

The only thing I'm not sure about yet is if it's possible - if I create a Post on an instance that's not my home, who is hosting the data? Do I only send ActivityPub Create Post with the data and the instance then saves it, or do I create the post on my own instance, send an ID, and if someone requests the Post data on the instance I posted to, it will be requested from mine? Because if it's the first one, then such a client that only implements DMs, your own user account, and a frontend for showing posts on other instances would be doable. And definitely something important, because it solves the biggest privacy issues of Lemmy right now. I see no drawback in that - the only data I would not be in control of are the ones I post to other instances, but that's ok. And even if you would be the one hosting it, all it means is that it would be a little bit harder do host it yourself.

Also, if I understand the ActivityPub right, if you're ok with not getting notifications or DMs, your personal instance wouldn't even need to be online at all times, since you only request data about communities and posts when you are browsing. But this would depend on whether the content and comments are hosted at your instance, or at the instance you are commenting or posting to.

I really like this idea. And from what I've seen of the ActivityPub protocol, it should even be that hard, aside from the UI.

Hmm, that actually sounds like a great idea. Does it actually need to be reachable from the outside, if you don't want to host any of your own communities on it? Or will it be enough for the instance to just pool data? Apart from no-one being able to contact you via DM, that is.

I'll look into it, having my own home instance actually sounds pretty easy and it may work.

Actually - wouldn't it even be possible to build a browser extension for that? One that just simulates ActivityPub calls, and you just browse on someone else's instance without logging in while still allowing you to comment or vote on your behalf?

EDIT: I've posted some more thoughs about it to another comment, which I assumed was a reply to this one. The more I think about it, the more I really like the idea of a self-hosted front-end for Fediverse apps that doesn't host communities, but only user interactions and allows you to interact with other apps and instances.

The federation API isn't using E2E either. It makes no difference if you use your mobile client to contact the mobile API or if you're hosting your own instance to use the federation API in safety regards. You should always be aware that every message / post / image you publish (even in a closed group) in the internet could be traced back to you and with enough afford be available to anybody with the right skills.

Only end to end encryption can help you there - this is the way.

Is this practical? How technically difficult is it? What are the hardware requirements?

Have you heard of the CLOUD act?

How do communication apps get away with E2E in the US then? Is there a backdoor that allow for companies to comply or does law enforcement seek alternative means of obtaining the information?

1984 indeed..

However, private chat messages are only one component in a whole range of digital evidence that is likely to be used by police to prosecute illegal abortions in the United States. Investigators will be able to request access to many data sources, including digital health records, Google search history, text messages, and phone location data.

Obligatory:

A racist, a snitch, a plagiarist and a rapist walk into a bar. The bartender asks: "How's the new book coming mr. Orwell?"

1684

The article:

Court and police records show that police began investigating 17-year-old Celeste Burgess and her mother Jessica Burgess after receiving a tip-off that the pair had illegally buried a stillborn child given birth to prematurely by Celeste. The two women told detective Ben McBride of the Norfolk, Nebraska Police Division that they’d discussed the matter on Facebook Messenger, which prompted the state to issue Meta with a search warrant for their chat history and data including log-in timestamps and photos.

From Motherboard (where you also can read court documents):

The state’s case relies on evidence from the teenager’s private Facebook messages, obtained directly from Facebook by court order, which show the mother and daughter allegedly bought medication to induce abortion online, and then disposed of the body of the fetus.

According to court records, Celeste Burgess, 17, and her mother, Jessica Burgess, bought medication called Pregnot designed to end pregnancy. Pregnot is a kit of mifepristone and misoprostol, which is often used to safely end pregnancy in the first trimester. In this case, Burgess was 28-weeks pregnant, which is later in pregnancy than mifepristone and misoprostol are recommended for use. It’s also later than Nebraska’s 20-week post-fertilization abortion ban, which makes allowances only if the pregnant person is at risk of death or "serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function." (Nebraska’s abortion laws have not changed since Roe v Wade was overturned).

Thanks for adding some nuance that people might miss if they just read the headline. This girl broke some long established abortion laws by aborting at 7 months like you said. She is definitely in the wrong here.

At the same time, I don't like meta for violating people's privacy and working with law enforcement. Make law enforcement do their own jobs.

Still, I don't feel sorry for them. These women definitely dug their own hole. You think it would be obvious to people by now to not talk about illegal things on any social media, especially meta.

Why should we continue birthing children when we already have so many that are insufficiently cared for?

If you, personally, would assume responsibility for this child, great, but otherwise leave it up to the individual.

It's disgusting to wish on women that they should lose the rights to their own bodies that easily.

It’s not your decision and should not be the government’s. Only the pregnant person and their doctor matter. Possible input from their parents and/or other potential-parent of the fetus.

You’re giving away your right wingery too easily. When you call a fetus a baby, red flag, but sometimes people just use that (if the fetus is an intended pregnancy and the parent(s) plan to actually have a child, usually). So, in the interest of debate-bro “good faith,” ok.

Referring to abortion as disgusting. Well, that pretty much just ruined anything else you had to say. I bet open heart surgery or getting your arm reset after breaking can be pretty disgusting to most of us who aren’t used to such things. They’re all still medical procedures and their disgustingness or not is completely irrelevant to outsiders to the procedure. And if you’re simply disgusted at the idea of the procedure being done, that meaning, well one choose better words and two, yeah, that’s just reactionary mindset creeping in and spewing out your little fingers. At the end of the day whatever little nuggets of shit were implanted into YOUR brain as a child (such as “abortions are only valid until X arbitrarily decided date”) are irrelevant to the world and to this completely other human being seeking a medical procedure. Long story short: it’s none of your fucking business. A fetus is NOT a baby or a child and you’re purposely wrongly using the word to conflate the two. Again… right wingery…

Prosecution is not warrant for a seeking to obtain medical procedures. This isn’t the year 1647. Please fucking stop.

If you were discussing a purely rhetorical topic on “the moral and ethics of abortions and when they’re done” maybe you’d have some valid points and perhaps, because my brain was also rotted by arbitrary religious deadlines growing up, I’d be inclined to agree with hypothetical “if it were MY gf/wife, I’d want…” whatever to happen. But at the end of the day this isn’t our partner, it wasn’t our body, we aren’t doctors involved in the decision, we aren’t the person’s parent(s), we aren’t fucking Jesus or whatever. It’s not our decision to make, it’s no one’s but the person with the fetus under the care of a qualified physician. Who, btw, very well might be, and I’d assume probably was, advising towards birth and then surrendering for adoption. But it’s not their decision either. Just one single person gets that right with some important advisors along the way. We are none of those people, so, we and the government should probably fuck off forever.

And Zuck can completely fuck himself. Not even going to rant on that because corporations bending over and spreading fully for the government at the slightest hint of a request for private data has been happening for decades. They’re morally bankrupt cowards. Even protected from personal legal liability (by their corporations, which do provide that, unfortunately in most cases) they won’t even attempt to stand up for privacy rights if nothing else. Gross.

I never said I was comfortable with it, but you clearly missed the point I was making.

Worry about what data is being harvested in your own country where a law change can suddenly put you in danger of being arrested before worrying about China having some of your data.

Is it bad how much data the Chinese govt get from you using apps like Tik Tok or phones made by Huawei? Sure, but the threat is a lot closer to home than you think as this article shows.

China spying is a problem for your government, your government spying is your problem.

We don’t even know if she had an abortion. May she had a miscarriage and was just trying to avoid what’s happening now, being accused of having had an abortion.

Now that sounds a lot like theocratic hellscape…

I've taken the liberty of re-reading the article and have some things to point out 1. the girl was 17, a literal child, something you seemed to forget in your comment 2. You mentioned that she wanted to wear jeans again and that that was the motive, but the word 'jeans' wasn't even mentioned, which makes me wonder if you're tampering with anything in your comment coming from the article. All that considered you have a good point with some things such as in this specific situation such as them confessing to conspiracy was not a good idea, but I will still say use something end to end encrypted when doing something like this.

commenting that she couldn’t wait to be able to wear jeans again.

Where was that in the article? I missed it.

This is really interesting (and awful) context.

This isn't a simple "my body my choice" type situation.

You cannot be convicted for an action that was made illegal after you comitted it.

That was not my point. The point is, if the tech for mass surveillance is already in place and the laws change to more authoritarian or even just more dumb, it will be harder to escape those.

“I have nothing to gain from sharing my life with them”.

That is obvious not true, otherwise people would not be using social media.

I am sure that they didn’t hand over the chat logs for free

They handed over the chat logs in response to a court order to do so. The gov't didn't pay them. They forced them.

It's kind of stupid to think that one side would use it and the other wouldn't. Just because they aren't destroying your privacy for this purpose doesn't mean left leaning politicians wouldn't use your data for their own clandestine reasons.

If there were actually end to end encryption on the messages, they wouldnt have the ability to decrypt the messages for the government when asked. So either A. Meta lied about their encryption, or they are lying about storing users passwords which is arguably worse as many use passwords for multiple uses even when we know we shouldn't. If Meta is required to not use encryption then once more I agree users should not use them for any personal messaging. Which is what it sounds people are preaching against here.

You can use adb to uninstall those kinds of baked in apps. Its completely fucked up that you need to though.

Nope, S23 Ultra unlocked here, no Facebook on device.

There were some Samsung and google apps but that's it

I believe thats just part of the service provider bloatware packages that come preinstalled into the OS. You have to root the phone and do a clean install without the bloatware to get rid of it. Its annoying as hell and I think its stupid that these companies can preinstall anything on these phones.

Not so. Unlocked is Facebook free. Blame your carrier

This isn't correct or at least it isn't a universal issue. My Samsung Galaxy 21+ doesn't have Facebook on it, disabled or otherwise.

Actually that page suggests that they can't access it. They'd never passed the security on it if that page was lying and they don't encrypt it. Clearly there must be some kind of mechanism they can use to decrypt it for law enforcement. The technicals of that are what I was actually interested in from my original comment.

EDIT: Oh my God I just figured it out. It's not enabled by default. You have to explicitly turn it on per conversation. That's terrible

And on the official app it isn't called end to end encryption or even a setting toggle. It's called secret chat and clicking on it opens a chat from the original chat. The only difference I see is a little lock icon where an emoji usually is.

I live in a third world country with a crumbling infrastructure, shitloads of violence and crime, a rapidly rising cost of living, crap working opportunities and corrupt government.

Americans live in a first world country where it seems more and more like most of the problems I mentioned are somehow worse there and the ones they haven’t got yet are on the horizon.

I used to think it would be my future home. Now I’m looking for literally anything other than the US/China.

I read the article at a glance, to be fair. Iirc the pair live in one of the many states where abortion itself is now criminalised, so there was no way to deal with this “without a fuss”.