Comment by phillaholic@beehaw.org on Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1874605

A 17-year-old from Nebraska and her mother are facing criminal charges including performing an illegal abortion and concealing a dead body after police obtained the pair’s private chat history from Facebook, court documents published by Motherboard show.

We need to be clear here. Don’t hate Meta/Facebook for complying with a legal search warrant. That’s the law. Hate Meta/Facebook for having the ability to hand over private chat messages at all. End-to-End Encryption is the only answer. It’s not about trust, it’s about the ability.

End-to-End Encryption is the only answer.

With OpenSource, audited, and user-controlled software.

Any software that could be ordered by a third party (like Meta) to send the E2E keys to the server, while sending all the encrypted messaged through the same server, is not to be trusted.

This would be bigger news had they broken WA E2EE. Indeed, the officials might prefer not to disclose the capability if they had it and this wouldn’t have happened. (Except, maybe, via parallel construction.)

That’s the law.

Yeah, I don’t buy that, not when you have the obscene money and power that Meta has. They could have fought it and resisted, but they didn’t. This is the same company that literally just stole a trademark and absolutely nothing meaningful happened to them because of it.

You don’t buy that it’s the law?

not when you have the obscene money and power that Meta has. They could have fought it and resisted,

What you’re saying is because Meta is rich, they don’t have to obey the law?

What you’re saying is because Meta is rich, they don’t have to obey the law?

Anyone who’s rich in America doesn’t have to obey the law. That’s not a matter of opinion. There’s a clear and observable imbalance between the rich and poor in regard to the outcomes experienced in the American justice system.

Yes, that is what is happening. But that’s not what I’m asking. I know there’s imbalance between the rich and the poor in the justice system. What I’m asking is, is that how it should be?

You’ve accepted that as an acceptable thing that rich people/companies don’t have to obey the law, and that rich people/companies obeying the law is a bad thing? Because what you’ve said above is that because Meta is rich, so they shouldn’t obey the law.

is that how it should be?

No, you’ve accepted that rich people/companies don’t have to obey the law. (Or, at least, that’s the tenor of your commentary.)

Therefore it needed to said that, no, they don’t have to obey the law. They’re complicit in the corruption that’s forcing this young woman to account for an abortion that should already be legal, at least in a just society.

They could have said okay here you g… oooops jeez it’s gone. Wow how did that happen. Oh well.

They’re a branch of the government at this point. Call it investing in avoiding the kind of scrutiny they should have been under the moment they started psychological experiments on the public.

They admitted to it but I don’t see Zuck the fuck in jail do you?

I’m sure there were plenty of strategies, but we all know that the justice system for a mega-corporation in America is way, way different than the justice system for a poor or middle class individual, so it’s laughable to me that anyone would look at this scenario, shrug, and pretend that Meta didn’t have any recourse in order to do the right thing.

Yeah it’s not even a discussion whether they could fight something like a subpoena, and even companies that would like to sometimes can’t afford to do it. But Facebook practically works for them, they seem to have some kind of arrangement behind the scenes - if not an out and out partnership. They are glad and willing always to provide the government with everything they ask for.

Maybe this is how Zuck the schmuck has stayed out of jail for the shit he’s done; maybe he’s worth far more being their espionage tool.

Between them and Amazon just collecting data and handing it over to any TLA that wants it.

Facebook supports E2E encrypted chats but you have to enable it, similar to Telegram. Whatsapp uses E2EE by default.

Hate american legislative / politics instead? Don’t hate the player, hate the game?

You’re right. e2ee is a good thing.

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Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges(www.theverge.com)

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