I’m following several privacy focused communities. Mostly as lurker but in few I’m more active. Every time I see a posts like “how to be more private”, I wonder about the reasons behind those questions. What’s the reason you want to remain private (don’t confuse it with being anonymous)? Could you elaborate on your reasons?
Let me start.
I worked (and still working) in a highly regulated industry as a software/devops engineer. I’ve been working with banks, insurance companies, global online payment companies, major credit card vendors, few global corporations. I have seen how data is gathered and (mis)used. Every time someone tells me “I’m sorry but the system…” I know it’s the data gathered by the “system” and my profile created based on that data was the reason for “but”. This is why I care about the privacy, to prevent companies from taking advantage of my current situation and charge me more.
I’m sorry, but that’s private.
Law enforcement used Facebook private messages to investigate and prosecute a woman for an “illegal abortion”. This is not a hypothetical, this happened.
I care about my privacy because I don’t want right-wing weirdos and perverts incarcerating me for controlling my own body.
There are more reasons. This is just the one most recently in the news as a glaring red flag real-life example.
Uhhh… if that’s the situation that blew up on lemmy shortly after the reddit API-pocalypse, that specific one probably isn’t something you want to rally behind.
That situation occurred in Nebraska, before the messy Roe v Wade repeal. At the time, abortions were 100% legal and available until the end of the 20th week (5th month) of pregnancy, far past the point that anyone shouldn’t be aware they are pregnant.
Beyond that, fetuses are considered viable outside the womb at 24 weeks (6 months). They show clear signs of conciousness before this point.
This woman waited until week 28. Two months past the point it could have been done legally and safely by a doctor. One month past the point of being viable to survive outside the womb. No US state has ever allowed abortions that late into the pregnancy.
The way she performed the abortion was to take medicine to kill the fetus. She still had to go through the normal process of labor and delivery (of the stillborn) afterwards, without any medical assistance. She and her mother then burned the stillbirth and buried it on a farm.
At that moment, if she had had labor induced, she could have went through the same process in a safer manner, and given the resultant baby up for adoption. She had roughly two months left until she would have given birth naturally. Going through labor in the manner that she did does not sidestep any of the postpartum medical and health stuff that happens after a normal pregnancy either.
This also ignores all of the many contraceptives available to help prevent pregnancy in the first place as well.
The only change was causing extra danger to herself, two months of time, and whether or not a living baby existed at the end.
She and her mother discussed their plans at length on Facebook messenger, before Facebook implemented end to end encryption. One of the last comments is of the woman stating she couldn’t wait to wear jeans again.
When questioned by police, they admitted to their actions, and admitted to discussing it on Facebook messenger. That is the reason the cops even got the subpeona for the chat logs. They told the cops where to look for evidence of their crime, and the cops followed normal investigative protocol.
Don’t talk to cops.
Privacy is important, but that was not the narrative of some downtrodden freedom seeker’s rights being infringed upon by regressive right wing policy, the surveillance state, or anything else that a lot of people took it to be.
Those details are unnecessary for this conversation. Cops used Facebook private messages to build a case to prosecute an illegal abortion.
They have established the process and the precedent, next time it will be a woman only 5 months pregnant. Or who has an ectopic pregnancy and is past six weeks. Or was raped. Or isn’t in a financial situation suitable for raising a child. Or simply doesn’t want a child. It doesn’t matter the details, cops have and will use private messages to prosecute women getting abortions.
The arguments that “because of her one comment about wanting to wear jeans again means she was just a careless, shallow woman who didn’t want to take responsibility for her actions and got what she deserved” is a load of crap. Not saying you are doing that solely, but that is not a good argument for not caring about privacy.
You’re welcome to your opinion, but I feel the bolded section is distinctly relevant.
If you want privacy, don’t admit to a crime and tell the cops where to find the evidence. Privacy starts at home with proper OPSEC.
That’s the story. It has very little to do with the specific crime committed.
The cops did as the cops do: if they are given a lead, particularly by the perp themselves, they investigate. To not do so would be to not do their job.
There was no new precedent here. This was not some brand new enforcement of a new law, and the chats were not the definitive evidence in the trial. Cops using Facebook chat transcripts were likewise not something newly established in this case.
The rest is me emphasizing that this lady was not a martyr, with the jeans comment being the least damning part of it all. Meant as a lead up to the bold.
She overwhelmingly had the ability to do what she needed to do, safely and legally. That has to mean something. And if it doesn’t mean shit to you, I know for a fact it means something to the people who want to take your reproductive rights away, or to ignore the very real dangers you’re worried about.
That said this is not the first step down that slope that you’re acting like it is, and it is not some datapoint on a downward trend towards what you are afraid of. This is a intersection of already existing problems that someone thought they could spin for clicks and emotion bait, and it overwhelmingly worked.
Stay safe, take steps to prevent ending up in that situation, only discuss dangerous shit using safe protocols, and for fuck’s sake don’t tell the cops where the evidence is.
Don’t want to be a devil’s advocate here but nowadays it’s left-wing weirdos that use publicly available data to cancel people they don’t agree with. Let’s keep personal political views out of this discussion.
As for the first paragraph, I vaguely remember reading about this. And this is a great example.
You’re the one who brought in a personal political view, and basic history realize your claim, which is why you didn’t actually cite any.
I mean, what’s a good example of cancer culture? If some white guy says something horribly racist, and then he loses an election, he complains about cancel culture. But that’s a good thing, because we don’t want racist bastards in office. Of course he doesn’t see it that way. So he looks for some new term to describe the phenomenon, some way to make himself a victim.
The term itself was created by right wing people who decided to deploy it against those they didn’t favor, as an excuse to justify their own bigotry, but the idea of public shaming and goes back centuries if not millennia. Quite naturally, the establishment has a strong interest in public shaming if it will keep them around longer.
Example: Terry Crews speaking out about his own experiences with sexual assault. Also him calling for black men to step up and be father figures in communities lacking them.
You can argue that he wasn’t truly “cancelled”, but he drew a lot or fire for those. People claiming that he was somehow taking away from womens’ experiences by speaking about his own, and people saying that his statements about a lack of father figures in the African American community was racist.
It’s not just white people wanting excuses to be racist. Just mostly that.
- Feeling clean
- Not being exploited
- Minimalism
- Less power drain
- Less data sent
- Freedom
- Everything works better and faster
- I hate spying because they can
- To be honest also because most people don’t care
The only con is convenience.
It’s kinda like this. Say you lead the most boring, law abiding, square life, top 20% of the bell curve in that zone.
Would you want strangers in your house, even if they couldn’t technically touch or take anything? Would you want them in your spouse’s closet? Your kid’s room? Looking in your fridge?
Creepy and “hell no”, right?
That’s what privacy is about. The right to lock your door against strangers snooping.
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
From Cardinal Richelieu
Combine this with the fact that entities which have access to our data rarely have our best interest in heart. Governments change, the political climate changes, and people change. What’s honest and just today may not be next decade.
Also, people change over time, and more and more of our lives are ending up online earlier and earlier.
Do you really want some stupid “hot take” you were passionate about as a teenager effecting how someone sees you a decade or more down the line?
Everyone deserves the right to change their mind and not have old beliefs hang around their neck forever.
