Nebraska Mom pleads guilty to abortion after Meta gives DMs to cops

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 357 points –
Mom pleads guilty to abortion after Meta gives DMs to cops
theregister.com

Facebook messages, obtained via valid warrant, help make case against women

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Important to note that police only sought the warrant after the women mentioned to them that they had talked on Facebook messenger about it.

Never talk to the police.

Also never trust a message is private unless you've at minimum encrypted it. Facebook, Twitter, reddit, even here.

Nothing here is private. At the very least, your messages are stored unencrypted on both the sending and receiving servers, and are completely readable to instance admins.

Yup. If it isn’t E2EE, don’t trust it.

If you’re on Apple, use iMessage or a reputable dedicated encrypted messaging app (not WhatsApp). If you’re on Android, likewise use a dedicated encrypted messaging app or make sure that you and your recipient are both using the same Google Jibe RCS implementation and have it on.

I don't fully trust Apple's claims because I feel they might have backdoors. I would trust only FOSS apps like Signal, Session, or Matrix.

Understandable to not trust a big corp. Apple does have a solid track record on encryption though and actively fighting against backdoors.

FOSS is generally the best choice though.

I'll trust them more if they are more transparent like Signal

https://signal.org/bigbrother/

They do have a transparency report they publish twice a year. The first one for 2022 should be out soon.

https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html

They also publish one for almost if not all countries they operate in.

It’s not as detailed as Signals but does detail all government requests they get.

As far as the encryption goes, keys are generated by the devices themselves and not Apple servers.

They also detail where the keys are stored for iCloud based on what protection you choose. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

And they’re fairly transparent on all the privacy features.

I wouldn’t trust them entirely if you’re a very high risk for breach like a journalist in hostile countries, but I also wouldn’t trust any off the shelf solution for that and would be running a heavily locked down privacy focused Android fork in that case.

The cross OS compatibility is an issue though and I use Signal for anyone on Android that I talk to.

Also if you don't trust either of the ends, it doesn't matter much if it is E2E.

Never trust a message is private unless you've at minimum end to end encrypted it and make sure both devices are not compromised.

Emphasis on "you've encrypted." If you don't have the keys its not safe. Imessage has great encryption but Apple will just hand over the keys if asked so its useless.

Apple doesn’t have the keys to it. That’s one of the major points of iMessage. Your keys are generated on device only. Apple can’t give what they don’t have. With the newer keychain stuff they’ve also made iCloud end to end encrypted as well, using keys generated on device, if you use advanced data security.

And if they would, they wouldn’t have gone to court over it when it was literal terrorists, the San Bernardino shooters a decade ago. They couldn’t turn over the keys to their iMessages because they didn’t have them and they went to court after they refused to put a back door in for the US government.

There’s a LOT to hate about Apple, but privacy so far hasn’t really been one of them. They’re pretty transparent about privacy features and how data is handled.

even if it's encrypted. if you don't want someone to find out about it.. don't talk about it online. you never know if the encryption really safes your ass in the worst case. there are cases where the police has deactivated or bypassed them without the user knowing about it.. or where they found the password.

here in germany the police hacked a server of a darknet drug market and deactivated the encryption and collected all the user passwords when you logged in. they collected data for almost a year and then screwed everyone over who used the service at that time.

never trust anyone or anything. if you want to keep a secret... don't post it online. even if it's encrypted.

Rule #1 When talking to the police, shut the fuck up. Rule #2 Ask for your lawyer. Rule #3 Shut the fuck up.

Use public key encryption programs like Open PGP or GNU Privacy Guard.

BUT you will want a program that is under active community development which releases regular updates to address any weaknesses or flaws as soon as they are developed , and ideally you want to be able to hand a copy to all trusted people you would like to securely communicate with.

Also worth noting the daughter was 4 months pregnant.

That seems pretty far along to be helping someone have an abortion without a doctor.

That’s what happens in red states that ban abortion. It becomes illegal to go to a doctor for it.

Banning abortion only makes women seek back alley abortions that are risks to their own lives.

Absolutely valid take, but that's not at all what happened here.


Some very important context in this case:

This was before Row v Wade was overturned, in a state where (red or not) abortion was not banned. At the time she could have had an abortion performed entirely legally up through 20 weeks of pregnancy.

There were hurdles such as required counseling explicitly and openly against abortion, having to wait 24 hours after declaring intent to abort to be able to perform it, and a likelyhood that insurance would not have covered it. That's some bullshit, but still not a ban.

There's no evidence that she made any attempt to do this the legal way, or was in any extenuating circumstances that would have made doing this the legal way impossible or more difficult.

Fetuses are viable outside the womb 24 weeks in. If she had taken meds to induce labor instead of to kill it, she could have put it up for adoption. Either way she still went through labor to pass the stillbirth.

She also openly stated that her reasoning for doing this was to be able to wear jeans again.

Also worth noting that there are incredibly few places in the world that allow abortions this late into pregnancy, so it's not just simply some republican/red/right or American thing going on. There's bigger reasonings behind the cutoff time. Not making any judgements on the validity, just that this is not some "murrica bad!" or "right wing, more like wrong wing" situation.


Look, abortion law is an absolute shit show, and a major problem in the US. Privacy is a big deal issue too. But this instance is not the great example of wrong that people and the headlines are making it out to be, and should not be used as such or as some sort of rallying point for pushes to improve the situation.

Don't incorporate shoddy shit like this case into the foundation for your arguments. Just makes it easy to get torn down. This is an anti-abortionist's dream case for people to point to, because it's so easy to make actually valid counter points to. I'm certain there's better cases to use as examples out there.

While that certainly is a valid point, saying she please guilty for having an abortion is a very misleading headline.