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.

  • mochi@lemdit.com
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    1 year ago

    Well, don’t use Facebook to talk about doing things that are illegal. Why do people not use common sense?

  • LeZero@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    To the people shitting on the idea of a default defederation with Meta, how about we deferedate not because it will affect us as posters but because they are evil pieces of shit?

    • b3nsn0w@pricefield.org
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      1 year ago

      yeah, the difference is pretty stark:

      • lemmy: we’ll give you a way to dm anyone on site, but please don’t use that, if you set up an app on this other open source service we’re not affiliated with (which is basically an encrypted discord) we’ll do our best to make it as seamless for you as possible. we’ll keep warning you for your own privacy.
      • meta/facebook: aggressively keeps you on-platform for spying purposes; literally killed xmpp a decade ago and they’ll fuckin do it again (if we let them)

      They trust me. Dumb fucks.

      - Mark Zuckerberg

      (yes it sounds like satire but that’s a real quote)

      • bluejay@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

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

        • triarius@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          It was Google, they Embraced, Extended, and Extinguished it with Google Chat. Then they killed that themselves.

          • triplenadir@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            correction: it was both! fedbook chat also supported xmpp at first, they never federated but you could at least use it with a jabber client. then when they had enough market share they killed it.

            fun semi related fact is that whatsapp, at least a couple of years ago, was using modified ejabberd (ie an xmpp server) as the backend - so arguably they helped with EEE too.

      • nLuLukna @sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • b3nsn0w@pricefield.org
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          1 year ago

          yep, it’s important that we have this capability, but it’s also nice that unlike other platforms that do their best to lock you in, lemmy actively pushes you toward a safer alternative

            • b3nsn0w@pricefield.org
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              1 year ago

              Matrix, which is pretty much an encrypted and open-source Discord clone (at least in the same fashion as Lemmy would be a Reddit clone). I personally use Element to interact with it and have a matrix.org account, but Matrix is just like the fediverse, you can choose any instance or client you want, or even host an instance yourself. In your Lemmy settings you can set up your Matrix user, right below your email address as of 0.18.1, and if you do, a new buttons saying “send secure message” will show up on your profile, next to “send message”, which will redirect people trying to message you to Matrix.

      • Steeve@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • bogdugg@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Some game-of-telephone misinformation originating from this article - though it has gone from Google killed it (which this article states), to it was a protocol that allowed Facebook and Google to communicate and then got killed, to Facebook killed it.

          • b3nsn0w@pricefield.org
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            1 year ago

            my understanding was that while google is the main culprit, facebook and google both played a big part in killing it. but since we’re discussing meta/facebook here, and they’re not blameless, i focused on that.

            but yeah, fuck google too.

            • Steeve@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              they’re not blameless

              I think we should try to do better here and provide actual reasoning to our statements instead of unbridled rage, regardless of the topic, because this isn’t valuable content. I work in an adjacent industry and I believe that a lot of what people have said lately about this topic is overly sensationalized and I don’t mind discussing it, but “fuck Meta/Google because they’re evil” is subjective as hell and gets us nowhere except back to Reddit culture.

              This discussion pyramid was a good post from the other day:

              https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b48a0a91-c7a3-4cc5-a117-6deceedde205.png

              Your comments are “ad hominem” at best.

              • b3nsn0w@pricefield.org
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                1 year ago

                Saying distrust is an ad hominem is one of the takes ever, lol. And that’s what all of this boils down to, trust. Do we trust Meta with not exploiting all of our data, and turning it against us at the earliest opportunity? Do we trust Meta that they want to contribute to the fediverse, and not just hurt it because it’s a competitor?

                By the same logic, blocking or banning a person instead of vetting every post and comment of theirs would also be an ad hominem. But at the end of the day, it’s just practical. Meta has a long and not so proud history of being extremely anti-consumer, and shoving that track record under the rug, trying to absolve them of responsibility and consequences for their actions, under the thought-terminating cliche of an ad hominem is neither productive nor practical.

                Yes, people are mad at Meta, and yes, the distrust means their actions are scrutinized more than they otherwise would be, but that doesn’t mean that their actions aren’t actually massively anti-consumer, and that they aren’t a massive liability. In this particular case, you can make the argument that they had a legal obligation to hand over the data, had they not tried to build a walled garden with no privacy they wouldn’t have had the data to hand over to begin with.

                (also, unrelated: you can embed images using the ![](https://image_url) syntax, and you can even add alt text in the brackets to help users with screen readers)

                • Steeve@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  Saying distrust is an ad hominem is one of the takes ever, lol.

                  It is literally ad hominem, that is the definition. We aren’t discussing whether we can trust Meta or not, we’re discussing a specific topic.

                  By the same logic, blocking or banning a person instead of vetting every post and comment of theirs would also be an ad hominem.

                  It definitely is, but again, we aren’t discussing a person or an entity, we’re discussing a topic related to that person or entity. This isn’t a discussion on whether Meta should be defederated or not, frankly that’s simple, just join an instance that defederates with Meta or don’t, or build your own! There’s a ton of freedom here.

                  And I’m not saying ad hominem arguments can’t be used, but when an argument is entirely made up of ad hominem points while discussing a specific topic it isn’t a good argument.

                  Also, side note, as for trust I definitely don’t think we can trust corporate entities, but I also don’t think we can entirely trust the Fediverse as it exists already. We know there’s been an influx of bot accounts, moderation tools aren’t great yet, and every platform attracts bad actors.

                  (also, unrelated: you can embed images using the ![](https://image_url) syntax, and you can even add alt text in the brackets to help users with screen readers)

                  Thanks for the tip! Haven’t been able to get that working well here, I think I was missing the exclamation mark.

              • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Abstraction is a cancer to society. Their comment was not ad hominem, yours however is hairsplitting to give rise to a conflict that never existed. If you are trying to correct misinformation, you do not really seem that articulate in conveying your word.

                • Steeve@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  Fine, their comments are nonsense that aren’t based in reality and the Fediverse and it’s communities will suffer the fate of every other echo chamber shithole social media if it’s moderators don’t take action and make a conscious decision to tackle misinformation, regardless of whether or not it fits their personal bias. Better?

      • favrion@yiffit.net
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Just yesterday here on Lemmy, I mentioned the dangers of violating privacy, and some commenters went on about “what dangers?” Implying there were none…

    Is it not enough to gesture broadly?

    • DrQuint@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      At this point, they’ll just say “yeah, but these people did a crime. I don’t do crimes so I have nothing to worry about”. The problem with that mentality, I would hope, doesn’t need to be stated.

      I stopped trying to change the world.

      • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • brainrein@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          How do you know they committed a crime. After reading the article I don’t know. It looks totally as if it’s possible that she just had a miscarriage.

          Maybe there’s just a prosecutor eager for convictions.

          Maybe she was trying do avoid exactly this kind of trouble.

        • Milk@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          Also, there’s no general agreement or scientific pointing of where life and consciousness is started on a fetus so, if the government job is to conserve the life of a individual, a fetus life still matters and shouldn’t be taken by neither the parents or anyone else.

          Brazil (ironically enough) has a good constitution about about abortion where’s it is strictly prohibited unless some cases apply like: the baby has developed no brain, the baby has originated from a sexual assault case or the process of giving birth or the pregnancy itself represents a risk of death for the mother. It is simple, states that life’s have the same values as well as showing the individual rights matter.

          • MyEdgyAlt@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Why do you think a life created by sexual assault is less valuable than a life created otherwise? Isn’t the resulting life the same?

            Thinking this through might help you understand the tradeoffs behind most abortions. Pregnancy is dangerous, childbirth is dangerous, parenting is incredibly difficult.

            A child could push a family into poverty and devastate siblings’ futures. How do you evaluate the harm caused by that against the harm caused by being forced to carry a child produced by sexual assault?

            • Milk@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago

              It is not less valuable but the way it was created was against the individual rights of the mother.

              I agree abortion laws are about trade-offs as I showed in my example and that’s why abortion shouldn’t be legal in the cases I stated. Abortion shouldn’t be legal for anyone cause, if it was in a consensual relationship, the mother assumed the risk of pregnancy.

              The only lives that are less valuable are those which deliberately risk or take way the others’ lives.

              Also, thanks for being respectful.

              • Gabu@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                The only lives that are less valuable are those which deliberately risk or take way the others’ lives.

                By choosing to be alive, you’re impacting all present and future generations, causing the deaths of potentially billions of humans and countless other animals. Do you see how your attempted distinction doesn’t actually exist?

          • Gabu@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You’re joking, right? First, abortions aren’t mentioned in the Brazilian constitution - you’d have to look at specific legal codices, such as the Civil Code or the Penal Code. Second, that’s the bare minimum, not “pretty good”.

            • Milk@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago

              The objective is supposed to be to find the situations where abortion would be fair a fair trade-off of lives and rights, not to try to speedrun the abortion rank; it makes no sense you’re saying it is bare minimum when the objective is to reduce it as it is inherently bad.

    • Rhabuko@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Every country has the anti-abortion cancer movement and it wouldn’t surprise me if the shit gets more serious here in Europe too with the rise of far right parties. As a matter of fact you have only to look at Poland.

  • kevincox@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    People are getting all upset at Facebook/Meta here but they were served a valid warrant. I don’t think there is much to get mad about them here. The takeaway I get is this:

    Avoid giving data to others. No matter how trustworthy they are (not that Meta is) they can be legally compelled to release it. Trust only in cryptography.

    There is of course the other question of if abortion being illegal is a policy that most people agree with…but that is a whole different kettle of fish that I won’t get into here.

    • Hexorg@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      On one hand - yes Meta followed the legal requirement, but the bigger picture is that people always say “so what it’s just don’t do anything illegal”. But that’s only fine when legality matches morality. And the disparity has been growing lately.

    • IllNess@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      Completely right. This is an education issue.

      There are several other issues how these two handled this situation.

      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.

      Don’t discuss this or involve anyone else.

      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.

      Why are they even talking to police? Lawyer up, even if the lawyer is free.

      (E2EE is available in Messenger but has to be toggled on manually. It’s on by default in WhatsApp.)

      Facebook messenger and text message is the absolute worse way to discuss things like this. They should’ve at least turned on E2EE but they already admitted fault and their devices would’ve been taken away anyway.

      They seem like they together. They should’ve just discussed this in person.

      • magnetosphere @beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • MrFagtron9000@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Facebook doesn’t use e2e.

    There is a private chat e2e feature, but then your chats don’t show up on PC.

  • ghariksforge@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There is no way for these companies to say no to law enforcement. That is why you should stay away from corporate social media.

  • 0xEmmy@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    So either FB isn’t actually E2E, or their implementation is Twitter-grade broken.

  • ezmack@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Regardless of what you think about abortion laws people just gotta come to terms with the fact that your phone and computer are not reliable partners in crime

  • Mikina@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    I’m almost certain that if something like this happened to any fediverse instance - that a local police enforcement would contact the admin and asked for user’s data, which they are required by law to provide or they would go to jail/get a hefty fine and possibly a criminal record, they would do that too. That’s also why E2E is required, to prevent such problems for instance admins - but then again, there’s really nothing you can do against local law, and if it requires that you have to be able to cooperate, well… Then there’s not much the admin can do, without putting himself in a real risk of prosecution, because he is breaking the law by have E2E.

    That’s also a good reason to be careful when selecting your home instance, and making sure that you choose one in a country that has all right laws in that regard.

    Of course, that’s assuming the police makes contact. I don’t suppose that the admins would be searching through the DMs of people to snitch on them. And if Meta is doing that preemtively and is actively snitching on people - that’s downright evil.

  • Technomancer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    She aborted at 28 weeks. That’s nearly 6 and a half months pregnant. Most babies can survive outside the womb when they’re around 22 to 23 weeks. This was a baby, not some tiny fetus.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I was born decades ago and 2 months early; in the glass box for weeeeks to beat the 11% survival-at-all stats.

      Having said that, IT’S STILL NOT FACEBOOK’S BUSINESS as a conveyor and not a filter.