Facebook and Google hand over user data, help police prosecute abortion seekers

https://www.businessinsider.com/police-getting-help-social-media-to-prosecute-people-seeking-abortions-2023-2

by manwithaplan • 3 years ago

234 187 3 years ago

User chat logs and search history released by social media companies to police can be used to prosecute people for abortion, even when they are being investigated for other reasons.

lelanthran5• 3 years ago

User chat logs and search history released by social media companies to police can be used to prosecute people for abortion, even when they are being investigated for other reasons.

Firstly, can you even prosecute a woman for abortion? Aren't they legal?

Secondly, if the abortion is illegal, it's not unusual for the state to prosecute someone when the investigation of that person reveals other crimes.

What would you propose instead? That any evidence of secondary criminal activity uncovered during an investigation of the primary activity be ignored?

jeroenhd6• 3 years ago

Firstly, can you even prosecute a woman for abortion? Aren't they legal?

In case you've been living under a rock for the last while: several American states have banned abortions[0][1] after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade. The federal government failed to implement any laws to safeguard access to abortions so overturning Roe vs Wade was all that conservatives needed.

Some states have exceptions for rape and incest, some don't. Texas even offers a sizeable bounty for reporting abortions. This has already resulted in medical care being refused to women carrying stillborn children and other pregnancy complications fatal to either the mother or the child out of fear of prosecution.

As for secondary criminal activity: I agree, if the police finds other illegal acts during a legal investigation, they should be allowed to act on that. This is the proof that the whole "if you've got nothing to hide" narrative surrounding state surveillance is dangerous.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-ro...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law_in_the_United_Sta...

mulmen10• 3 years ago

You should do the bare minimum to familiarize yourself before wading in to this particular topic.

Abortion legality varies by state in the US. This is a recent development.

I wouldn’t expect to be prosecuted, or even investigated, for typing “how people get away with bank robbery” into Google. Or for watching The Dark Knight.

OkGoDoIt• 3 years ago

In the USA, abortions are now illegal in many states. This was a major change that took place last year.

DennisAleynikov• 3 years ago

We did it. We made the dystopia

euroderf• 3 years ago

Under His eye.

throwntoday2• 3 years ago

Abortions were a convenient way to keep women locked into the workforce. There could be no escape from wageslaving. Now that the population is in the shitter, they criminalize abortion.

joaonmatos• 3 years ago

Disingenuous. Contraception and abortions freed women from being locked into patriarchal family structures (see the thousands of years of history where women were passed from father, to brother, to husband with no choice in the matter).

Broken_Hippo• 3 years ago

Not entirely, but it is a contributing factor: Women aren't suck having children and stuck staying with some guy because she can't support herself. It isn't the only benefit nor the only outcome of having these - we've had different sorts of abortion and imperfect contraception for thousands of years. Women are still stuck in such societies. Safe contraception and safe abortions keep women from dying. Women are able to have fewer children, spaced further apart, making for healthier women and healthier children - even in such traditional societies, assuming folks have access to these things.

raverbashing2• 3 years ago

Exactly

For men, it was always "pro-choice", child support and paternity tests are a recent invention (and don't compare with how hard it is to raise a kid)

If men got pregnant you could have your abortion together with your haircut

psychphysic4• 3 years ago

That's at least a tertiary factor in "freeing" women.

1. The creation of domestic appliances that dramatically shorten house hold chores (washing clothing is a main one).

2. The move from the bulk of work labour being less physical.

Both meant there was less time needed to maintain a household, previously that was a full time job that seemed unpaid. And that women had suitable roles available in the work force where as manual labour would mean they likely couldn't compete with men for employment.

While society gained extra productivity from these changes, it's debatable if households gained financially as it was likely a powerful force in the mid century inflation.

I'd place centralised schooling in that list of things which freed up more labour. Contraceptives are recognised for this too, and I'm sure it lead to a sexual liberation at least.

concordDance10• 3 years ago

Indeed. A household with a single wage earner will have a lot more free time. Its not just cleaning and cooking, it's paying bills, organising holidays, going shopping, arranging events/parties, socialising with neighbours, taking kids places, birthday cards/presents, keeping up with local council issues to be able to vote sensibly... the list goes on.

Honestly, given where the productivity gains of women in the workforce went (not to the actual workers), we'd probably have a better quality of life if only half the household adults worked.

numbers_guy• 3 years ago

It shouldn't be up to Facebook/Google to decide what is a crime, nor in which cases wiretapping should be allowed.

Y_Y2• 3 years ago

And as far as I know it isn't. At least these companies certainly comply with lawful warrants. They may be more helpful in cases of their choosing (e.g. CSAM) but are they really expected to refuse when a court orders them to assist with an investigation on the basis that they (to the extent possible for a company) disagree with the law in question?

lelanthran5• 3 years ago

I wanted to reply to GP with something along these lines, but I could not tell what the GPs comment actually meant, it was too ambiguous.

It shouldn't be up to Facebook/Google to decide what is a crime, nor in which cases wiretapping should be allowed.

Could mean either:

1. FB/Google should be prevented from deciding what is and is not a crime. They don't set the laws.

2. FB/Google aren't setting the laws, so can't be blamed when complying with those laws.

Maybe it's my sleepiness, but I just cannot decide which of the two statements were intended by GP.

jeroenhd6• 3 years ago

Abortions are now a crime in several American states, close if not equal to murder. These companies just do what they've always done when it comes to murder cases: hand over the data when the authorities demand it through warrants. As they should, in theory.

Facebook and Google are not to blame here; they're simply doing what the law demands of them. These companies are not above the law, they cannot refuse warrants. Blame Nebraskan and American federal law for this situation.

With a bit of luck, this situation will make these companies put more priority into E2EE. Had these conversations been done through Signal, there was likely nothing to be found or handed over.

orra2• 3 years ago

Facebook and Google are not to blame here; they're simply doing what the law demands of them

The article disagrees:

One legal expert said social platforms may cooperate with police even if not legally required to.

Regardless, you are right these companies are morally culpable for not implementing E2EE.

heavyset_go2• 3 years ago

Abortions are now a crime in several American states, close if not equal to murder. These companies just do what they've always done when it comes to murder cases: hand over the data when the authorities demand it through warrants. As they should, in theory.

Companies just hand over data when simply asked, they don't even need a warrant.

timbit424• 3 years ago

E2EE doesn't mean your IP is hidden. Briar uses Tor to hide IPs as well.

croes3• 3 years ago

So if the Iranian government wants data, they should comply?

lelanthran5• 3 years ago

So if the Iranian government wants data, they should comply?

If they want to do business in a certain nation, they'll have to comply with the laws of that nation.

Are you proposing that companies be above the law? That they should be able to pick and choose which laws apply to them?

aww_dang5• 3 years ago

A better question might be, "Should they have data in this readily accessible format given the potential moral hazards?"

They could opt-out of being forced to comply with or defy authorities.

DeathArrow• 3 years ago

Aren't they handling user data for any other case of law breaking?

aww_dang5• 3 years ago

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/17/pakistan-asks-...

Pakistan asks Facebook and Twitter to help identify blasphemers
Companies approached in effort to locate Pakistanis at home or abroad so they can be prosecuted or potentially extradited

Semaphor• 3 years ago

Is this unexpected? Of course, they follow warrants, why wouldn’t they?

amelius• 3 years ago

Because they didn't support E2EE and homomorphic encryption.

PradeetPatel• 3 years ago

They never claimed that they support E2EE...

The users signed the EULA and know what their rights are.

supriyo-biswas2• 3 years ago

The Techcrunch article[1] (linked in TFA) mentions FB Messenger was used, which does not have E2EE.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/digital-data-roe-wade-repr...

lapcat10• 3 years ago

"An investigation by ProPublica found online pharmacies that sell abortion medication such as mifepristone and misoprostol are sharing sensitive data, including users' web addresses, relative location, and search data, with Google and other third-party sites — which allows the data to be recoverable through law enforcement requests."

"we also know that social media isn't likely to stand up to illegitimate law enforcement requests, because of the fact that they fear their own liability, or because of the fact that it's just too costly to stand up."

Barrin92• 3 years ago

Baffling to me that people still use Messenger. Not even switching the company is necessary, with WhatsApp at least they'd have message encryption.

dalanmiller• 3 years ago

I’d say most WhatsApp users don’t realize they are backing up to Google Drive in clear text.

aboringusername2• 3 years ago

This is key. Both parties need to trust that their messages are staying within the realms of WhatsApp itself, and with the usage of disappearing mode, not leaving any traces of a conversation.

They should probably be using encryption within the chat itself (and not, you know, speaking in plain English) to add another layer. Perhaps changing the keys frequently via an agreed method (thinking about how to do that safely without leaving another trace) to render older messages 100% undecryptable.

But yeah, chances are all of that data is going to be accessed and they agreed to it! It's right there in the privacy policy people don't bother reading

jeroenhd6• 3 years ago

For those using WhatsApp: you can actually encrypt the GDrive backups, and has been for a while now: https://www.androidpolice.com/whatsapp-end-to-end-encryption...

The default setting is still unencrypted backups, though.

croes3• 3 years ago

Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear.

Unless they change the laws and suddenly you have something to hide.

supriyo-biswas2• 3 years ago

This echoes my sentiment perfectly.

Discussions on surveillance and misinformation often involve people advocating for granting more power to the government to prosecute who they believe violate their value system, unless the value system somehow changes and now you become the criminal. As an example, this is why breaking E2EE with backdoors to stop pedophilia, revoking immunity to social platforms for users' speech and the like are bad ideas - some day your values will become abhorrent, and the same tools that you used against others will be used against you.

andybak2• 3 years ago

I remember when Schmidt came out with this line thinking the same thing.

But back then it seemed like a distant and improbable scenario - I objected to his statement more on point of principle than out of any realistic sense that it was things were going to get that bad in the near future.

Turns out they did.

(before anyone says it - yeah. Back then there were probably already enough examples of law enforcement overreach - not to mention the decades-long injustice of the "war on drugs". I need to learn to be more cynical)

eternalban• 3 years ago

But back then it seemed like a distant and improbable scenario

I am trying to understand this perspective. I was there and nothing seemed improbable or remote. The remoteness was merely a function of technical & economic conditions. Historic precedents, domestic and foreign, past or near present, all pointed the same direction, underlining high probabilities.

Pessimism is rarely the correct inclination, with the exception of questions concerning freedom, power, security, and control. It is appropriately rational to question and highlight worst case outcomes in such cases.

This same pattern is happening yet again ('surprise!') with generative AI. Maybe it is necessary to assure that 'yes, this technology is very cool' as red flags are raised.

It is a very simple thought, backed by unassailable historic evidence: Humans enjoy lording it over other human beings. We should never create systems that permit a tiny tiny subset to realize such base desires. A very simple idea, truly.

tbran• 3 years ago

Along the lines of surveillance I heard this one:

When you pass mass surveillance laws you are trusting the people in power now, but also the future people in power.

This framing can make you think about many laws differently.

CM30• 3 years ago

Yep. Too many people design systems (both technical and otherwise) under the assumption 'their team' will always be in control, and it'll be their enemies who suffer.

Or that hey, this power will never be abused because the system won't allow it, and those in control will always have our best interests in mind.

Don't collect more data than you have to, limit the power of any systems you implement, and always design things under the assumption your enemies will take control of it in future.

kornhole2• 3 years ago

Don't collect more data than you have to, limit the power of any systems you implement

That is basically the opposite of what these companies do, and their business models rely it.

Some people realize we live in a surveillance dystopia with corrupt government, and others have not yet realized it.

Shish2k2• 3 years ago

Don't collect more data than you have to, limit the power of any systems you implement, and always design things under the assumption your enemies will take control of it in future.

This is great advice if you want to design Good systems, but under barely-regulated capitalism, those who design Good systems will be out-competed and put out of business by those who design Profitable systems :(

dspillett3• 3 years ago

I have nothing to hide, beyond a bit of casual piracy, at least until laws change significantly, but people I care about might.

My distaste for corporate stalking is, if I'm perfectly honest, at least partly selfish feelings of discomfort in losing what privacy I still have, but it is mostly concern for what some will use information about others to enforce.

psychphysic4• 3 years ago

The only take away from this article is that somehow they could read the change logs.

Doesn't that fly in the face of metas own claims to not be able to?

BI seems to be implying that abortion shouldn't be treated as a crime in places where it is a crime.

unmole3• 3 years ago

WhatsApp is supposedly end to end encrypted. Does Meta claim anything similar about its other platforms?

mulmen10• 3 years ago

Is it really? I always assumed it was like Zoom end to end encryption where one of the “ends” is a Facebook data center. How can a user prove the claim of end to end encryption?

timbit424• 3 years ago

E2E encrypted doesn't mean they don't know who is messaging whom. If there is suspicious contact, can they request who contacted a pharmacy? Then they can ask the pharmacy why so-and-so contacted them.

A better option would be something like Briar which hides IPs via Tor.

lapcat10• 3 years ago

BI seems to be implying that abortion shouldn't be treated as a crime in places where it is a crime.

Abortion was explicitly legally protected for 50 years and only became a crime in some localities last year. There aren't many "crimes" like that.

decremental• 3 years ago

Slavery was once legal everywhere until it wasn't. It became illegal in some parts of the country but eventually it became illegal everywhere. Now we can look back and think how obvious it is that slavery is wrong.

Murdering the unborn was once legal everywhere until it wasn't. It became illegal in some parts of the country and will eventually become illegal everywhere. One day we will look back and think how obvious it is that murdering the unborn is wrong.

MacsHeadroom2• 3 years ago

Technically it was illegal the whole time in many places and the supreme court only last year recognized that they never had the power to prevent states from enforcing their own laws on the matter.

In states where it was illegal it may not even be ex-post-facto for them to prosecute for events that took place prior to last year's supreme court ruling.

Anyway, the real takeaway should be that businesses should not be collecting this kind of data in the first place. If they don't collect it, then they have nothing to turn over.

feeela• 3 years ago

Is this real? This sounds like a weird trip back into medieval times. Who is the head of that modern Inquisition?

LudwigNagasena• 3 years ago

What sounds like a trip into medieval times? Government control over corporations? Corporation oversight over private lives? Isn’t that what the new generation of enlightened and progressive people wanted?

fluxinflex5• 3 years ago

But wait, isn't that what was happening in medieval times: the church ruled over the peasants, the kings ruled over the states and everyone was happy living in a liberal and free world - well at least they believed that.

nurgasemetey• 3 years ago

What employees will think about their companies?

aboringusername2• 3 years ago

Although it probably sucks for the individuals at the receiving end of the scales of justice I believe this is an important public education campaign which will hopefully raise awareness of the scale and extent of data collection.

There seems to be a disconnect between data being collected from a terminal, how rich that data can be, and what it can be used for. If you use a digital keyboard your every keystroke can, and probably is being logged - we used to call this spyware, now even the keyboard app on your phone has clipboard sync (and it's built into Windows too!).

People need to be aware for example when activating javascript (and most don't know what that is), how much the various APIs are collecting and storing, which is used to build a "fingerprint" of your device.

The web (and digital devices in general) is actively hostile, anyone who uses noscript can attest to that and anyone who goes onto any news media website and opens "network" via web dev console can see how much data is flying to god knows where to do god knows what.

If you want to defy the state you need to be a master spy, this means actually thinking how you research, and probably learning a thing or two from Snowden (are you on wifi? open hotspot? is your device logging anything, if so, what? do you need to destroy the device afterwards incase it gets forensically inspected? If you could read /var/log what would be there and would it reveal anything about your situation? If you can't read /var/log then your device is actively hostile and not worth the risk).

Privacy is effort, and, in these cases, the 'seekers' are not spending enough effort on hiding their tracks and they are like fish in shallow water, easy pickings.

The ones who are clued up are not the ones who end up making the press, because they know exactly how to cover their tracks, and make it impossible to prove or disprove a fact, which, thankfully at least at this moment, is how justice works (for the most part).

f6v2• 3 years ago

Is the issue that Meta and Google comply with the law(turning in the data to crime investigators), or that the law itself is medieval? I mean, both are concerning in their own way. But the latter seems like a much much bigger problem.

diceduckmonk4• 3 years ago

comply with the law

What concerns you about this?

croes3• 3 years ago

Because they are good laws and bas laws, so some requests shouldn't be given in too easily.

mulmen10• 3 years ago

The only concerning thing to me is when tech companies volunteer information to LEO. They should at least demand a warrant.

fluxinflex5• 3 years ago

First came the data, then came the law.

That is the problem: we have nothing to hide until someone changes the law. Suddenly those things that were legal yesterday become the crimes of today.

psychoslave• 3 years ago

Nothing really. Here is the list of this ethnic people you want to eliminate in conformance with the law you just passed on mandatory abortion and sterilization, oh my great overlord. Congratulations for your successful putsch by the way.

concordDance10• 3 years ago

As long as there is diversity of people and jurisdictions the law will vary from place to place.

What is legal and acceptable in one place is illegal and abhorrent elsewhere.

Until we have a homogenous global population and one world government there will be laws you disagree with and wont want enforced.

Edit: Genuinely confused by the downvotes here. Anyone care to take the time to explain?

lapcat10• 3 years ago

As long as there is diversity of people and jurisdictions the law will vary from place to place.

You forgot from time to time. Abortion was legal in all of these places 1 year ago.

kevincox2• 3 years ago

I think this issue is that we are giving these companies the ability to reveal sensitive information about us.

We should rethink how we share our data and the costs that it has.

I don't think Meta and Google are to blame here. Other than encouraging us to give them our data unprotected (as well as trying to syphon up as much as they can get their hands on in the background).

dspillett3• 3 years ago

I don't think Meta and Google are to blame here. Other than encouraging us to give them our data unprotected (as well as trying to syphon up as much as they can get their hands on in the background).

That bracketed "as well as" is a 'king huge "other than".

Even your smaller "other than" that is stated as such, is enough to make the premise that they carry no blame seem pretty silly to me.

alxmng• 3 years ago

Both.

kornhole2• 3 years ago

Both are problems, but naive people expect Google and Facebook to do differently. Google has always been intertwined with the government, and Facebook was absorbed early on. I am not denigrating people by using the word naive. Those who are most naive need protection and knowledge. More tyrannical/medieval rule seems to be trending.

brandmeyer• 3 years ago

This comment is a fantastic example of the meta-battle which the tech industry has been waging. They have worked very hard to change the very questions in the privacy debate. In their terms, collection of the data itself is never under debate; all debates are framed in terms of how they are allowed to use data. In this case, the failure isn't the law or the company's compliance with it. It was the collection and retention of the data in the first place.

bboygravity• 3 years ago

Interesting to realize that I now have to equally self-censor whether I'm using WeChat (China) versus any US-based service (Western world) for communication..

A_D_E_P_T• 3 years ago

Unless you're working on sensitive or compartmentalized tech, and talking about it on the platform, I don't even see why you'd need to self-censor on WeChat. The Chinese, for all their faults, don't seem to care what you do in your spare time.

That said, I don't know if I'd feel comfortable discussing my medical history over Gmail or Facebook, even if ostensibly "private."

concordDance10• 3 years ago

The Chinese, for all their faults, don't seem to care what you do in your spare time.

I thought pyrography (for example) was illegal in China

Wingman4l7• 3 years ago

The Chinese, for all their faults, don't seem to care what you do in your spare time.

No, they'll just dutifully record all activities in a dossier, until something interesting presents itself to be leveraged against you, or until they decide at a later date that what you do is distasteful.

ThinkBeat2• 3 years ago

Facebook and Google comply with the law. When presented with a valid warrant they hand over the data requested.

The article seems to imply that the big social media companies should selectively comply with a valid warrant based on what crime the accused has committed.

I think you should either have problem with the entire procedure or agree that the procedure is valid.

lapcat10• 3 years ago

The article seems to imply that the big social media companies should selectively comply with a valid warrant

They already selectively comply: "According to internal statistics provided by Meta, the company complies with government requests for user data more than 70% of the time".

joenot443• 3 years ago

I’m sure you’re aware, but there’s pretty obviously a huge difference between the police requesting info because they want to make an arrest and any other government branch asking Meta for data on anything else. My guess is Meta’s cooperation rate with police would be much higher than 70%.

madeofpalk4• 3 years ago

Purely opinion, but I'm sure a non-trivial amount of government requests for user data are invalid, warrantless, or unfulfillable (contains incorrect information).

As we have said in prior reports, we always scrutinize every government request we receive to make sure it is legally valid, no matter which government makes the request. We comply with government requests for user information only where we have a good-faith belief that the law requires us to do so.

(But) they seem to apply legal discretion on which to follow, which is mostly expected. When Meta receives a request/warrant they must use their judgement to determine whether it's legal or not.

misnome2• 3 years ago

That says nothing about warrants.

madsmith• 3 years ago

And the other 30% is unknown so we can’t say they selectively comply. It’s quite possible the other 30% are invalid warrants, in which case there’s nothing to comply with.

ThinkBeat2• 3 years ago

Well 100% is more than 70%. So we can if we want to assume that means 100%

A much more informative statement would be:

"We turn down about 25% of all requests"

SilasX• 3 years ago

For me, the takeaway is that they collect and persist too much personalized data about users, and it's a shame that people only start caring when it affects abortion access.

Now, Google, to their credit, claims[1] they now purge information about users who visit abortion clinics or related places, but ... that isn't very reassuring. Even if they excise some related portion of user data, they still have enough other data to figure it out once law enforcement has access -- and there's more stuff the law would be after than just abortion! You'd be expecting Google to play whack-a-mole with every latest "activity that needs protection"!

But yes, you're correct, it's far too late to identify what Google's doing wrong after abortion is illegal, and after Google has that data about you, and after they're served with a warrant on that basis.

[1] This article https://www.opb.org/article/2022/08/18/google-workers-sign-p...

which cites this blog post: https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/protecting-pe...

aww_dang5• 3 years ago

The framing is inflammatory. What most people can agree upon is that the surveillance state is out of control.

I'm sure I'll be flamed into oblivion here, but it is worth considering the headline from the perspective of the anti-abortionists. If we cannot empathize or attempt to understand those who disagree, what is the point of having a discussion?

"FB and Google hand over user data, help to prosecute baby killers"

Reasonable people can disagree on the topic of abortion or at what stage of pregnancy it is acceptable. HN is not the place where I want to have that discussion. It has already been explored at depth elsewhere.

concordDance10• 3 years ago

I've often been puzzled by why the abortion argument is seen as a binary. The majority of people in the developed world feel that the abortion legality line should be somewhere between conception and birth. Honestly, based on my somewhat biased sampling, there's probably a similar number of people who think infanticide should sometimes be legal as people who think a single fertilized egg has a right to life.

aww_dang5• 3 years ago

This is definitely a big part of the problem. Media outlets are looking for outrage. They need only conflate a ban on late term abortion with a blanket ban. For the other side, vice versa.

emsign• 3 years ago

If you would have read the article to the end you would have noticed that is puts the blame on law enforcement and legislation.

lapcat10• 3 years ago

Think of it this way though: 50 years of legal precedent was overturned last year. Women who are young enough to get abortions have lived their entire lives not being considered murderers, legally. Abortion was an explicitly protected legal right. Now suddenly, a woman is transformed overnight from a citizen freely exercising their legal right into an illegal murderer — but of course only in certain localities. How are they supposed to deal with this massive U-turn? Can we not empathize with them?

It's one thing to make providing abortions illegal. It's quite another thing to prosecute the women.

TedDoesntTalk• 3 years ago

Sounds opposite to what’s going on with pot in many states. Illegal for decades. Now legal. Massive U-turn.

Laws of the land change, like everything else in this world.

nl• 3 years ago

Note that you can turn on E2E encryption in FB Messenger (as well as WhatsApp). It does lose a few features, but people should probably be aware it is possible.

timbit424• 3 years ago

Meta still knows who is messaging whom. Sending a message to a pharmacy or certain doctors would raise flags. E2EE isn't completely safe. Briar is decentralized (no central company or servers to watch) and uses Tor to hide IPs.

dools2• 3 years ago

This is not the story.

The story is Roe v. Wade overturned due to heinous corruption of the US political process in favour of the religious right and free market libertarians.

concordDance10• 3 years ago

Roe v. Wade was a corruption of the political progress (and I say this as a non-american pro-abortionist). If you want to have a law on abortion make an actual law.

krapp3• 3 years ago

I mean, SCOTUS said otherwise for fifty years. They decide what is and isn't legitimate and it was fair play until last year.

I agree with you in principle but AFAIK "actual laws" have never been necessary when the SCOTUS has declared a Constitutional right. Individual states don't need to codify a right to keep and bear arms, or freedom of speech or religion, nor can they choose to re-enable slavery or segregation, because those have all been decided at a higher level.

mch82• 3 years ago

The Constitution grants rights by default. Laws are only needed to remove rights.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

nilmask• 3 years ago

Safeguarding the privacy of a user's personal information is a technological problem that should be solved through the development and correct usage of cryptographic primitives that secure that data.

dools2• 3 years ago

I completely disagree. If you're trying to subvert the political/legal process through innovation then you're only accelerating the path to dystopia.

salawat6• 3 years ago

Wrong. It's a people problem. Any technological measure capable of reliably recovering information will be utilized or forced to be tapped by law enforcement. The problem is the law. The solution is not tech. The solution is changing the law. The cryptographic primitive approach is an elitist wet dream. The moment you employ it in enough sketchy contexts, then it itself will be seen as evidence of criminal doing. The UK/Europe has already been sniffing in that direction w.r.t possession of heavily encrypted phone handsets/telephony systems.

krapp3• 3 years ago

That's not even the story.

The story is Roe v. Wade was overturned due to the US political process working exactly as it as designed to, with the religious right telegraphing their play for decades, and progressives doing nothing about it except trying to fundraise on the aftermath.

projektfu3• 3 years ago

That's not entirely true. They also bought candles and tote bags.

More seriously, there has been substantial opposition to the anti-abortion long game but it's not easy to secure abortion rights in Nebraska from NY without federal law. But Roe made securing abortion federally a little moot and maybe not the hill a slim majority wants to die on when they have other priorities. Then they didn't get justices to retire when they could be replaced, although it's questionable that would have been allowed to happen anyway. Bad strategy but not complete inaction. They have been trying to oppose laws in states but gerrymandering means that the Right gets unfairly more representation in those states like Georgia.

mgraczyk2• 3 years ago

IMO the most realistic way to improve this situation is to get more people using E2EE chat apps, and fight against any attempt by government to weaken or ban encryption.

Meta the company hates this and is spending money on ads trying to get people to use WhatsApp with end to end encryption for things like this.

timbit424• 3 years ago

Even with E2EE doesn't META know who is messaging who on Whatsapp? This doesn't seem completely secure. Briar is distributed and uses Tor to hide user IPs.

mgraczyk2• 3 years ago

Yes, but it's not realistic to believe people will use apps like Briar. The user experience is not good enough.

learnedSloth2• 3 years ago

Is the next step extending citizen rights to unborn babies?

qwray• 3 years ago

I miss the good old days when you could just open a telephone book and no one would know what you were looking up. Now everything you do is recorded by a third party.

Don't use Facebook or Google.

npteljes• 3 years ago

Since communication was unencrypted, listening in was easy though. Even the instant messengers, up to 2005-2007, sent their messages in cleartext. So listening in was easy, but since storage was much more expensive, I don't think they bothered with recording them too much.

Regarding your conclusion, leaving FB and G is not even the hardest part. The hardest part is that your network probably won't follow.

clbrmbr• 3 years ago

We do not provide governments with 'back doors' to people's information.

PRISM?

Serious question. I thought that was still a thing.

31337Logic• 3 years ago

And they wonder why we don't trust Big Tech.

Facebook and Google hand over user data, help police prosecute abortion seekers

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