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.
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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.
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.
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.
On one hand - yes Meta followed the legal requirement, but the bigger picture is that people always say “so what it’s <insert deficiency> just don’t do anything illegal”. But that’s only fine when legality matches morality. And the disparity has been growing lately.
I understand what you are saying but I don’t think that having every company coming up with their own definition of morality is the right solution. The only goal of these companies is to create profit, and I doubt that their definition of morality will be overall beneficial.
Oh yeah I agree I didn’t mean it that way either. I just meant it as an argument for privacy/end to end encryption
This is an older story, and 5 months later Meta announced that they’re rolling out full E2EE encryption to Messenger, I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Are they doing it out of the goodness of their hearts? Probably not, they’re a corporation, but this does show that global backlash actually works for something.
Use end to end encrypted messaging apps, and, if you’re in a situation like this, know what they can be forced to share via court order. For example, while WhatsApp has full E2EE and messages can’t be turned over, IP addresses can, which can be used to track location, so don’t connect to an abortion clinic’s wifi for example. Probably just a good rule in general, as law enforcement could subpoena router logs if they have a suspicion.
Ideally use something that can hand over less metadata like Signal if you’re in this sort of situation, they don’t even keep IP address, but this is a lesser known app that also relies on the recipient using Signal.
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?
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
“private chat history” on Facebook…
If you have nothing to hide… but then they just change the laws, now you are a criminal and they already have handy tools in place to convict you.
You cannot be convicted for an action that was made illegal after you comitted it. This is just Facebook sucking data and making money off others’ misfortune. I am sure that they didn’t hand over the chat logs for free. “I got nothing to hide” is exactly the reason Meta is a multi-billion company. Your agenda should be “I have nothing to gain from sharing my life with them”.
It’s like “don’t talk to cops, it will not help you”.
You cannot be convicted for an action that was made illegal after you comitted it.
That was not my point. The point is, if the tech for mass surveillance is already in place and the laws change to more authoritarian or even just more dumb, it will be harder to escape those.
“I have nothing to gain from sharing my life with them”.
That is obvious not true, otherwise people would not be using social media.
I am sure that they didn’t hand over the chat logs for free
They handed over the chat logs in response to a court order to do so. The gov’t didn’t pay them. They forced them.
What year is it
This is what “Freedom & Family” means, apparently!
Remember folks, when subverting a theocratic hellscape, use something encrypted.
This isn’t subversion, or any sort of theocratic hellscape.
Girl could have gotten an abortion 100% legally up through 20 weeks of preganancy. At 24 weeks the fetus becomes viable outside the womb. At 28 weeks she (with the assistance of her mother) took meds to kill the fetus and induce a stillbirth, commenting that she couldn’t wait to be able to wear jeans again.
She goes through natural labor to pass the stillbirth outside of any medical facility or supervision, burns the remains, and buries them on a farm. When questioned by police, she and her mother admit to using Facebook Messenger to discuss their plans.
The only thing in any way related to the romanticized fiction of some sort of downtrodden freedom seeker you’re talking about is that using encrypted communications would have prevented their discussions from being available to be subpeona’d. That said, admitting to police you even had those discussions in the first place kind of defeats the damn purpose.
We don’t even know if she had an abortion. May she had a miscarriage and was just trying to avoid what’s happening now, being accused of having had an abortion.
Now that sounds a lot like theocratic hellscape…
- Whirlybird ( @Whirlybird@aussie.zone ) English1•1 year ago
She took abortion drugs…
Allowing her to just get an abortion would have avoided this entire situation in the first place.
Eh 28 weeks seems kind of late for an abortion though.
I think I’m missing something here. She was allowed to just get an abortion, for 20 weeks. This was all before the godawful Roe v Wade repeal.
- Whirlybird ( @Whirlybird@aussie.zone ) English2•1 year ago
It was also in a state that didn’t change their abortion stance after Roe v Wade was repealed. Nothing was stopping her getting an abortion for the first 20 weeks like you said.
I’ve taken the liberty of re-reading the article and have some things to point out 1. the girl was 17, a literal child, something you seemed to forget in your comment 2. You mentioned that she wanted to wear jeans again and that that was the motive, but the word ‘jeans’ wasn’t even mentioned, which makes me wonder if you’re tampering with anything in your comment coming from the article. All that considered you have a good point with some things such as in this specific situation such as them confessing to conspiracy was not a good idea, but I will still say use something end to end encrypted when doing something like this.
- Whirlybird ( @Whirlybird@aussie.zone ) English1•1 year ago
It might not be in this article but there are others that state that one of her messages about doing the abortion was that she couldn’t wait to wear jeans again.
She should have legally gotten an abortion in the first 20 weeks of the pregnancy. I’m all for abortion and reproductive rights, but not when it’s a viable baby already like it is at 28 weeks. She had 5 months to abort legally and easily and she didn’t. Not only did she then illegally abort it, but she burned the stillborn baby and buried it. That’s not ok.
This is really interesting (and awful) context.
This isn’t a simple “my body my choice” type situation.
Not that facebook doesn’t suck and we definitely shouldn’t federate with Threads. But here’s another article on this. Very late abortion where the fetus was probably viable. 17 year old was like, “I can’t wait to get this thing out of me. I can finally where jeans.” swallowed some pills to abort. Burned and buried the body on a farm. and the mom and daughter told the police about the facebook messages.
So not the best case to argue all the things, but I suppos yet another reminder not to trust big tech with our sensitive information.
Yep. I’m pro-abortion rights, but this was just murder.
That article doesn’t really change anything.
In regards to Facebook, and why you should never trust it, no. But given the headline, which is intentionally vague and seems constructed to imply this was related to the Supreme Court’s reprehensible ruling on Roe, it adds much needed context, such as the fact that this would have been illegal even before Roe was overturned, and the heinous and sociopathic comments she made. As a rule, I support a childbearing person’s bodily autonomy, but in this case? When the fetus was almost certainly viable and her reasoning for the abortion was because she wanted to wear jeans again? Fuck that.
So in this case, because you don’t like the person, you deem to have to go through pregnancy and childbirth a rightful punishment or what exactly is your reasoning?
In this case, when she had ample time to abort the pregnancy before it became viable, and didn’t choose to do so until in inconvenienced her fashion, my reasoning is that the baby (and yes, this was a baby) did not deserve to die for vanity’s sake. She should’ve given birth and put the baby up for adoption if she didn’t want it. There’s a reason third trimester pregnancies were illegal even before Roe was overturned. In the third trimester you’re no longer dealing with an amorphous clump of cells, which anti-women fanatics ridiculously argue should overrule a woman’s bodily autonomy. You’re dealing with a person.
There was a very similar case in the UK recently where a woman induced an abortion at 32 weeks and was sentenced to two years in prison. Many people here were appalled by this, though such late abortions are basically illegal in every country in the world.
I don’t think women should be locked up for inducing very late-term abortions. But I think we can all agree that it’s a terrible decision to do this, can’t we? In both these cases, the women basically had a still-birth and had to dispose of a dead baby themselves. Can you imagine? We should try to stop people from doing this for their own good.
Use Signal messenger and have it set for auto deletion of messages if you must message!!!
Signal or Matrix is also fine.
Of course use Signal or Matrix but please don’t think that makes your messaging entirely impenetrable. I am not saying their end-to-end encryption has been breached. But a compromised device is a compromised device. Signal might be secure at least for now, but is your keyboard?
We do live in times of zero-click spyware and while the general public doesn’t necessarily have to worry about things like Pegasus atm, it is still used increasingly and not just against people who break the law.
I do my best, although I do fail to be up to date every once in a while, to stay as secure as possible, but to think any communication is entirely secure is not a good policy.
Unless you pissed off an entire nation state I wouldn’t worry about signal as long as you encrypt your device and use a password to unlock. Although I believe that some police in the u.s. have some kind of black box for unlocking phones. In that case, I guess you break off your USB port and rely on wireless charging. Even then, they could send the phone to someone to disassemble and pull an image from the device image and try to get in that way.
Pissing off entire nation state or at least people in power in that nation is unfortunately easy these days. And while the average person usually doesn’t run into these issues the shrinking spaces and criminalization of civil society even in countries you wouldn’t think are that far gone are at the level that surprising people might run into these issues. There are also some situations where you don’t need to piss off entire governments to get a lot of data from a person. Tech-savvy abusive spouse might be enough.
We are not really disagreeing here. I just think that we need to be open about the vulnerabilities and strengths of software. The security of Signal and Matrix are absolutely great especially compared to things like WhatsApp. But they are not 100% secure. Very little is.
Agreed. Basically if you know that nobody will have physical access to the device and that nobody who cares has the money to buy a vulnerability from an Israeli firm, then you’re good.
the pair’s private chat history
There is no such thing as a private chat on a platform you do not own. And even if you DO own the platform it is only as private as the participants decide it to be. Hopefully people start to realize this before complete non-privacy becomes the accepted norm.
Private doesn’t means the privacy in this case just a formal formatting. If they were not discussing in a publicly available chat then it is already considered private by the definition but yeah, 99% true.
Aside from any moral or political views, it amuses me when people do criminal acts and fail to realize police can inspect personal data like text messages, email, and social media. I think people smart enough to realize that are smart enough to avoid committing a crime in the first place. Though there are smart criminals that get away with it, you just don’t hear about them because they don’t get caught. In any case I tend to think being stupid is prerequisite to being a criminal.
The only crime here is the crime against humanity of taking away a person’s agency over their own body
They had the agency to take care of this for 20 damn weeks into the pregnancy where they were at 100% legally, even disregarding the options we all have to prevent conception in the first place.
On top of that, fetuses are viable outside the womb at 24 weeks, assuming the pregnant woman doesn’t kill it at week 28 using medicine as this one did. I can’t help but feel that makes 24 weeks a pretty important deadline for when this sort of choice is more than just about the pregnant woman.
Yeah it’s horrible for innocent people to be deprived of life against their own will
yeah horrible to be forced into a shit life they didn’t ask for
- eskimofry ( @eskimofry@lemmy.ml ) English1•1 year ago
Wow what a brave person arguing for the rights of those who can’t speak for themselves! How do you know what the fetus wants?
I can’t think of a single organism that doesn’t have a survival instinct
Good job victim blaming dude. This mother and daughter did absolutely nothing wrong here.
What? They had 20 weeks to do this properly with medical supervision but waited to do shit until week 28 of pregnancy, then most importantly broke rule #1: Don’t talk to the fucking police. They admitted to the police that they planned it using FB messenger. Whether the police got the DMs isn’t as relevant as the fact that when they were questioned they admitted it.
You’re still victim blaming.
The victim in question openly stated they wanted an abortion at 28 weeks so they could wear jeans again.
Please stop using the phrase “victim blaming” to abrogate the necessity for critical thought.
This isn’t some “she shouldn’t have dressed like a slut” situation.
At some point people need to be held accountable to some absolute minimum level of personal responsibility.
Let’s be honest here.
How long do you think that child would last being parented by someone who wanted their child aborted so they could wear their jeans again.
Abortions should be easily available to any and all women, in every state.
I don’t agree with their decision making length, but if abortion wasnt such a fucking touchy subject, the woman probably would have done so as soon as she found out.
Her body, her choice.
Men and politics need to get the fuck out of the way.
She literally had 20 weeks to do it legally with no problems.
It amuses me people use anything Facebook created.
I dont think most people actually read the article. These women performed an abortion at 28 weeks, abortion that late in the game has always been illegal in every state.
Yea, this wasn’t an abortion, this was straight up murder. Headline is clickbait as fuck.
- argv_minus_one ( @argv_minus_one@beehaw.org ) English2•1 year ago
As long as it’s inside someone’s body, it’s a body part, not a person, and there’s no such thing as murdering a body part.
Had it been outside of her body at the time it would have been viable as a stand alone person.
- argv_minus_one ( @argv_minus_one@beehaw.org ) English2•1 year ago
It wasn’t outside of her body, so I don’t see how that’s relevant.
Damn these seem like trustworthy people who we should definitely federate with.
- Whirlybird ( @Whirlybird@aussie.zone ) English3•1 year ago
Any and every Lemmy instance owner would hand over your DMs to law enforcement as well btw.
Just deleted my Instagram Account for good. I have no need for any Meta App on my Phone or any other Stasi like Institution
Someone feel free to refresh me but I think it’s Samsung in the US you can only disable Facebook not delete it and it still calls home even if disabled. Probably other manufacturers as well. If you roll with android over apple 100% get a pixel. Yes fuck Google as well but they don’t have any 3rd party shit collecting your data unless you install it.
You can use adb to uninstall those kinds of baked in apps. Its completely fucked up that you need to though.
