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The Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

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Re: The Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

#61

Post by sp527 »

didibus wrote: post #44
sp527 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could the fetus have survived? Who could say. Can someone ELI5 why this is the standard? Shouldn't it be something more reasonable like "has a relatively developed brain", "can experience pain", "shows early signs of consciousness", "has major organs", "is a recognizably bipedal/human lifeform", etc? Every cutoff I've encountered seems to be entirely subjective and like it reduces down to "whatever I find political…

There's no good way to draw a line. Morally, arguments are just as strong in terms of the fetus putting the mother at risk, or the obligations on society to force the mother to behave in ways that care for the fetus and later for the child itself, with limited support or assistance. Similarly, you can claim that life is life even if it obligates others to sacrifices of their own. Both arguments also have their equal…

> fetus putting the mother at risk

I have absolutely no qualms with abortion in the event of life-threatening complications experienced by the mother at any stage of pregnancy. That seems perfectly reasonable. In fact, I think most supposedly 'pro life' states carve out such exceptions?

> or the obligations on society to force the mother to behave in ways that care for the fetus and later for the child itself, with limited support or assistance

> What if you didn't consent to this thing living in you, maybe it was rape or accidental?

Does it really take 20-24 weeks to realize and act upon this? Keep in mind I'm asking about where the line is placed, not about whether or not abortion should be permissible.

> The point being, there is no science to draw on for the cutoff

I disagree. Science tells us very precisely what kind of life is being disposed of at every stage of pregnancy.

People are being intellectually dishonest about this on both sides to serve their own purposes. Extreme pro-lifers, for example, will argue that life begins at conception merely because of the potential for it to become a child. My point was that setting the cutoff at "viability outside the womb" is equally as extreme and just as likely to be motivated by political expediency, in the opposing direction.

I see nothing in your comment that meaningfully invalidates that assertion.

Re: The Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

#62

Post by kragen »

cato_the_elder wrote: post #22

This is a duplicate with significant discussion in the previous submission, from an outlet with a similar slant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32401381

I don't think the other submission included the actual chat transcript.

Re: The Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

#63

Post by lukewrites »

adamrezich wrote: post #40
samfisher83 wrote: post #14

It was court ordered. Facebook didn't just give this information voluntarily to police.

I have not read the article (and don't intend to) but this here headline is an astoundingly well-crafted work of attention-catching rage-bait art . in eleven mere words, you get: - Facebook (fuck em) - giving collected personal data (fuck that) to - the police (fuck em) because - a teen had an abortion (fuck yeah(?)) - and needs to be prosecuted because said teen presumably lives somewhere where this is illegal (fuck…

While it's a clickable headline it isn't near as inflammatory as it could be; "the data" is a very anodyne way to refer to "Facebook Messenger conversation between mother and daughter".

Re: The Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

#64

Post by kragen »

ta8645 wrote: post #41

This gives a different reason why "They're a private company, they can implement any policies they want", is a horrible argument. Even for the cases where you happen to agree with the outcome. We need to regulate these large, ubiquitous platforms as we would the town square or any other public infrastructure.

We did, that's the problem! Facebook didn't send the messages to the police because they thought the issue needed attention; they sent the messages to the police because a court order threatened them with contempt of court if they didn't.

Re: The Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

#65

Post by abigail95 »

fitblipper wrote: post #55
samfisher83 wrote: post #14

It was court ordered. Facebook didn't just give this information voluntarily to police.

The problem is the 3rd party doctrine. The data should not be treated as if it is Facebook's to give away. Instead it should be the defendant that receives the request for their data using the proper warrant process. Instead governments incentivize companies like facebook, google, and amazon to collect all the private data on citizens that the people need to live in the society and then they claim it is no longer the…

I'm not clear how that would have changed the outcome in this case

Re: The Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

#66

Post by morelisp »

lvass wrote: post #47
newfonewhodis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fetus aborted was 28 weeks, or 7 months, and almost certainly viable Never surprises me that HN is full of world-class doctors who can provide a medical conclusion based simply on a news story.

Not really needed in this case. I was born with 7 months and didn't spend a night in hospital.

No post body was provided.

Re: The Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

#67

Post by washbrain »

sp527 wrote: post #52
washbrain wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, personally, I believe that human pregnancy is unusual. Most mammalian mothers can self terminate pregnancy if desired, by cutting off the flow of resources to their fetus. Humans are somewhat unique in that they can't. Our fetuses are parasitic, and attempt to force the mother to carry them to term through endocrinological trucks. Except... We can now disrupt that parasitism and join every other mammalian spe…

Setting aside that thinking of pregnancy as a "parasitic relationship" is a somewhat deranged perspective that very few people likely share, we have a rather robust toolkit for dealing with this problem that doesn't have to tread on moral gray areas: contraception, plan b, pregnancy tests. I'm also not saying pregnancies shouldn't be terminable by choice, to be clear. I'm inquiring about how we justify placing the li…

The parasitic placenta is not my thinking, it's a fairly widely understood, perhaps not anodyne, scientific description of the relationship. See:

https://www.reading.ac.uk/news-archive/press-releases/pr9938....

It's a topic of much, much discussion, and I don't believe that it's deranged to discuss how human pregnancy is particularly unique in the chemical and hormonal ways the placenta interacts with the uterine wall.

Edit: for instance, human embryos attack and digest the urine wall, paralyzing the cells there and pushing growth hormones to the blood vessels to increase the blood supply to the placenta. Other mammals don't operate this way, the mother controls access to nutrients. Human embryos are so aggressive in seeking blood they typically leave behind clumps of cells throughout the mother's body, making the mother a generic chimera.

In other mammals, the placental wall is not breached, so a failed or terminated pregnancy doesn't have the network of paralyzed and intertwined arteries that a human pregnancy does, making it much more dangerous for human mothers. The human embryo is nearly unique in it's aggression in seeking out arteries.

One effect of human gestation is that the fetus has direct access to the mother's bloodstream, and injects hormones to regulate the mother's behavior - again, this manipulation is fairly unique - increasing blood sugar and blood pressure to serve the fetus even at the expense of the mother. A fetus may spend up to 25% of its protein intake on hormonal regulation of the mother (which, by the way, the mother's body tried very, very hard to shut down.)

It's a complicated and hugely messy affair, and in humans represents a literal fight for resources.

Re: The Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

#68

Post by lmm »

kragen wrote: post #21

To repeat my comment on the earlier now-buried post: Companies definitely should disobey the law by refusing to comply with a valid search warrant in cases where someone is being prosecuted for having an abortion. Obeying the law in this case is clearly immoral! This does not entail that obeying the law is always immoral, or even that breaking it is always moral. You can come to the conclusion that it is okay for com…

> Companies definitely should disobey the law by refusing to comply with a valid search warrant in cases where someone is being prosecuted for having an abortion. Obeying the law in this case is clearly immoral!

I like living in a country where it's illegal to kill babies on a whim, thank you very much. So no, while you might disagree with this law, it's not at all "clear".

> Of course talking about encryption always brings out the knuckledraggers who link to XKCD 538 and talk about hitting people with $5 wrenches. Hopefully this example clarifies why encryption sometimes defeats a $5 wrench: neither Celeste Burgess, the Nebraska teenager, nor the Facebook employees were ever at risk of being beaten with a wrench in this case.

Facebook employees who refused to comply with a warrant would absolutely be thrown in jail once they ran out of lawyers and money (admittedly a process that would probably take years). Just look at the ProtonMail guy.

Re: The Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

#69

Post by kragen »

whywhywhydude wrote: post #20

Why vice is highlighting Facebook is beyond me. If a judge gives you a warrant, aren’t you forced to provide the data? Otherwise, don’t you face contempt of court charges and possibly get jailed?

If they'd had this conversation over Freenode, Signal, Pond, WhatsApp, or maybe even Matrix or Telegram, probably nobody except the mother and daughter would have a copy of their private messages. Because they used Facebook Messenger instead, Facebook was in a position to provide the private chat to the police. Facebook Messenger is no different in this way from Slack, Discord, or numerous other insecure chat systems.

It's unfortunate that Vice didn't bother to mention this.

Re: The Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion

#70

Post by abigail95 »

So much fuss about privacy, data collection, facebook, and police.

The real issue here is someone tried to abort a 28 week old fetus?

Only Americans find this acceptable. It's a fringe and extreme position in all of the developed world to abort a viable fetus on-demand. I continue to be shocked at the permissiveness of American abortion law.

I hope this ends in conviction of those responsible.

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