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

businessinsider.com

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

#171

Post by unmole »

mulmen wrote: post #56
caf wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a bit of a song and dance when Whatsapp adopted the Signal protocol. Certainly if you choose not to back up your Whatsapp messages, your old messages aren't available when you switch phones. If they're not end-to-end encrypted, they're engaging in a lot of deception to indicate that they are.

Thanks, I don’t have much experience with WhatsApp. I don’t have a lot of faith in Facebook. Especially post-Snowden. If you think you need E2EE you can really only achieve that on an open system you control and have intimate knowledge of. You can’t trust precompiled binaries. Something something trusting trust. This isn’t a problem technology can solve. Women shouldn’t need to be information security experts just to…

> Especially post-Snowden.

What does Snowden have to do with Facebook? I'm asking in good faith.

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

#172

Post by kornhole »

CM30 wrote: post #119
croes wrote: post #12

Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. Unless they change the laws and suddenly you have something to hide.

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 t…

>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.

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

#173

Post by mch82 »

concordDance wrote: post #78
dools wrote: post #71

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.

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.

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.

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

#174

Post by andybak »

eternalban wrote: post #168
andybak wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 overr…

> 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 ex…

I think I framed it at the time as requiring some "V For Vendetta"-esque takeover of democracy. (which in itself no longer seems to remote).

But I now see that things don't need to get comic-book bad for Schmidt's statement to be dangerously wrong.

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

#175

Post by mulmen »

unmole wrote: post #171
mulmen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I don’t have much experience with WhatsApp. I don’t have a lot of faith in Facebook. Especially post-Snowden. If you think you need E2EE you can really only achieve that on an open system you control and have intimate knowledge of. You can’t trust precompiled binaries. Something something trusting trust. This isn’t a problem technology can solve. Women shouldn’t need to be information security experts just to…

> Especially post-Snowden. What does Snowden have to do with Facebook? I'm asking in good faith.

Facebook was wrapped up in PRISM.

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

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

#176

Post by mulmen »

salawat wrote: post #129
concordDance wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree, if the police finds other illegal acts during a legal investigation, they should be allowed to act on that. I'm not sure this principle is a good one. Almost everyone had probably broken a law or two (yes, this meane there are too many bad laws, let me know if youve an idea of how to solve that), so by investigating someone for some random thing they haven't done you've got a good chance of finding somethi…

>yes, this meane there are too many bad laws, let me know if youve an idea of how to solve that) I, in fact, do. All laws come with baked in sunset dates. No exceptions. Furthermore, it's clear there is a need for some sort of secondary legislature or sub committee of the primary dedicated to the repeal of bad law. Then again, if that worked, we wouldn't necessarily be in the problem we're in.

Do we put a sunset date on the bill of rights?

What’s the sunset date on these abortion bans? Is it more than 9 months? Is there any reason to believe they will be repealed at their sunset date? How long do we tolerate the injustice? What do you tell the woman who wants an abortion today?

Bad laws aren’t a mechanical problem. They’re a people problem. Repealing law is something the current legislatures are perfectly capable of. The hard part of repealing “bad law” is defining “bad”. A secondary repeal committee would have the same difficulty as our existing legislature.

If you don’t like a law then go do something to change it. In case you doubt the feasibility of this recall that is exactly what happened with abortion.

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

#177

Post by yanderekko »

heavyset_go wrote: post #92
yanderekko wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One legal expert said social platforms may cooperate with police even if not legally required to. From my reading of the article this is purely speculative, however. There's no actual assertion that FB/Google are doing more than complying with valid warrants, other than observing that this appears to be the case with other types of warrants. So I guess one could fault these companies for not fighting tooth and nail…

> From my reading of the article this is purely speculative, however. Apple publishes statistics about their shared data, and whether data shared was shared because of a warrant or request. The company very often just hands over data without a warrant, a simple request is all that's needed. I doubt they are unique in that regard.

Yes, but to the one case specifically mentioned in the article Facebook said the warrant was valid. Hence further commentary about how companies are not simply doing as required in these specific cases is speculative. Seeing further discussion on this it seems unlikely that the warrants in question made any specific reference to abortion to begin with. So there isn't even a notion in many instances that these social media companies could provide extra scrutiny unless they made this determination on their own.

Maybe social media companies should fight tooth and nail over every data request, but somehow I think most people don't want this. The same people who would be outraged at Facebook turning over data in an abortion case are probably the ones who are fine with say Facebook turning over data related to the January 6th protestors. Is there actually a non viewpoint-based principled stance behind the outrage, or is this just an instance of working the ref to your team's advantage?

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

#178

Post by timbit42 »

unmole wrote: post #29
psychphysic wrote: post #15

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.

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

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.

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

#179

Post by timbit42 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #39
numbers_guy wrote: post #6

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

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.…

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

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

#180

Post by timbit42 »

mgraczyk wrote: post #109

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.

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.
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