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

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

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wages stagnate when there are an abundance of workers and a shortage of jobs. Corporations don't care about empowerment of women they care about keeping wages down across the board. It's why they were offering women several thousand dollars in reimbursements to travel for an abortion. Those employers were unwilling to provide the same amount to women who wanted to keep their baby.

> they were offering women several thousand dollars in reimbursements to travel for an abortion. Isn't that contract killing now? Edit: Thanks for downvoting a honest question!

Good question really, I suppose it depends if having had an abortion is a crime. I've only peripherally followed the news but i think some places do want to make it a crime.

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

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-f…

> only where we have a good-faith belief that the law requires us Given their track record, it's frightening that we're depending on the "good-faith belief" of Meta/Facebook and Alphabet/Google to make such legal decisions that affect people's lives. But I suppose the alternative could be even worse, where they comply with any and all government requests for data, regardless of legal validity and requirement.

You might be surprised, 70% compliance is fairly low. For comparison, Apple complies with ~90%: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html

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

#193
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

SCOTUS has said plenty of stupid things (e.g. Dred Scott). Laws are the right way to do things. And it's somewhat unclear to me why this should be a federal issue at all... isn't murder a state issue?

>And it's somewhat unclear to me why this should be a federal issue at all... isn't murder a state issue?

That's an odd framing for a self-described "pro-abortionist" to use, but no, obviously federal law against murder exists[0].

But of course the question of whether or not abortion is a matter of murder, fundamental bodily autonomy or both is a quagmire not worth getting into. Not that it's relevant to Roe v. Wade, or its appeal, because that rested on the question of the existence of a fundamental right to privacy and stare decisis.

I mean, read the dissenting opinions on Dobbs[1]. I think a good case is made there as to why this shouldn't be an issue left to the states, and why Roe wasn't repealed because it was bad law, but because the court was stacked with ideologues who were opposed to Roe for religious reasons.

You should be at least as angry about that as Roe itself, if not more so because that represents a far more egregious corruption of the system, but I suspect you aren't.

[0]https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1111

[1]https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/read-supreme-court-...

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are laws being retroactively applied or since the date the law came into effect, plus some grace period ?

It's a good question actually. The law was on the books but not being enforced because of Roe. But then the supreme court says Roe doesn't apply and law is fine as-is. Isn't this legally different from an ex-post-facto law?

Unclear: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/81342/can-abortion-l...

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

#195
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.

They are if you enable encryption (with your own key, of course). The default backups are insecure, though.

Except you provide the key to the app and the app is controlled by FB. There’s really no way to prove the key stays on your device. Or that your messages aren’t just forwarded without encryption to a FB datacenter.

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

#196

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..

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."

> 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.

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

#197
post #175
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

What exactly do you mean by wrapped up in PRISM? My understanding is FB like everyone else is legally obligated to comply with FISA demands?

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

#198
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I don't agree with this "technical" interpretation at all. Nobody would have said in 2020 that technically abortion is illegal in many places. Just because the Supreme Court changed its mind doesn't wipe everyone else's…

It doesn't matter what you agree with. Plenty of legal scholars said exactly that, so you're wrong. Roe ruled that certain state laws criminalizing abortion could not be enforced. But Roe's ruling was found to be unconstitutional and invalid. It was invalid the day Roe was ruled, not the day it was overruled. Those same states laws criminalizing abortion, which were on the books before Roe and are still on the books,…

And then when the supreme court changes their mind again, it will always have been like that too...

We have always been at war with Oceania.

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