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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

#141

Post by lioeters »

madeofpalk wrote: post #91
lapcat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

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.

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

#142

Post by inspicouss »

tsimionescu wrote: post #85
diceduckmonk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, which is your second point about the law existing being the concern. Companies are simply enforcing the law, right or wrong.

There is no inherent moral good in enforcing the law. Enforcing a morally evil law is morally evil.

The second part is true, the first part not so much. Enforcing the law creates stability, which is a good trait in and of itself, (all things considered equal otherwise about the law in question)

You have some arguments for that I'm not aware of perhaps?

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

#143

Post by salawat »

nilmask wrote: post #82
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.

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.

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.

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

#144

Post by dspillett »

kevincox wrote: post #97
f6v wrote: post #44

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.

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).

> 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.

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

#145

Post by projektfu »

diceduckmonk wrote: post #122
fluxinflex wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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

#146

Post by candiodari »

madeofpalk wrote: post #84
diceduckmonk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, which is your second point about the law existing being the concern. Companies are simply enforcing the law, right or wrong.

Companies should not enforce laws. They should just follow them.

Companies don't get a choice. The "out" some companies are using is to encrypt everything with keys only on the customer's device. They then provide all data they have, as ordered, on request. This, of course, does not include the encryption key. However, as far as I know essentially only Signal does it these days.

Whatsapp is famous for doing this before, and then Facebook killing this for "regulatory concerns". I don't know for sure, but the previous owner of Whatsapp and founder of Signal implied that Facebook got threatened by states into doing that.

But FB/Google/Amazon/... are the tip of the iceberg. The companies really used for "enforcing the laws" (and for using very harsh measures against individuals just to make some government department's job a little bit easier) are banks.

https://www.taxsamaritan.com/tax-article-blog/reasons-the-ir...

(note the wording here: "the IRS has full authority to". They can do this at will. This process has been used to cause problems for political opponents as well. Nobody seems to care)

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

#147

Post by candiodari »

salawat wrote: post #116
madeofpalk wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies should not enforce laws. They should just follow them.

Except in this case, they are doing both. To not do what you're asking (not turn over data on abortion seekers), they would be breaking the law if they received a valid warrant. Now... They could comply with the law by not hoovering up as much data as they do, thereby becoming useless to both advertiser and law enforcement alike.... But that jeopardizes their business model.

No they couldn't:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention

https://edri.org/our-work/a-beginners-guide-to-eu-rules-on-s...

The companies profit from this data, but at this point they no longer have a choice: they have to collect the data or stop offering services in a lot of geographical areas. The point that they can avoid it by not collecting it was valid some 15 years ago, but no longer.

One of the main objections of companies is, by the way, that most governments refuse to pay the sometimes extensive development and infrastructure costs for this, instead just threatening the companies with (often illegal) measure to force their compliance.

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

#148

Post by lioeters »

concordDance wrote: post #117
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I thought pyrography (for example) was illegal in China

Today I learned about pyrography and a particularly dangerous technique called "fractal burning", where people use high-voltage electricity to burn patterns into wood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_burning

The result is quite beautiful, but I can see why some countries might want to regulate or prohibit it. Personally, I think people should be allowed to take such risks if they choose to do so.

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

#149

Post by heresie-dabord »

fluxinflex wrote: post #90
diceduckmonk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> comply with the law What concerns you about this?

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.

> First came the data

And as their data was harvested, consumers were told: Relinquish your private data to us, it's a fine and normal thing to do, we are trustworthy corporate citizens and privacy is a concern expressed only by those who wear hats of tinfoil.

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

#150

Post by dspillett »

fluxinflex wrote: post #128
diceduckmonk wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The data was generated, the law changed and law enforcement asked for all user data. There is nothing retroactive here. There is no respect for the context in which the data was generated.

From the point of view of the company for who it is just a pot of data with no context until analysed, maybe.

It will sure seem retroactive to someone who might have acted differently so the data wouldn't be available to be handed over, if the current laws were in action at the point they could have done something to avoid the data being collected¹².

--

[1] "Generated" is too benign a word here IMO, hence using "collected" instead

[2] "inferred" might be a better choice as the data could be incorrect³ but that still seems to imply less agency than the companies have in their very deliberate stalky behaviour

[3] so something made up, not a truth collected

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