Facebook and Google are handing over user data to help police prosecute abortion seekers

Zeedox

Zeedox

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Dec 1, 2020
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Facebook and Google are handing over user data to help police prosecute abortion seekers

Social media sites are inundated with police requests for user data and may cooperate even if not legally required to, one legal expert told Insider.
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This spring, a woman named Jessica Burgess and her daughter will stand trial in Nebraska for performing an illegal abortion — with a key piece of evidence provided by Meta, the parent company of Facebook. Burgess allegedly helped her daughter find and take pills that would induce an abortion. The teenage Burgess also faces charges for allegedly illegally disposing of the fetus' remains.
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It wasn't "handed over". They were forced by court order. It happens all the time.

"Every day, across the country, police get access to private messages between people on Facebook, Instagram, any social media or messaging service you can think of," says Andrew Crocker, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Warrants for online messages are a routine part of police investigations, he says, but "a lot of people are waking up to it because of the far-ranging nature of how we expect abortion investigations are going to go. And it's going to touch many more people's lives in a way that maybe that they hadn't thought about in the past."​

 
It is not "requested". It is ORDERED.

The police did not go to them and say, "It would be very nice if you would give us imformation we want off your servers."

They fill out a warrant, take it to a judge, a judge signs it and then they give it to Facebook / Google / Whoever.

It is a WARRANT issued by a JUDGE OF THE COURT.

You have no choice. Unless, of course, you want to go to jail.
 
Oh, I fully understand you have to comply with the information they want (if you have it). That's why Google implemented this policy last year -

Google said late Friday that it would work to quickly delete location history for people going to abortion sites and other medical sites following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last week.

“Today, we’re announcing that if our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after they visit,” wrote Jen Fitzpatrick, Google’s senior vice president of core systems and experiences, in a blog post.
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It's why I said about the ad trackers.
 
They don't delete it. That was bullshit.

If they were found to have deleted it in a jurisdiction where it's against the law to aid and abet an abortion, Google could and would be charged with obstruction of justice on top of aiding and abetting.

I'm sure his in house council straightened his ass out on that matter.

The safest bet is: DON'T DO YOUR SHIT ON SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE INTERNET.

Use a fucking land line phone and a phone book. They can't touch that. My God, we live in a time of complete idiots.
 
Zeedox said:
Had an RCMP officer tell me that over 20 years ago...
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And he's absolutely right.

There is no recording of any conversation. In order to listen in on it, you have to have a warrant and there's got to be BULLET PROOF probable cause attached to it and even then the judge may not grant it. Even if the judge grants it there are usually limits as to how long and what times you can listen in, so it still takes a bit of luck to get anything useful.

When it comes to the internet / social media / cell phones / etc., what most people don't realize is that they sign away pretty much every right to privacy that they ever had when they sign up.

Believe me when I tell you, that makes a MASSIVE difference. Police don't need anywhere near the probable cause for a warrant because they'll use the EULA you agreed to when you signed up.

You essentially have ZERO expectation of privacy on any social media platform, even in a private message because of that agreement.

That is why Facebook, Google et al don't try to fight it in court. They're not going to bother fighting a battle they know full well they can't win, especially when it will point out in a VERY heavily covered and VERY public trial just how little rights you have when you signed up with them because you essentially gave away any right to privacy you ever had.
 
It wasn't in relation to legal wiretapping. lol. He had some operational information to pass to a colleague during an operation we were involved in with the RCMP and did so via an unencrypted landline. I was aghast at the security implications in his handling of their information over an 'open' line but he later explained it would be dammed impossible for the 'baddies' to intercept his landline to landline call. They would have too many unknowns to contend with the to capture that particular call. Cell-phones were off limits.
 
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