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> BI seems to be implying that abortion shouldn't be treated as a crime in places where it is a crime.

Abortion was explicitly legally protected for 50 years and only became a crime in some localities last year. There aren't many "crimes" like that.

MacsHeadroom 1202 days ago

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.

In states where it was illegal it may not even be ex-post-facto for them to prosecute for events that took place prior to last year's supreme court ruling.

Anyway, the real takeaway should be that businesses should not be collecting this kind of data in the first place. If they don't collect it, then they have nothing to turn over.

> 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 minds.

MacsHeadroom 1202 days ago

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, were always legal and enforceable because Roe never was. That is what the court determined last year.

> Plenty of legal scholars said exactly that, so you're wrong.

LOL. What exactly, numerically, does "Plenty" mean, and how does it compare to "all"? Of course, both the majority and minority of the Supreme Court in the Dobbs opinion are legal scholars, but they disagreed vehemently with each other.

Your response sounds very Orwellian to me. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.

yencabulator 1197 days ago

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.

decremental 1202 days ago

Slavery was once legal everywhere until it wasn't. It became illegal in some parts of the country but eventually it became illegal everywhere. Now we can look back and think how obvious it is that slavery is wrong.

Murdering the unborn was once legal everywhere until it wasn't. It became illegal in some parts of the country and will eventually become illegal everywhere. One day we will look back and think how obvious it is that murdering the unborn is wrong.

You're missing the point. The transition from legal slavery to illegal slavery was not a smooth one. Consensus did not magically arise. People did not simply relent to legal authorities. There was a massively bloody Civil War fought over it. Regardless of what you think about how "One day we will look back" (and note how Confederate pride is still a thing today), you can't expect this to be like an ordinary legal issue. The transition is extremely divisive, and there will be resistance. Nobody could be neutral during the Civil War, and it's going to be difficult for corporations to remain neutral now, when they want pro-choice people to use their services. Abortion is legal in the headquarter state of the big tech companies, and those companies employ many pro-choice workers.

unmole 1202 days ago

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

timbit42 1202 days ago

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.

Is it really? I always assumed it was like Zoom end to end encryption where one of the “ends” is a Facebook data center. How can a user prove the claim of end to end encryption?

jeroenhd 1202 days ago

Almost all of WhatsApp has been E2EE for years, based on the same protocol Signal uses. This goes for text messages (personal and groups) and calls. Cloud backups are not encrypted by default, but encryption can be enabled.

WhatsApp doesn't have an open source client so verification is difficult. However, if someone were able to break the encryption, I'm sure it'd be in the headlines of most newspapers.

One exception is WhatsApp business: I don't know the details, but Facebook offers a service where they will do some chat automation for your business which means they must receive the keys.

In terms of security: key changes are automatically accepted. They are hidden by default, but by toggling a setting every time a user updates their keys, a message will be introduced into the chat. QR code key validation has been in the app for years now, though I doubt many users are using the feature.

How do you tell the difference between true E2EE and Zoom E2EE where FB decrypts the message in the middle? Or otherwise backdoors the exchange, perhaps outside the Signal protocol? Ultimately you are trusting Facebook to tell the truth here.

salawat 1202 days ago

You read the bloody code, and you run the infrastructure. Not your hardware, not your system. There is no alternative.

caf 1202 days ago

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 ask questions about their own bodies.

unmole 1202 days ago

> 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

jeroenhd 1202 days ago

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.

ccouzens 1202 days ago

> how can a user (without deep technical knowledge and skills) prove the claim of end to end encryption?

Checking to see if investigations include evidence from messages on these platforms excepting:

Messages sent by the user to someone who distributes them further

Or investigators getting control of the phone.

---

WhatsApp stands up to that test.

salawat 1202 days ago

Except, parallel construction is a thing; jealously guarded by law enforcement as well.