[jeroenhd]

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. Blame Nebraskan and American federal law for this situation.

With a bit of luck, this situation will make these companies put more priority into E2EE. Had these conversations been done through Signal, there was likely nothing to be found or handed over.

[orra]

> Facebook and Google are not to blame here; they're simply doing what the law demands of them

The article disagrees:

> One legal expert said social platforms may cooperate with police even if not legally required to.

Regardless, you are right these companies are morally culpable for not implementing E2EE.

[yanderekko]

>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 over these warrants in a way they wouldn't for other warrants, but that seems like a weak condemnation.

[heavyset_go]

> 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.

[yanderekko]

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?

[orra]

Precisely. And, you know, maybe they could challenge some of these warrants, even if retroactively?

[heavyset_go]

> 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.

Companies just hand over data when simply asked, they don't even need a warrant.

[timbit42]

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