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by orra 1204 days ago
> 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.
1 comments
yanderekko 1204 days ago
>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.

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heavyset_go 1204 days ago
> 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.

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yanderekko 1204 days ago
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?

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orra 1204 days ago
Precisely. And, you know, maybe they could challenge some of these warrants, even if retroactively?
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