this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1874605

A 17-year-old from Nebraska and her mother are facing criminal charges including performing an illegal abortion and concealing a dead body after police obtained the pair’s private chat history from Facebook, court documents published by Motherboard show.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Law enforcement will knock on the doors of Fediverse servers and there will need to be some monetary fund for legal fees.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (5 children)

If law enforcement knocks on my door with a valid warrant I'm going to comply. It would be nice to have some legal assistance to help validate the warrant but at the end of the day in this case it was almost certainly valid.

If this was about a murder rather than abortion people would be applauding Meta for helping catch the murderer. I think what people are actually mad about is the law, and they are using Meta as a scapegoat.

But at the end of the day E2EE is the best solution here. Don't give private data to others, they can't be trusted because they can be compelled by the law.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And this is one thing that people don't seem to understand about Lemmy et al. If you post messages (including DM's) on any one host, that message will be duplicated to any federated hosts. In most cases the only encryption would be in transit, so all it takes is for one of those hosts to be in a jurisdiction where the local authorities can seize the data, hackers can infiltrate poorly secured server, etc

If you are worried about the privacy/security of your data, it's not really any safer here then on Reddit or Facebook etc. It may be more resistant to corporate influence but at the same time a kind citizen running a node is less likely to have money to fight legal action and warrants.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Yes. You really should treat anything you post on Lemmy (or anywhere else that isn't E2E Encrypted) as public.

This is also why Lemmy recommends against using Lemmy direct messages and recommends Matrix with E2EE instead.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Just wondering (INAL): if these women would have been using e2ee, could the police not legally require them to let them read it

Edit: I mean would the women not be required to let the police read the e2ee?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

IANAL but it depends. In the US there is strong protection for the contents of your mind and self-incrimination. So if your keys were locked behind a strong password the legal system wouldn't be able to access it. But if you had no password they would be able to seize the device and read the messages.

So basically if the messages are inaccessible other than a secret that you know them yes, they wouldn't be forced to reveal it.

[–] Dioxy 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

(Also not a Lawyer) I’m not familiar with the laws in Nebraska, but they wouldn’t be able to get the messages from Meta. They would need to get on the devices, but it seemed like the people charged themselves tipped off about using Messenger to the police. The only other way to get E2EE message from a device without consent is with the use of force.

From the article:

However, campaigners note that Meta always has to comply with legal requests for data, and that the company can only change this if it stops collecting that data in the first place. In the case of Celeste and Jessica Burgess, this would have meant making end-to-end encryption (E2EE) the default in Facebook Messenger. This would have meant that police would have had to gain access to the pair’s phones directly to read their chats. (E2EE is available in Messenger but has to be toggled on manually. It’s on by default in WhatsApp.)

(…)

However, private chat messages are only one component in a whole range of digital evidence that is likely to be used by police to prosecute illegal abortions in the United States. Investigators will be able to request access to many data sources, including digital health records, Google search history, text messages, and phone location data.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If the oberstgruppenfuhrer of the schutsstaffel came to your house and asked where the juden were hiding and had a valid order, would you show them the attic?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

For the murder example, remember Apple being in the news for not providing the FBI access via a backdoor in the OS to the San Bernardino shooter’s phone? There were plenty of people on both sides of that argument saying they should or shouldn’t comply. That’s why it’s essential for E2EE to maintain privacy