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] 20 points 11 months ago

Well, don't use Facebook to talk about doing things that are illegal. Why do people not use common sense?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Just yesterday here on Lemmy, I mentioned the dangers of violating privacy, and some commenters went on about "what dangers?" Implying there were none...

Is it not enough to gesture broadly?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

At this point, they'll just say "yeah, but these people did a crime. I don't do crimes so I have nothing to worry about". The problem with that mentality, I would hope, doesn't need to be stated.

I stopped trying to change the world.

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

This is the perfect example of why you should be worried. Because your government can turn into a fascist dictatorship at any time and you ain't getting that data back.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

How is this an example of the government turning into a "fascist dictatorship"?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

I agree that these people did a crime.

I just don't think their crime should be illegal.

If this was about murdering a full-grown adult and not aborting a fetus, nobody would be talking about privacy concerns. Guaranteed.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

How do you know they committed a crime. After reading the article I don’t know. It looks totally as if it’s possible that she just had a miscarriage.

Maybe there’s just a prosecutor eager for convictions.

Maybe she was trying do avoid exactly this kind of trouble.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

She took abortion drugs.....

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Also, there's no general agreement or scientific pointing of where life and consciousness is started on a fetus so, if the government job is to conserve the life of a individual, a fetus life still matters and shouldn't be taken by neither the parents or anyone else.

Brazil (ironically enough) has a good constitution about about abortion where's it is strictly prohibited unless some cases apply like: the baby has developed no brain, the baby has originated from a sexual assault case or the process of giving birth or the pregnancy itself represents a risk of death for the mother. It is simple, states that life's have the same values as well as showing the individual rights matter.

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

Why do you think a life created by sexual assault is less valuable than a life created otherwise? Isn’t the resulting life the same?

Thinking this through might help you understand the tradeoffs behind most abortions. Pregnancy is dangerous, childbirth is dangerous, parenting is incredibly difficult.

A child could push a family into poverty and devastate siblings’ futures. How do you evaluate the harm caused by that against the harm caused by being forced to carry a child produced by sexual assault?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

A child could push a family into poverty and devastate siblings’ futures.

A child can also be put up for adoption btw.

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

Which often means shoving them into massively underfunded institutions, that are full of corruption and abuse, making it a less than ideal alternative.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

Less ideal than being dead?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You're joking, right? First, abortions aren't mentioned in the Brazilian constitution - you'd have to look at specific legal codices, such as the Civil Code or the Penal Code. Second, that's the bare minimum, not "pretty good".

[–] [email protected] -3 points 11 months ago

The objective is supposed to be to find the situations where abortion would be fair a fair trade-off of lives and rights, not to try to speedrun the abortion rank; it makes no sense you're saying it is bare minimum when the objective is to reduce it as it is inherently bad.

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

Would you be ok with someone aborting a 39 week old fetus? What about a 40 week old fetus? What about during labour?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Slippery slope fallacy detected

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

To the people shitting on the idea of a default defederation with Meta, how about we deferedate not because it will affect us as posters but because they are evil pieces of shit?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

yeah, the difference is pretty stark:

  • lemmy: we'll give you a way to dm anyone on site, but please don't use that, if you set up an app on this other open source service we're not affiliated with (which is basically an encrypted discord) we'll do our best to make it as seamless for you as possible. we'll keep warning you for your own privacy.
  • meta/facebook: aggressively keeps you on-platform for spying purposes; literally killed xmpp a decade ago and they'll fuckin do it again (if we let them)

They trust me. Dumb fucks.

- Mark Zuckerberg

(yes it sounds like satire but that's a real quote)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The Lemmy DM is imo actually quite important. If I want to get in touch with someone about a post, nothing more. It is an easy option, and serves a purpose. It isn't imo meant to be used for anything else.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

yep, it's important that we have this capability, but it's also nice that unlike other platforms that do their best to lock you in, lemmy actively pushes you toward a safer alternative

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

What's the name of that safer alternative?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Matrix, which is pretty much an encrypted and open-source Discord clone (at least in the same fashion as Lemmy would be a Reddit clone). I personally use Element to interact with it and have a matrix.org account, but Matrix is just like the fediverse, you can choose any instance or client you want, or even host an instance yourself. In your Lemmy settings you can set up your Matrix user, right below your email address as of 0.18.1, and if you do, a new buttons saying "send secure message" will show up on your profile, next to "send message", which will redirect people trying to message you to Matrix.

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

Was it Facebook that killed xmpp or Google? Legitimately asking because I've always seen that blamed on Google.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It was Google, they Embraced, Extended, and Extinguished it with Google Chat. Then they killed that themselves.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

correction: it was both! fedbook chat also supported xmpp at first, they never federated but you could at least use it with a jabber client. then when they had enough market share they killed it.

fun semi related fact is that whatsapp, at least a couple of years ago, was using modified ejabberd (ie an xmpp server) as the backend - so arguably they helped with EEE too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

America is a terrifying church with guns. I pity the citizens.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Every country has the anti-abortion cancer movement and it wouldn't surprise me if the shit gets more serious here in Europe too with the rise of far right parties. As a matter of fact you have only to look at Poland.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

We'll keep saying that can't happen here right up until it happens

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

People are getting all upset at Facebook/Meta here but they were served a valid warrant. I don't think there is much to get mad about them here. The takeaway I get is this:

Avoid giving data to others. No matter how trustworthy they are (not that Meta is) they can be legally compelled to release it. Trust only in cryptography.

There is of course the other question of if abortion being illegal is a policy that most people agree with...but that is a whole different kettle of fish that I won't get into here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

On one hand - yes Meta followed the legal requirement, but the bigger picture is that people always say “so what it’s just don’t do anything illegal”. But that’s only fine when legality matches morality. And the disparity has been growing lately.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Completely right. This is an education issue.

There are several other issues how these two handled this situation.

Court and police records show that police began investigating 17-year-old Celeste Burgess and her mother Jessica Burgess after receiving a tip-off that the pair had illegally buried a stillborn child given birth to prematurely by Celeste.

Don't discuss this or involve anyone else.

The two women told detective Ben McBride of the Norfolk, Nebraska Police Division that they’d discussed the matter on Facebook Messenger, which prompted the state to issue Meta with a search warrant for their chat history and data including log-in timestamps and photos.

Why are they even talking to police? Lawyer up, even if the lawyer is free.

(E2EE is available in Messenger but has to be toggled on manually. It’s on by default in WhatsApp.)

Facebook messenger and text message is the absolute worse way to discuss things like this. They should've at least turned on E2EE but they already admitted fault and their devices would've been taken away anyway.

They seem like they together. They should've just discussed this in person.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Granted, I’m lucky enough never to have been arrested or questioned about a crime. I don’t know how difficult and manipulative interrogations are outside of what I’ve seen on TV. Even still, I’m amazed by and critical of people who talk to the police without a lawyer present.

Even if you think (or know) you’re guilty, that doesn’t mean you should let the system have its way with you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I'm almost certain that if something like this happened to any fediverse instance - that a local police enforcement would contact the admin and asked for user's data, which they are required by law to provide or they would go to jail/get a hefty fine and possibly a criminal record, they would do that too. That's also why E2E is required, to prevent such problems for instance admins - but then again, there's really nothing you can do against local law, and if it requires that you have to be able to cooperate, well... Then there's not much the admin can do, without putting himself in a real risk of prosecution, because he is breaking the law by have E2E.

That's also a good reason to be careful when selecting your home instance, and making sure that you choose one in a country that has all right laws in that regard.

Of course, that's assuming the police makes contact. I don't suppose that the admins would be searching through the DMs of people to snitch on them. And if Meta is doing that preemtively and is actively snitching on people - that's downright evil.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

"I gUeSs IlL use ThReAdS. WhAts ThE hArM" /s

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I dont think most people actually read the article. These women performed an abortion at 28 weeks, abortion that late in the game has always been illegal in every state.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

She aborted at 28 weeks. That's nearly 6 and a half months pregnant. Most babies can survive outside the womb when they're around 22 to 23 weeks. This was a baby, not some tiny fetus.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Remember folks, when subverting a theocratic hellscape, use something encrypted.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This isn't subversion, or any sort of theocratic hellscape.

Girl could have gotten an abortion 100% legally up through 20 weeks of preganancy. At 24 weeks the fetus becomes viable outside the womb. At 28 weeks she (with the assistance of her mother) took meds to kill the fetus and induce a stillbirth, commenting that she couldn't wait to be able to wear jeans again.

She goes through natural labor to pass the stillbirth outside of any medical facility or supervision, burns the remains, and buries them on a farm. When questioned by police, she and her mother admit to using Facebook Messenger to discuss their plans.

The only thing in any way related to the romanticized fiction of some sort of downtrodden freedom seeker you're talking about is that using encrypted communications would have prevented their discussions from being available to be subpeona'd. That said, admitting to police you even had those discussions in the first place kind of defeats the damn purpose.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

We don’t even know if she had an abortion. May she had a miscarriage and was just trying to avoid what’s happening now, being accused of having had an abortion.

Now that sounds a lot like theocratic hellscape…

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

They aborted a child 7 months into pregnancy. That’s murdering a baby. Fuck those people, glad they are being prosecuted, and it’s good that Meta complied. The law in that state gives her 20 weeks to abort. That’s 5 months. That is a pretty liberal allowance.