Technology

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.

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.

This is an older story, and 5 months later Meta announced that they're rolling out full E2EE encryption to Messenger, I don't think that's a coincidence. Are they doing it out of the goodness of their hearts? Probably not, they're a corporation, but this does show that global backlash actually works for something.

Use end to end encrypted messaging apps, and, if you're in a situation like this, know what they can be forced to share via court order. For example, while WhatsApp has full E2EE and messages can't be turned over, IP addresses can, which can be used to track location, so don't connect to an abortion clinic's wifi for example. Probably just a good rule in general, as law enforcement could subpoena router logs if they have a suspicion.

Ideally use something that can hand over less metadata like Signal if you're in this sort of situation, they don't even keep IP address, but this is a lesser known app that also relies on the recipient using Signal.

You cannot be convicted for an action that was made illegal after you comitted it. This is just Facebook sucking data and making money off others' misfortune. I am sure that they didn't hand over the chat logs for free. "I got nothing to hide" is exactly the reason Meta is a multi-billion company. Your agenda should be "I have nothing to gain from sharing my life with them".

It's like "don't talk to cops, it will not help you".

This is what "Freedom & Family" means, apparently!

So not the best case to argue all the things, but I suppos yet another reminder not to trust big tech with our sensitive information.

Yep. I'm pro-abortion rights, but this was just murder.

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.

Signal or Matrix is also fine.

Of course use Signal or Matrix but please don't think that makes your messaging entirely impenetrable. I am not saying their end-to-end encryption has been breached. But a compromised device is a compromised device. Signal might be secure at least for now, but is your keyboard?

We do live in times of zero-click spyware and while the general public doesn't necessarily have to worry about things like Pegasus atm, it is still used increasingly and not just against people who break the law.

I do my best, although I do fail to be up to date every once in a while, to stay as secure as possible, but to think any communication is entirely secure is not a good policy.

The only crime here is the crime against humanity of taking away a person's agency over their own body

Good job victim blaming dude. This mother and daughter did absolutely nothing wrong here.

It amuses me people use anything Facebook created.

Someone feel free to refresh me but I think it's Samsung in the US you can only disable Facebook not delete it and it still calls home even if disabled. Probably other manufacturers as well. If you roll with android over apple 100% get a pixel. Yes fuck Google as well but they don't have any 3rd party shit collecting your data unless you install it.