Meta-provided Facebook chats led a woman to plead guilty to abortion-related charges [View all]

[usonian]

Two wrongs make a double-wrong.

An investigating officer served a warrant to Meta, which provided unencrypted chat sessions showing the woman and her daughter discussing abortion pills.

By Wes Davis
Jul 11, 2023

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/11/23790923/facebook-meta-woman-daughter-guilty-abortion-nebraska-messenger-encryption-privacy

A Norfolk, Nebraska, woman pleaded guilty to helping her daughter have a medication abortion last year. The charges came after Facebook, by court order, provided police with evidence that bolstered a Madison County prosecutor’s case against her.

Last year, it emerged that the two were charged after police acquired Facebook messages that proved the two had acquired abortion medication intended for first-trimester abortions. In a June 2022 affidavit (via Jezebel), the officer investigating Celeste Burgess, the daughter who was charged along with her mother, Jessica Burgess, said he’d served Meta a warrant seeking their messages, and the company quickly complied.

The charges include having an abortion after 20 weeks, false reporting, and tampering with human skeletal remains. According to last year’s affidavit, Burgess was about 23 weeks along in her pregnancy, which is also later than the Nebraska 20-week post-fertilization abortion ban in place at the time. Nebraska has since implemented a 12-week abortion ban.

The case underscores a crucial privacy drawback of Facebook Messenger, which to this day doesn’t default to end-to-end encryption (E2EE) like other messengers, such as Signal, Meta’s own WhatsApp, or Apple’s iMessage do. Because it’s not the default, average people not being intentional about their messaging may not realize they can even turn it on.

Digital Security and Privacy Tips

Simpler
Digital Security and Privacy Tips for Those Involved in Abortion Access
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/05/digital-security-and-privacy-tips-those-involved-abortion-access

More Technical.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to Online Anonymity
https://anonymousplanet.org/guide.html