Facebook caused outrage in the United States for collaborating with the police in the investigation of an abortion case, an attitude that also caused fears that the platform would become a tool to suppress this practical procedure.
The anger increased when it became known that the social network had delivered to justice messages that a mother sent to help her daughter get an abortion.
Activists had warned precisely that this could happen after the controversial measure of the US Supreme Court to revoke the national right to abortion at the end of June, as large technology companies accumulate a large amount of data on the location and behavior of users.
Jessica Burgess, 41, was charged with aiding her 17-year-old daughter to terminate her pregnancy in the state of Nebraska, in the middle east of the country.
He faces five charges. One of them under a 2010 law that only allows abortions up to 20 weeks of gestation.
The daughter faces three chargesamong them one of concealment or abandonment of a corpse.
However, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, defended itself on Tuesday, pointing out that the Nebraska court “did not mention abortion at all” and that it occurred before the highest court overturned the ruling in Roe v. Wade, a case that granted the right to abortion in the United States.
“That phrase seems to imply that ‘if’ the search warrants mentioned abortion, there would be a different result. But of course that’s not true,” tweeted Logan Koepke, who researches the impact of technology on issues like criminal justice.
When asked about the delivery of data, the Silicon Valley giant said that they collaborate with government requests when “the law requires it.”
Nebraska’s abortion restrictions were adopted years before the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. Some 16 states have outright bans or limits on early pregnancy in their jurisdictions.
encrypted messages
The Nebraska case will surely not be the last, according to technology experts.
“This will continue to happen to companies that have vast amounts of information about people across the country and around the world,” said Alexandra Givens, CEO of the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology.
If companies receive a legal request duly issued under existing law, there are many incentives to collaborate, he explained.
“At a minimum, companies need to ensure that they insist on full legal process, that court orders are specific and not a fishing expedition, that searches are interpreted very narrowly, and that they notify users so they can try to oppose it,” Givens added.
Meta did not provide AFP with the Nebraska court order.
The police report asked the judge to order the company not to inform the daughter of Burgess about the search order of his Facebook messages.
“Notifying the subscriber or client of the issuance of this search warrant may result in the destruction or tampering with evidence,” Police Detective Ben McBride wrote.
Advocates pointed out that, in addition to not using Meta’s products, a sure way to keep user communications out of government hands is for them to be automatically encrypted.
WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, has end-to-end encryption, meaning the company doesn’t have access to the information, but that level of privacy protection isn’t the default setting in Facebook Messenger.
“The company has never said it would not cooperate with a law enforcement request in an abortion-related situation,” said Caitlin Seeley George, campaign director at the advocacy group Fight for the Future.
“If users could use encrypted messaging, Meta wouldn’t even be in a position where they could share information,” he added.
