Search Warrants for Abortion Data Leave Tech Companies Few Options | Hacker News Reader

Search Warrants for Abortion Data Leave Tech Companies Few Options

washingtonpost.com

22 pointsandrewl12 comments

... they could, you know, not collect the data, or if they do only keep it in an encrypted format, and protect the privacy of their consumers?

Crazy thought i guess.

Few options? Tech companies have incredible lobbying power. They could simply lobby for privacy restrictions, but we're not really seeing that. Instead, feigned helplessness is telegraphed in pieces like this.

Of course, but it would have affected sales. I had a Microsoft VP tell me to my face circa 2010 they saw themselves as “activists” and were investing in more protections for customers.

I laughed.

He was not wrong. Microsoft has been "activists" that have been actively lobbying multitudes of states for years pushing for consumer privacy protection laws that really do meaningfully improve peoples privacy.

Of course, that's only technically correct. The bills they have been pushing for are terrible, they improve consumer privacy status quo in the worst way possible, by taking one step forward and building a wall that prevents any further steps.

The reason for this is mostly because they hate the idea a GDPR-esq law in the US and hope if they pass enough shitty laws in the states they can forestall federal legislation.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/tech-lobbyists-are-pus...

Interview with the author of the above piece on the topic: https://opensourcesecurity.io/2022/02/13/episode-310-hayley-...

Isnt the point of a warrant that it negates any privacy restrictions

Maybe I view the legal substrate as a bit more malleable than most. Just spitballing.

Raise the burden of proof requirements for warrants in abortion related cases from probable cause to something more strict ie: some credible evidence, preponderance of the evidence, clear and convincing evidence, or beyond reasonable doubt, and introduce criminal penalties for complying with warrants that don't meet this threshold.

Introduce criminal penalties for exfiltrating abortion related evidence found during a warrant across state lines.

I'm sure there are an infinite number of much more creative ways to construct such laws. Being more familiar with evidentiary procedures would make me feel more able to derive some more subtle and effective requirements. My gut says that this being a "states issue" allows for more legislative flexibility, but then again, I'm no lawyer or legislative analyst.

Broadly speaking, the rules which govern search warrants are themselves laws which can and have been amended. See https://casetext.com/statute/california-codes/california-pen...

You could stop tracking the data they ask for. If you don’t have it they can’t get it from ya.

Statement from Meta: Nothing in the valid warrants we received from local law enforcement in early June, prior to the Supreme Court decision, mentioned abortion. The warrants concerned charges related to a criminal investigation and court documents indicate that police at the time were investigating the case of a stillborn baby who was burned and buried, not a decision to have an abortion.

I don’t understand why there should be a moral imperative to defy a warrant in this case. I hope all pro-choicers would agree, that the freedom of self performing a not-medically-supervised abortion at 23 weeks, the burning und burying in a plastic bag is _not_ the freedom most are fighting for.

You cant have a medically supervised abortion at 23 weeks minus very few exceptions. If you could, this wouldn't be the story. So, yes, it is about having a very late abortion. What else do they do with it to avoid the very law that is now going after them?

But yes, medically, 22 weeks the fetus may be viable without the mother, therefore we draw the line. It's murder, charge it as such, and sounds to me investigations are proper.

What do you mean minus very few exceptions? A bunch of states ban abortion only at 24 weeks or later, with the viability line generally being at 24-28 weeks. And the actual point of this case isn't the the individuals going past the viability line, but as an example of what states could do to violate someone's privacy. Especially in states that have completely banned or are working on banning abortion. The threshold of evidence needed for a state to serve such a warrant is low and there's a clear trend of states also using it to punish people out of state or out of their legal jurisdiction.

"To bolster the case, a law enforcement officer asked a court to order Facebook to turn over private messages between the women. In his application, the officer said the women had told investigators that they had texted back and forth on Messenger about Celeste’s pregnancy."

https://archive.ph/mTvgU

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