Meta explained that he only shared the information of the users due to a court order.
Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
A mother and her 17-year-old daughter are being charged with performing an illegal abortion and hiding the baby’s body after Facebook turned over the chat histories of both women to police..
The case has generated debate due to the way in which Meta, the parent company of Facebook, handled the situation and about the fact that it stores personal information of its users which can then be shared with third parties.
“Since the Roe rollback, Facebook parent company Meta and other big tech companies have made big promises about advocating for access to reproductive health care,” said Caitlin Seeley George, director of Fight for our Future, an organization non-profit dedicated to fighting these types of cases.
He pointed out that Meta’s position is hypocritical to say the least, since ultimately they criminalize people who facilitate and seek abortions, all thanks to the surveillance systems they implement on their social networks.
After receiving the history of the conversations between Celeste Burgess, 17, and her mother, Jessica Burgess, the authorities decided to press charges against her. and use the data provided by Meta as the main test.
In this situation Meta decided to publish a statement in which they explained that the delivery of the information occurred in response to a court order. that forced them to share the history of conversations.
“The arrest warrants were for charges related to a criminal investigation and court documents indicate that police at the time were investigating the case of a dead baby that was burned and buried, not a decision to abort,” said Andy Stone, communications director of Meta.
He added that as part of the court order Meta was prohibited from disclosing that it had had to share its users’ informationso they couldn’t do anything about it.
Despite this many activists have pointed out that Meta may have chosen to stop collecting its users’ information, something that is a matter of debate. To do this, it would only have been necessary to activate end-to-end encryption by default on Facebook Messenger, as is the case with WhatsApp.
This may also interest you:
– Abortion in the US: what is Roe vs. Wade and what consequences his annulment by the Supreme Court will have
– Kansas: Supporters of legal abortion achieve a resounding and emblematic victory in a referendum in the conservative state
– Biden signs an executive order that seeks to protect access to abortion and contraceptives
Source-laopinion.com