When the Supreme Court first undermined bodily autonomy in the United States, many well-meaning people, myself included, told everyone they should delete their period tracking apps. Police could use the data from those apps to see if you missed your period and then use that to prosecute you if you’re not pregnant anymore. Who would have thought that the first major tech company to help police arrest someone who had an abortion would be Facebook?
Honestly, I can’t believe we didn’t call that in advance. After all, Meta (Facebook) is the company that doesn’t allow its employees to even say the word abortion, and has already removed posts related to abortion on two of Meta’s properties, Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook helped Nebraska cops arrest a girl for having an abortion. She had used Facebook Messenger to discuss the procedure. Once police suspected that her miscarriage was intentional, they were able to get their hands on her messages. From there, they made an arrest.
If Facebook wasn’t storing “private” conversations, this wouldn’t have been possible. Instead, a girl and her mother could go to prison for a medical procedure that’s legal in other states.
How Facebook Sold a Family Out
On June 7th, Facebook received warrants requesting information on Celeste, the daughter, and Jessica, the mother. The warrants were for alleged illegal burning and burial of a stillborn infant. This was prior to the Supreme Court ruling that struck down Roe v. Wade, and the warrants didn’t mention abortion. Facebook was under a non-disclosure order, which, now that Celeste and Jessica have been arrested, has lifted. This is all Facebook (Meta) has admitted to.
Nebraska has an existing law banning abortion after 20 weeks. Celeste had been 23 weeks pregnant. In many states, only “viability” is concerned with abortions, rather than a hard week-based limit. In other states and other countries, the limit is set at 24 weeks. The lone exceptions are cases where the pregnancy, previously viable, could now endanger the life of the parent or child, or if the fetus would have debilitating birth defects.
Late term abortions, as they’re often called, are rare and heartbreaking decisions where parents have to choose between their own lives and the possibility of viability, or have to remove a fetus that has no longer become viable. They’re exceedingly rare In fact, 90% of abortions are performed before the end of the first trimester, within the first 12 weeks, with fewer than 1% being “late term.”
We do not know why Celeste waited until her 23rd week to get an abortion. Her situation may have changed, she may not have been able to get the money, or she may not have been sure she was pregnant until then. There are a variety of reasons for later abortions. The fact of the matter is, in the right state, this procedure would have been legal.
In Nebraska, it’s a felony.
How Police Found Out
Police had gotten word that Celeste had miscarried under potentially suspicious circumstances. She told the police she had a miscarriage, but police continued their investigation. Police say that during their conversations, Celeste and her mother had told a detective that they discussed her situation on Facebook. From there, police got the warrant.
Police found messages on Facebook Messenger like, “Are we starting it today?”, “Ya the 1 pill stops the hormones…u gotta wait 24 HR 2 take the other,” and, “remember we burn the evidence.” The women may have thought their “private” conversation on Facebook would stay between them. They were wrong.
Facebook hasn’t helped in the matter. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has touted end to end encrypted chats on Messenger before. However, end to end encryption is not enabled by default or even easy to enable on Facebook. It’s an arduous process that involves creating a new “secret chat” with each contact or using “vanish mode,” which makes messages disappear. Their conversation gave police enough evidence to make their arrest.
No Privacy With Meta
Meta doesn’t allow discussions of abortion at the company, and hasn’t said how they’ll moderate discussions of abortion on their platforms. However, they have suspended users in the past for posting about the abortion pill.
Facebook had bragged about their end to end encryption before. When Meta (then Facebook) bought out popular chat app WhatsApp, they stated that they would keep its end to end encryption. In fact, they’d instead implement it on Facebook and Instagram. That was years ago. You could be forgiven if you believed that had already happened. However, Facebook has made turning on end-to-end encryption exceedingly difficult. They still haven’t enabled it by default.
On top of that, Meta’s properties, that is, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, can track everything you do in their in-app browsers. If you click a link in Instagram and don’t leave the app by selecting “open in browser,” you’re giving everything you do to Meta. If someone sends you a link to do research and you open it in a Meta app, the company will have that data and may hand it over to police upon request. Your best bet is to not use the Facebook app, at the very least, instead using the mobile web view in a browser that you only use for Facebook.
Meta’s apps are not a place where you can ever expect privacy. If you’re using anything from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, or anything else Meta owns, remember, it’s a data company. They make money for the data they collect on you. That’s it. Their entire job is to spy on you. Don’t trust them with anything.
For your messaging, use Signal. Signal is actually end-to-end encrypted. Unlike Meta, they don’t make money from collecting data, but instead through premium options and donations. Unlike Apple, they never back up versions of your messages on their servers. They store nothing, and your messages are always encrypted.
Meta is not your buddy. It’s a nosy neighbor that watches everything you do.
Facebook Promising Changes
Facebook is promising changes. They claim that encrypted chat is difficult, but manage to do it on WhatsApp and in special modes of Facebook Messenger. If they wanted you to have private conversations, they could easily allow that. But it’s far more difficult to analyze what someone sends to someone else with end-to-end encrypted messaging. There’s analysis that can be done on device prior to encryption, but it’s reliant on the client. Possible, yes. Trickier than simply encrypting everything? Certainly.
Just use Signal. I can’t praise it enough. And never discuss what could be crimes online anyway. Of course, with basic healthcare becoming a crime, that’s going to get far more difficult.
Sources:
- Emily Baker-White, Sarah Emerson, Forbes
- Gabriella Borter, Reuters
- Johana Bhuiyan, The Guardian
- Albert Fox Cahn, Wired
- Ed Hardy, Cult of Mac
- Brittany Shammas, Aaron Steckelberg, and Daniela Santamariña, The Washington Post
- James Vincent, The Verge
- Alvin Wanjala, Make Use Of