A stark example of how digital footprints will be utilized in a post-Roe America
The article is from Aug 10, 2022 but remains relevant
A stark example of how digital footprints will be utilized in a post-Roe America
The article is from Aug 10, 2022 but remains relevant
It would also be literally illegal for Facebook to have not done this. They were given a legally binding warrant.
If you honestly would personally go to jail rather than comply with a warrant, that speaks pretty highly to your credit, but I don’t think most people would find Facebook to be particularly culpable here. Facebook Messenger does actually offer an encrypted messaging service that, to my knowledge, has never been turned over to law enforcement because it is technically impossible for them to do that. That isn’t the default setting though, and it’s unfortunate that the people involved here weren’t aware of it.
Just to be very clear, these laws are reprehensible. However, my anger is largely reserved for the politicians and voters responsible for them. It’s a pretty big ask to demand someone personally risk jail time by refusing to comply with a valid warrant.
This would be more compelling point if FB were a person capable of going to jail and/or did not have a history of taking the user-hostile side of privacy situations, regardless of whether the law agreed with them.
This right here is why I personally believe FB deserves and flak they get from this situation. They could avoid the whole conversation about whether they should turn over the conversations if they made it so they couldn’t. They’ve chosen their data mine over user privacy, and people are right to judge them accordingly.
Facebook may not be a person, but there are people within Facebook who absolutely can and would be held personally liable for refusing to comply with a warrant, up to and including going to jail.
That Facebook Messenger isn’t E2E encrypted definitely is something that can and should be criticized, and they could absolutely do a lot more to educate users on how safe their information is or isn’t. On the flip-side, to their credit, WhatsApp is, by default, E2E encrypted. I’d honestly be curious how much value they really get out of Messenger not being encrypted, since if it’s really that high, the value from WhatsApp would be significantly higher.
I’m not saying that this is the only reason - because I’m sure they do get some financial value out of it as well - but if you wanted to be charitable, you could say that users generally expect Facebook Messenger to be equally available across devices with full message history, which isn’t really feasible when you’re signing messages with device-specific keys.