Court Demands Data From Facebook
A 17-year-old and her mother are facing criminal charges for an alleged abortion. The alleged abortion is in direct violation of Nebraskan law as presently the law prohibits abortions after 20 weeks.
According to Vice, a court order demanded Facebook to provide access to the teenager’s messages on the platform. The messages allegedly suggest that the teen purchased medication to induce an abortion. The messages also reportedly contain information about the alleged disposal of evidence.
See Vice for further information on the evidence as well as court documents.
The teen and her mother were charged with allegedly removing, concealing or abandoning a dead human body. As well as concealing the death of another person.
What’s more, Forbes note that this is one of the first examples of authorities using someone’s Facebook data to incriminate them.
Can our private messages be considered “private” anymore?
How does this relate to the wider discourse of abortion rights in the US?
Our data no longer being private is worrying given the context of the contested nature of abortion laws in the US. The overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24 has impeded on abortion rights in the US. Abortions are becoming significantly harder to access and their legality is severely threatened in several states.
When abortion rights are restricted, people are more likely to resort to unsafe methods which could be detrimental to their health.
Thousands of pro-choice supporters have been protesting since June 24 to bring awareness to the need for safe and legal abortions. Presently, legislative change to support the pro-choice movement is yet to be seen.
#DeleteFacebook
#DeleteFacebook has been trending on Twitter since August 9. As of today, the hashtag has over 57 thousand tweets and is gaining further attention.
Twitter users are calling for others to delete Facebook as their privacy is no longer guaranteed. Moreover, in the event of further bans on abortions in the US, people cannot rely upon Facebook for discretion.
Here is what some people are saying on Twitter.
As mentioned previously, Facebook is no stranger to a privacy scandal. Just last week two patients sued Meta, Facebook’s partner company, for allegedly violating patient privacy. Facebook was also sued in October 2020 for reportedly failing to meet their obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998 resulting in data being unlawfully used for advertising during elections.
Evidently, there are some compelling reasons to ditch the social media platform. What do you think? Feel free to use the comment feature on this article to let us know how you feel about #DeleteFacebook.