Here’s what you need to know about online privacy in a post-Roe world
Global News
Facebook owner Meta said it received a legal warrant from law enforcement about the case, which did not mention the word "abortion."
The case of a Nebraska woman charged with helping her teenage daughter end her pregnancy after investigators obtained Facebook messages between the two has raised fresh concerns about data privacy in the post-Roe world.
Since before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, Big Tech companies that collect personal details of their users have faced new calls to limit that tracking and surveillance amid fears that law enforcement or vigilantes could use those data troves against people seeking abortions or those who try to help them.
Meta, which owns Facebook, said Tuesday it received warrants requesting messages in the Nebraska case from local law enforcement on June 7, before the Supreme Court decision overriding Roe came down. The warrants, the company added, “did not mention abortion at all,” and court documents at the time showed that police were investigating the “alleged illegal burning and burial of a stillborn infant.”
However, in early June, the mother and daughter were only charged with a single felony for removing, concealing or abandoning a body, and two misdemeanors: concealing the death of another person and false reporting.
It wasn’t until about a month later, after investigators reviewed the private Facebook messages, that prosecutors added the felony abortion-related charges against the mother.
History has repeatedly demonstrated that whenever people’s personal data is tracked and stored, there’s always a risk that it could be misused or abused. With the Supreme Court’s overruling of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, collected location data, text messages, search histories, emails and seemingly innocuous period and ovulation-tracking apps could be used to prosecute people who seek an abortion — or medical care for a miscarriage — as well as those who assist them.
“In the digital age, this decision opens the door to law enforcement and private bounty hunters seeking vast amounts of private data from ordinary Americans,” said Alexandra Reeve Givens, the president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based digital rights nonprofit.
Facebook owner Meta said it received a legal warrant from law enforcement about the case, which did not mention the word “abortion.” The company has said that officials at the social media giant “always scrutinize every government request we receive to make sure it is legally valid” and that Meta fights back against requests that it thinks are invalid or too broad.
