How Facebook became the center of an abortion case

This past June, a Nebraska woman was charged with two felonies related to an illegal abortion after authorities discovered information in private messages on Facebook, per court documents made public this week.

⚖️💊 A deeper dive… Prosecutors say the 41-year-old Jessica Burgess acquired and gave abortion pills to her daughter, who was 17 at the time and ~28 weeks pregnant, then helped her dispose of the fetus following a miscarriage.

The two were initially charged with one felony and a pair of misdemeanors each – none of which were related to abortion, which has been illegal in Nebraska 20 weeks after fertilization since 2010. But after serving a search warrant to obtain FB Messenger chat logs between the mother and daughter, police tacked-on two additional felonies for Burgess (the mother)… and this time both were related to abortion.

• Meta published a statement this week saying the warrants from Nebraska police “did not mention abortion at all,” only that authorities “were investigating the case of a stillborn baby who was burned and buried.”

🧠 In the know: Facebook stores most user information in plaintext on its servers, meaning the data can be accessed when compelled with a warrant, per NBC News, which said the company routinely complies with law enforcement requests to do so.

• Its Messenger app does offer end-to-end encryption, meaning chats are only visible on users’ phones and aren’t readable by the company or any government entity (even with a search warrant). But this option is only available to people using the app on mobile devices, and messages are encrypted only after you select the option to mark chats as “secret,” though Meta says it’ll be the default setting across all messages and calls by next year.

📊 Flash poll: How do you think Big Tech should handle legal requests for data related to abortion?

Comply as normal

Refuse to hand over data

Unsure/other