Facebook shares chat history with police in abortion case, sparks outrage in US
San Francisco: Facebook sparked outrage for informing the US police probing the abortion case. It was revealed in media reports that the social networking site exposed the messages of a mother facing criminal prosecution over her daughter’s abortion to the police.
The Abortion rights advocates feared a similar thing in the US Supreme Court when big tech companies would track users’ data, location and behavior.
Jessica Burgess, 41, is accused of helping her 17-year-old daughter get an abortion in the US state of Nebraska.
She faces five charges—one of which pertains to a 2010 law that allowed abortions only up to 20 weeks before conception. There are three charges against the daughter, one of which includes hiding and leaving the unborn child after an abortion.
Even after this, Facebook’s owner company Meta defended itself, referring to the Nebraska court order saying that they did not mention abortion at all and it came before the Supreme Court overturned the Row vs Wade case. .
Logan Koepke, who researched the impact of technology on criminal justice, tweeted, “This order applies if the search warrant mentions abortion. But this is not true.”
Facebook told a news agency that “they had to do this according to government law.”
