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Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges (www.theverge.com)

submitted 1 year ago by JRepin@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.ml

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1874605

A 17-year-old from Nebraska and her mother are facing criminal charges including performing an illegal abortion and concealing a dead body after police obtained the pair’s private chat history from Facebook, court documents published by Motherboard show.

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[–] Stovetop@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Obligatory IANAL, but...

Generally a search warrant needs to be issued by a local authority, and that requires the crime to be prosecutable in the place where it was issued.

So in theory, California is potentially able to refuse requests to search for things that are not illegal in California but may be illegal somewhere else.

That being said, it looks like there are specific practices in place making it easier to issue warrants for electronic data like this scenario, even across state lines.

And in this particular circumstance, the alleged offense is even illegal in California (abortion of a viable fetus), so it's a bit of a moot point anyways. A Californian judge would have issued this warrant if a local police department requested one.