Google and Facebook share personal data of users seeking abortion with police

American Jessica Burgess and her daughter will stand trial in Nebraska for conducting an illegal abortion. The woman allegedly helped the underage girl find and take pills that provoked a miscarriage. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, provided a significant part of the evidence for the criminal case.

Meta provided law enforcement officials with access to an internal chat between the mother and daughter, where they discussed a plan to find the medication through Facebook. Representatives of Zuckerberg’s corporation stated that they were responding to «valid legal warrants from local law enforcement agencies.»

According to statistics provided by Meta to Insider, the company fulfills government requests for user data in more than 70% of cases. In total, the corporation receives more than 400,000 requests a year.

«Of course, we expect social media companies to cooperate with law enforcement when they make legitimate requests for information. We need them to do that,» commented Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, «But we also know that social media companies are unlikely to resist unlawful law enforcement requests because they fear liability.»

There has been a public outcry that social media can use personal data and correspondence of users to prosecute people for abortion. By the way, in some American states (in particular, Nebraska), abortion has been equated with a crime, so social networks cooperate with the investigation «within the law.»

Another case is an investigation by the American nonprofit organization ProPublica. Analysts' research has revealed that online pharmacies selling abortion drugs share confidential data with Google. And the tech giant can provide all the necessary information to law enforcement.

ProPublica has found web trackers that collect user data on the websites of at least nine online pharmacies that offer mail-order contraception — Abortion Ease, BestAbortionPill.com, PrivacyPillRX, PillsOnlineRX, Secure Abortion Pills, AbortionRx, Generic Abortion Pills, Abortion Privacy, and Online Abortion Pill Rx.

Interestingly, neither Facebook, nor Google, nor the law enforcement officers themselves comment on the communication between them. Representatives of the pharmaceutical company that uses the personal data of its customers also refuse to speak.