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Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Technology
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This is an interesting point. If my server is hosted in California where abortion is legal, and some police dept from Alabama wants access to my message database, can I tell them to pound sand?
IIUC no. All of the US and some allied countries respect court orders. In general evidence can be collected worldwide as long as the crime was committed where it is a crime.
But IANAL.
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.
Generally, if in the same country you'd have to comply. As another example though: If your server was in Canada, and some department in Alabama wanted your data, you could tell them to pound sand. Though they may put some sort of warrant out for you for failure to comply (doesn't matter though if you never go there)