Story says it was a warrant. Not a request or a subpoena. Fighting a warrant isn't really possible. Defense can move to suppress it at pretrial, but FB has no standing to refuse to service a warrant.

Could you say a bit more? IANAL, but I only know about warrants in the context of them coming in and taking stuff. I don't know what a warrant could even mean here, especially given that the information isn't physically in Nebraska.

Ok, I just double-checked that, and apparently Facebook has a Nebraska data center. So the information could possibly be there. But I have a hard time imagining Nebraska PD going into a 10-acre data center and just grabbing servers.

Warrants don't need to be for physical items. Even pre-internet, PD could issue a warrant for phone records and it doesn't matter where or how the records are stored. They just need the records to be turned over for inspection. Nebraska can sanction anyone who doesn't comply with a warrant.

Thanks. I have looked for information on this and can't find much. Maybe part of this is per-state variation?

IANAL but I think a subpoena is different from a warrant.

They are. Roughly, a warrant is issued to a law enforcement agent and grants them powers not normally granted (arrest, search, etc). A subpoena is issued to a 3rd party to produce evidence or appear in court.

In this case, the warrant appears to have been issued to an officer in the Norfolk PD, who then asked FB for any messages between the two suspects.

What's not clear to me (IANAL) is what power FB had to refuse to comply with the warrant. If they refused to comply, would the police start seizing servers? Or, would FB be held in contempt (usually applies to subpoenas, not sure if that would apply with a warrant).

All that said, the "easy" answer for FB (Apple, Google, etc) is E2E encryption of messages. Then all they can do it produce the encrypted "gibberish" and the PD has to hack it or move on.