via
Snapchat scans private messages.
Not just public posts or stories. private group chats between you and your closest contacts. automated AI. no human reviewed it first, got flagged and reported.
Snapchat AI → FBI → local police → school → arrest.
in under an hour.
Snapchat’s privacy policy says it may share your information with law enforcement when it believes there is a risk of harm. the definition of “risk of harm” is determined by an algorithm.
you are not told when a message is flagged.
you are not told when a report is filed.
you find out when the police arrive.
They are functionally the same when you are talking about online communications. If your message is not secret it is not private, the operator of the messaging service can see the contents of the message.
Private, in the sense of “contains sensitive information that I don’t want public” is just a feeling. Saying those things in a Snapchat “private” message is no different than posting them in a “private” message board. The number of people who can read those messages is reduced but still contains significantly more than you and your intended recipient.
To people who work in security, they are absofuckinglutely not the same.