Sixty minutes. That’s how long it took for a private Snapchat message to travel from Kristen Volpe’s phone to the FBI to the deputies standing in her elementary school hallway. On January 29, 2025, the 22-year-old student teacher at John L. Hensey Elementary in Washington, Illinois, vented to her boyfriend and two roommates — three people total — after a student closed her laptop mid-class and wiped her lesson plan. She referenced shooting the student or the school. She meant it as a frustrated joke. Snapchat’s algorithm didn’t get the humor.
No student reported her. No parent. No coworker. The flag was entirely automated. Snapchat’s policy permits voluntary emergency disclosures to law enforcement — no warrant required — when the platform determines imminent harm exists. The algorithm makes that initial call. Think of it like your Ring doorbell deciding to call 911 on its own, except the doorbell is reading your text messages.
The duality of AI…one stops nonexistent threats another one happily puts you into danger
The headline of this article should have mentioned the reason her communication was flagged was because she mentioned shooting the student or the school. When you send a text, or Snapchat message, you are stripping out a wide range of non-verbal communication including intent and seriousness. So when someone sends a message with the comment that they might shoot a student or the school there is no way to judge these things. The last thing Snapchat wants or needs is an actual school shooting occurring that can be traced back to the shooter actually mentioning their intent to do so on their platform. With no way to judge intent Snapchat had to have a way to address these concerns. If an actual shooting was prevented then Snapchat would be lauded. Otherwise it’s spun like this article implying it’s a breach of privacy.
The world with social media is much different than the world before it. It’s changed the way people think, the types of things they think about and what they consider important. It therefore changes the way they act. Combine this with the ever growing surveillance state that intentionally wants to manipulate us and is able to do so at scale and speed and we find ourselves in the giant and dangerous mess we’re in now.
So the lesson to the rest of us is DO NOT USE SNAPCHAT especially for private messaging.
I use Signal, was pressed to do so by privacy-minded friends and have pressed other friends to adopt the client.
So long as you don’t accidentally include Jeffrey Goldberg in your chat, you’re okay.
Questions for the ridiculous number of people on here who are perfectly willing to give up their right to privacy because you believe it makes schools and other places safer:
Have you read the 50+ page user agreement for your cell phone company? How about the user agreements of every app that has access to your cell phone, your PC mic or apps that have access to your files? Late model cars have microphones too, as do TV remotes. Microsoft has access to everything on your Windows PC. I’d give 100 to 1 odds that 99% of you haven’t read any of those user agreements OR the UA for private chat apps you are using. Likewise are you sure any cloud storage you’re using isn’t scanning your documents for forbidden phrases?
Since you haven’t read every word of each and every user agreement and think it keeps schools safe, you should be just fine with the fact that EVERYTHING you say or write may be available to law enforcement, even if you’re talking to yourself while sitting on the toilet in your home. If you mutter that you’d like to kill someone or burn something misheard as a school building to the ground you are just fine with AI flagging it and the police knocking on your door in an hour, right? You’ll also be just fine with losing your career and your job never being able to find another one, right? Right? After all, other people never know WTF someone dangerous and violent is going to do.
The number of people on here who are perfectly willing to give up all their rights and have their private communications monitored for something that is nothing more than security theater is unbelievable.
Is it legal for a service to be called private when it is programmatically shared with law enforcement?
Seems like something i would [Ctrl]+[S]
Welcome to post Constitution USA.
It’s HEARTENING to Know these Platforms have the ABILITY to STOP atrocities and Almost Always choose NOT too! <3
Marvel at how AI stopped this non-existent threat, while also giving advice on the best way to kill yourself, or get the highest kill score in a mass shooting, or hack into other corporations.
Sure, this tech isn’t ever going to start directly killing people it has determined are a problem, flipping off life support machines, crashing autonomous vehicles, etc.
Who the fuck still uses Snapchat?
Ditch that shit.
Now that you know everything on Snapchat is going through active automated filtering, consider what Snapchat has chosen NOT to flag and is allowing to flow freely, like sex trafficking and the sale of minors.
As unfair and life-changing as this event has been for this young teacher, I think the actual story of what Snapchat (and every other digital communication method) is reading/tracking yet allowing is a much, much bigger story. And dirtier. With billionaires and pedophiles and all manner of nasty allowables we do not yet know.
This will ve the biggest shock to society when people discover what has been known. The only reason people are not blackmailed into compliance and slavery yet is because they have not destabilized the gov enough to get away with it.
Think if they had to explain how they know the color of your shit that day, but they can’t explain where all the cocaine came from or why sex trafficking rings still exist? How did they know everything else but not how that senator bought the crack he was caught smoking?
We can’t be more than a few years away if we continue along this path.
I suspect a lot of the influence of Israel and the US on European politicians who again and again act against the European Public Opinon and in favor of Israel and the US, is the ton of blackmail material those two states have gathered on politicians the world over in the modern era of digital communications mainly via American systems, using portable networked pocket computers running OSes from American companies and which have everything needed to be a fully-features surveillance device, including a camera.
Every single vaguelly criminal or even just shameful action of any European politician with a chance of reaching a position of power, done via or around a smartphone or computer running an American OS and/or using American chat software, is almost certainly stored in a database somewhere.
Certainly that would explain A LOT of what’s going on in European Politics, especially when it comes to Israel turning full-on NAZI whilst European governments mainly just make believe nothing is happening or propose purely symbolic performative measures with zero effectiveness in stopping the Genocide.
And this is why I’ve moved away from snap, and most other platforms, I’m back to texting and using carrier pigeons.
know what platform doesn’t have this problem? simplex.
that’s why neonazis are using it and why you should too.
I fully agree with how all of this is authoritarian bullshit but I can’t escape that nagging feeling that this too is about the US, the only country in the world where these shootings are daily occurrences; I get that people get ichy about even jokes like these
The amount of people in this thread that seem to think invasion of privacy is cool to police thought crime is honestly shocking. The subject and subject matter are completely irrelevant.
In addition, teachers are fucking people and venting and joking in private with close friends is sacrosanct.
My guess is most are very young. Goes to show our civil liberties worldwide, especially since 9/11, have eroded tremendously. Young people have grown up in a world where privacy is a joke and government spying is a foregone conclusion.
I work mostly with people older than myself. The younger ones are shocked by everyone’s lackadaisical privacy practices. The older ones all say, “oh well, it’s everywhere and I have nothing to hide. It’s not like you can get away from it.”
I don’t know a single young person who actually cares about Internet privacy. The vast majority of them are on social media all the time.
To clarify, I’m not saying any demographic is above poor privacy concerns. But there is a subtle difference between laziness / difficulty understanding how to mitigate the threat and the believe that it isn’t a threat but an okay behavior, however subtle that difference is. I don’t want to sound like an old man tilting at windmills and blaming things on the youth. I actually think it is a problem that they are just suffering, not responsible for.
The idea that mass violence, which happens very rarely all things considered, justifies constant mass surveillance and automated reaction is very troubling. The new “think of the children,” I suppose.
Mass violence that the US as a society endorses by doing nothing to address the root causes of gun access and lack of mental health treatments.
It’s as if they can create the conditions for mass repression and then justify any action.
Ironically the far-right was worried about this 40+ years ago with the “FEMA Camps” narrative - right up until ICE started rounding up citizens and US residents alike in the exact facial fashion described
I am dripping in the irony
In fact, we also have countries with less surveillance and less mass violence. And that’s most countries these days. There’s been only one single school shooting ever in my country and I actually knew people at that school at the time (my ex had graduated from there, but her cousin was still attending). 8th or 9th grade boy with a strict military father was being bullied by a teacher so he shot the teacher. That teacher would give him bad grades knowing his father would punish him for it (someone said he’d have to run 20 km home from school if he got a bad grade, but I’m not sure if that’s true), mocked him apparently, etc. Not trying to justify the kid’s actions, just illustrating what it took to get someone in a country other than the US to even go that far. He didn’t announce his plans to his friends beforehand AFAIK, so surveillance wouldn’t even have caught it.
Where I live there is little to no mass surveillance, and the only “shootings” in schools are the high school students shooting alcohol hidden from the teachers.
We do have crime, like every other country, but by population count, it’s not that bad.
There are cameras in most key intersection in major cities, and they are monitored by the emergency services, but no plate readers or face recognition whatsoever.
but no plate readers or face recognition whatsoever.
we promise
No, we know. My wife used to manage a shift of the emergency services, and they just don’t have the funds. Not happening for another 4 to 8 years.
Is my brain just not working or does that first sentence make no sense?
“that seem to think invasion of privacy is cool to police thought crime”
What? (I’m not disagreeing with you, based on the rest and what I think you’re saying, just to be clear)
I can try and rephrase: It’s shocking to me how many people support invasions of privacy for the purposes of detecting and prosecuting ideas and thoughts.
I take solace in this is the top comment, at least.
It’s frightening that many people are fine with this sort of invasion of privacy as long as the reason is “good enough”. This is a knee-jerk, uneducated response that only makes sense to the ignorant. I also expect they’re young, and spent more time looking at their phone than paying attention in class.
I’m reminded a lot of the therapist rule when dealing with suicidal people (Ive had thoughts myself and others in my life so I’ve had enough discussions around this).
Mentioning suicidal ideation usually isn’t enough to warrant a call. What will is when you start planning. If you get into details of how and who you’re contacting.
Here too she just mentioned it off hand and didn’t mention having a plan to go do anything. Seems excessive to do a call on that and really into “thought crime” territory.
Dark humour is half of what keeps people going in Jobs where the situation is dire. You have to let it out somehow, if you just let it bottle up you’ll explode and won’t be able to do the job anymore.
I think of it the way the ACLU thinks about defending racists: it’s totally irrelevant whether or not the joke is fucked up.
The US has worked itself into a horrible situation whereby the protection of the second amendment comes at the cost of all other rights for citizens. Trying to do this without coming out and saying so results in an enmeshment of industry and government that would make Mussolini proud.
I can theoretically understand why terrified parents who can’t think of any other way to protect their children might want this, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. They’re selling everyone out for the appearance of temporary protection from the real problem.
Exactly! The joke is fucked up, and yet we deserve the right to reasonable privacy in spaces where we’re told we can expect reasonable privacy (and the right to have spaces with reasonable privacy). Consent for mass surveillance and tyranny is built from situations like this where the question can be shifted to being about what was done under the presumption of privacy rather than the fact that it was violated.
I don’t see much of it, luckily. They must be pretty far down in the comments. On Lemmy, of all places, I would expect that sentiment to be near zero. On Reddit though? I would hope it’d be low, but I have a feeling it’d be mixed, at best.
People (I suspect most if not all Americans) are unironically cheering for an automated version of what the Stasi did.
my knee jerk reaction was thinking the same as you but this very paticular case, i am not sure. i havent made up my mind.
lets talk about opposite ends and then talk about snapchat
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if a person is sitting in mcdonalds saying they want to shoot up a school, we wouldnt think it weird if someone called the authorities. in fact peoples lives have been saved because someone overheard something
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in contrast, a private conversation on signal should never be read and everyone should stop using it if it is read.
now snap chat is neither a public place or an encrypted communication app. it falls in between. it is a social media app. would you be worried if it was facebook? i keep thinking about it. why shouldnt snapchat report it? keep on mind that i have never used snapchat, facebook, or instagram and i thought snapchat was basically for sending pictures. (i am older). but, honest question, why would people expect privacy on snapchat? again, i havent used it and not as “hip”, so i am genuinely asking and this isnt a loaded question
I haven’t used it in some years now but I suspect it’s still the same. Snapchat is a messaging platform with the main form of communication being images showing what the user is doing at the moment, either through direct message which disappears after the receiver views the picture, or through a “story” which is removed after 24 hours. You can send people direct/private messages with just text (and stickers, etc.) as well and those conversations disappear after both parties view the messages and leave the chat page. You have the option to set your stories as “private” so only friends can see it, and you assume a “private” message between you and another user is “private”, or the image you sent to your friend will only be seen by your friend. But people forget (because nobody reads them) that it doesn’t mean they didn’t agree to T&C that tell them that nothing they do on the platform is private and they give snap inc the legal right to use or sell their data. They don’t advertise E2EE, but I’d say a majority of Snapchat users either don’t care to understand the value in E2EE or they have never heard of it and don’t even know what it is.
If I overheard some kids making obvious jokes about shooting a kid at their school while sitting in a public area, I would do nothing, “kids are dumb, they shouldn’t say that shit because it’s a sensitive subject, but obviously they’re not being serious” I would think.
If I overheard them planning a murder of a fellow student, or of anyone, whether with a gun or any method, I would be inclined to call authorities and report it.
Imo, this situation is wrong, it shouldn’t have happened, no planning occurred, it was just a joke, as tasteless as it may have been, it was still just a joke to let off some steam. A crime would have been if they made an elaborate plan on how they’d do it, like waiting for the kid to be alone, and talking about ways to do it without getting caught or saying they would bring a gun to school tomorrow and shoot the kid, these sentences all have planning involved. Saying I want to kill myself after an embarrassing moment or kill someone else after they hurt my feelings doesn’t justify someone calling the cops on me because they fear for my or someone else’s safety and now they’ve ruined my career over a thought that slipped out of my mouth during a moment of emotional distress.
People should be seeing this story and boycotting Snapchat, users stories should be riddled with links to this story and educating friends about why online privacy is important and how to protect themselves, but it won’t be, I’m sure most will not ever even hear about this story. Plus, the comment this person made is obviously controversial so there’s a lot of differing opinions about whether it was okay to say that to someone in a school setting, but this isn’t about that at all, it’s about privacy, doesn’t matter what was said, doesn’t matter where it was said. What matters is that a person said something to another person in confidence and without either of them realizing someone else was spying on them, like a bug being planted in someone’s home. The conversation didn’t happen at a school, it happened on the Internet, in a “private” room.
Preventing crime is and should be a tricky business, because if it was easy then that would mean nobody would have any privacy, physical and digital locks would have to be purchased from the government so they could access anything you have. Houses and cars would be required to have microphones and cameras that our governments would have full access to. Nothing we said, did, or owned would be private. Nothing you invented would be yours, nothing you build would be yours, and nothing that makes you happy/sad/angry/embarrassed/etc. would be yours.
This is blatant proof you are the product and everything you do on the platform is surveiled. Individuals are not as valuable as communities, so ridding their platform of one person means absolutely nothing to them even if it ruins the individuals life in the process. If they started the platform with these controversies, they would have never gotten traction. They got traction because the mechanics of the system give you the impression that you are talking privately and everything you do on this platform “disappears” into nothingness and you don’t have to worry about an embarrassing picture or message coming out years down the road.
Sorry for the long winded response lol
TL;DR Snapchat gives the false impression of private conversations that disappear forever, sort of like how signal can be configured, but it has a higher priority for image sharing, and of course, nothing is encrypted so nothing is really ever deleted. It doesn’t matter the individual was at a school when they said the thing, the context of what they said is important, and more importantly the fact they said it in confidence is important.
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Hey Tesseract, I wholeheartedly agree with this. Fucking ban me god dammit!
Could you show a link because I haven’t seen anyone saying that.
Scroll. That was the entire thread when I posted. And they were all upvoted.
Sort by Controversial.
Scroll down to the -2 and lower comments in this thread.
I believe there are a few things you simply shouldn’t joke about. Killing children is one of those things. But yes, everybody has a fundamental right to their privacy and it’s insane that mass surveillance is becoming more and more common and way too many people seem to just accept or ignore it.
I believe there are a few things you simply shouldn’t joke about
And I believe that belief makes you a dangerous idiot who’ll happily support Fascism.
Me thinking that joking about killing kids isn’t ok makes me a fascist? I don’t quite understand how you got to that conclusion, but ok.
To be clear, I didn’t say people can’t say what they want to. I think that freedom of speech is incredibly important. It’s none of my business what you choose to say if I’m not involved, but I would not be comfortable joking around with such a serious topic. If you are, then more power to you I guess?
The relevant part of my reply was about mass surveillance being bad, and I don’t think that’s a very hot take. What I think about certain dark joke topics doesn’t matter.
Any restriction on your freedom to say offensive shit must be fascism, right?
Couldn’t you just fuck-off into the woods and enjoy all your freedoms alone?
Any restriction on your freedom to say offensive shit must be fascism, right?
Not what I said. But any restriction that leads to law enforcement intervention without a person complaining damn sure is.
Couldn’t you just fuck-off into the woods and enjoy all your freedoms alone?
No, and fuck you for asking. If I have to share the planet with a bunch of copsucking shitbags who believe in thoughtcrime for dead baby jokes but people saying the most horrifically racist, sexist, or homophobic bullshit is just the price of free speech, you can suck it up and deal with there being people out there who can tell the difference between “popular” and “right”.
I believe there are a few things you simply shouldn’t joke about. Killing children is one of those things.
I don’t think we could be friends. Not because I have a need to make jokes about killing kids, but because I don’t want to spend the whole time worrying about how you’ll take a joke.
That’s fine. I think we’d get along fine if you don’t make a habit of joking about killing kids, slavery, rape or animal abuse. If you think that makes me too sensitive then I’m happy to stay away.
Americans would rather have thought crime and mass surveillance than give up their guns, because they need those guns to combat a tyrant or fascist.
So anyway, how’s USA’s government going these days? Surely not fascist or tyrannical with all those guns around, right?
Right?
If she was in a bar and she was venting to her friends about shooting students or shooting up a school and the bartender heard her and contacted the police, would you call it an invasion of privacy?
The real story is that people consider unencrypted messages on Snapchat “private”.
This isn’t a bar. This is too people joking in their living room. Or at least, that’s how Snapchat conditions you into treating the space.
This isn’t a bar. This is too people joking in their living room. Or at least, that’s how Snapchat conditions you into treating the space.
Your final sentence shows that you know that the first part of your comment is misleading, so It’s curious that you didn’t correct it.
“How they condition you” is irrelevant. You may be “conditioned” to think your little corner of the bar is your private space, but that doesn’t make it so.
This story isn’t a tale of an invasion of privacy, or even a tale of mass surveillance; it’s a tale of people being unable to determine what is private and what isn’t.
I can’t help but wonder if people would be messing this up so badly if it were Snapchat automatically forwarding an alert to the police because they detected an adult soliciting a non adult for sex, or if the police arrived and the teacher was making plans to shoot up a school.
In any event, I’ll save my outrage about invasions of privacy and mass surveillance (both very real concerns) for actual instances where one or both occur.
War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Your Private Chats have no expectation of privacy.
In what way is an unencrypted message sent using software you don’t control on a server you don’t control “private”?
Does Snapchat even call them “private chats”? Or are they called something like “Direct Messages”?
A 22 year old should know better.
Maybe we shouldn’t bait-and-switch people by calling something private that is anything but.
This is just victim blaming. These people are victims of corporate deceit, and you’re blaming them for it. What was she wearing? Maybe that contributing to it as well!
Hey, if you want to be angry at Snapchat, be my guest. I have never used it so I don’t know for sure what they claim. I do assume that they never explicitly say your DMs can’t be read by them, because lawyers exist.
There is no victim here. The student teacher did say she was going to shoot up a school. There were no charges filed, and she rightfully lost her job for poor judgement.
If she wanted a truly private conversation, there are plenty of options. Hell, even Facebook encrypts DMs by default, iirc.
People need to learn the difference between “feels private” and “is private”.
shouts death threat in public forum
“THEY CANT TAKE MUH FREEDUMMMM!”
