Snapchat admits to handing unopened 'snaps' to US law enforcement
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
People have been disappointed with the seeming death of this dream, and very recent revelations have exposed just how much that dream failed to be achieved. And very vocal, as one would expect from a league of very frustrated dreamers.
Of course, this is complicated for images, not to mention resource intensive, but it's entirely possible to lock down your services to a point where you literally cannot divulge information on your users since you don't have it.
Anyway, a clarification of the headline: not only 'unopened' snaps, but also those that have not yet been opened by all nominated recipients. So if a law enforcement agent can have themselves invited into a Snapchat circle they can take advantage of that fact to persist the image on the server until it is legally demanded.
One of the more out-of-touch HN comments I've seen in a while. And that's saying a lot!
Look at it this way: the person sending the snapchat owns the "data", and is just granting the recipient permission to watch it for ~10 seconds.
It's just about making it harder for the average user to save a potentially embarrassing photo and allow you to send fun pics that are too crappy to put onto facebook/twitter.
Do you remember when we thought that Twitter was a stupid idea? When "I'll publish pictures of my food" was not worth a billion dollars?
The idea of drawing something with someone else alone was valued at 180 million. Think about it.
Obviously that doesn't make sense, but neither does any valuation in tech right now.
I'm glad they don't actually store for longer than is necessary tbh.
Not national security, but an arguably reasonable law enforcement target.
As soon as the image is sent though, most legislatures consider that pornographic distribution. Here in the UK for instance you could at least be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act.
Having such a picture of someone else is also against the letter of the relevant laws even if the subject of the image sent it to you.
Like laws covering the age of consent for explicit sexual activity (which varies between 14 and 21 depending on where you are and sometimes depending on your gender and orientation) it gets more complicated if an image crosses state borders (sender and recipient being in different states/countries). Generally speaking you would find yourself judged against the strictest of the laws involved, not the most lenient, where there is variation.
It's not rare to read about some teen that is having to register as a sex offender for doing the kind of things teens have been doing for a long time, it's just that now technology keeps the evidence around and accessible.
They may be storing all snaps. They say they aren't but who knows.