Snapchat and the Police

The popular mobile social media application Snapchat has already been the subject of scrutiny mainly because of the fact that snaps don’t actually disappear once they have been viewed. In its own privacy policy, Snapchat says, “We cannot guarantee that deletion always occurs within a particular time frame.” Now Snapchat is in the spotlight again for sharing snaps with the local police force.

There are two conditions, however – the snaps can’t have been opened by the intended recipient yet, and law enforcement needs to have a warrant. Snapchat has only turned over snaps about a dozen times between May and October 2013.  The reason why the police can only see unopened snaps is because the snaps are supposed to be deleted from Snapchat’s servers once they are opened. Unopened snaps are stored until viewed or for 30 days if not opened. With a warrant, Snapchat can send the ones still on those servers to the police. Snaps that have been added to users’ My Stories are a different beast. Unless the snaps are deleted by the user, they remain on the server for 24 hours, even after they have been viewed. Any images still on a Snapchat server can be requested to be viewed by law enforcement. What’s more, snaps can also be kept after their expiration date if the police express interest but cannot get a warrant to view the snap until later.

According to Micah Shaffer, head of “trust and safety” at Snapchat, their compliance with the police is keeping with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which “obliges us to produce the snaps to the requesting law enforcement agency.”

This is all well and good until the police violate the ECPA or Snapchat’s privacy policy or even step into a gray area. My roommate, whose father is a deputy chief of their local precinct, has been questioned by her father regarding snaps he has seen on her My Story. I do not believe that he obtained a warrant to open his daughter’s My Story, but if he is her father, is it more acceptable?

In Birmingham, England, the West Midlands Police (WMP) Department actually has its own Snapchat account and sends followers “a hodgepodge of missing person’s posters and meme-y PSAs.” Even though in this case you have to be friends with WMP on Snapchat to receive the snaps and view their My Story, my concern is that someday the police will become a sponsored My Story on everyone’s feed. This has some benefits – alerts of crimes, road closures, etc. – but most of those benefits can be achieved in other more efficient manners. These two cases serve as examples that online activities are eventually surveyed by “Big Brother”

The whole Snapchat situation is simply the NSA on a smaller scale. We, as citizens, are not really sure what the police and the NSA are looking for when they scan our emails and snaps. Schaffer only vaguely answered this concern when he said “there are times when we . . . are permitted and sometimes compelled by law to access and disclose information.” Not knowing what the police or NSA are searching for turns this into a typical “big brother” case. I understand the need of law enforcement and the NSA to keep their citizen’s safe, but there are lines that must not be crossed, including taking advantage of the system by violating the privacy of your daughter just to make sure she’s succeeded in college.