this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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Student Teacher Sent a Private Snapchat Complaining About Her Workday. An Hour Later, Police Pulled Up to Her School. (www.gadgetreview.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago by spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world
519 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

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[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 14 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

The US government has been spying on "private" communications for a looooooooooong time. Idk if "well over 80 years" is accurate, but sometime around mid last century for sure.

[–] NihilsineNefas@slrpnk.net 6 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Maybe not over 80 years if only due to the lack of technology (it would have taken a lot of agents manning a lot of switchboards to listen in on every telephone conversation), but saying "at least since the late 60s" wouldn't be inaccurate at all

[–] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

WW2 started over 80 years ago. And they had the technology to spy on electronic communication then.

[–] NihilsineNefas@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

100% true, though in the same vein as I said; it would take a lot of agents personally listening in to cover the sheer volume of phonecalls and radio transmissions that occurred over just the US, let alone the level of granularity they have with today's "every message on every service goes through a datacenter server and is analysed in realtime" mode of surveillance that leads to things like this teacher being raided for a snapchat message faster than the cops responded to Uvalde.

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