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.
Except Snapchat doesn’t have to surveil its customers and we really don’t want it to.
Does Apple surveil iMessages? Does your cell carrier need to monitor your text messages? Does it listen to your calls to see if you make terroristic threats?
Some bad things might be prevented if we “listened in” to all communications and then triggered a police response when something alarming was said. But doing so is ripe for abuse by those in power as well and that’s why warrants are required before surveillance and the invasion of your privacy is allowed. No warrant was necessary here because Snapchat makes you accept the surveillance under its terms of use, which all apps and cell carriers could technically do. And your Amazon Alexas. We don’t want that. Without privacy you don’t have freedom.