Snapchat Search Warrants Emphasize Data Vulnerability 105
Nerval's Lobster writes "This year's revelations about NSA surveillance have upended the idea that our data—any of it—is truly secure from prying eyes. That uncertainty has sparked the rise of several businesses with a simple proposition: you can send whatever you want via their online service (text, images, video), and that data will vaporize within seconds of the recipient opening it up. One of the most popular of those services is Snapchat, which allows users to take "Snaps" (i.e., videos or photos) that self-destruct a few seconds after the recipient opens them; that data also disappears from the company's servers. But is 'disappearing' data truly secure from prying eyes? Earlier this week, Snapchat admitted to a loophole in its schema that leaves Snaps open to viewing by law enforcement — provided the latter shows up at the company's front door with a warrant. Until a recipient opens a Snap, it's stored in the company's datacenter. In theory, law enforcement could request that Snapchat send it an unopened Snap. 'If we receive a search warrant from law enforcement for the contents of Snaps and those Snaps are still on our servers,' read an Oct. 14 posting on Snapchat's corporate blog, 'a federal law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) obliges us to produce the Snaps to the requesting law enforcement agency.' Law-enforcement entities have hit Snapchat with 'about a dozen' search warrants for unopened Snaps since May 2013. 'Law enforcement requests sometimes require us to preserve Snaps for a time, like when law enforcement is determining whether to issue a search warrant for Snaps,' the blog continued. That surveillance could also go beyond unopened Snaps: Snapchat 'Stories,' or a cluster of Snaps, live on the company's servers for up to 24 hours and can be viewed multiple times, which broadens the window for law enforcement to poke its way in."
Newspeak (Score:5, Interesting)
a federal law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) obliges us to produce the Snaps to the requesting law enforcement agency.
Is it a rule now that every law has to be named to imply it does the exact opposite of what it actually does?
It's a big planet (Score:4, Interesting)
What I don't understand is why anyone runs any service with any sort of privacy angle from the U.S. There are freer countries with good Internet access. Pick one, and put all those U.S. subpoenas on the bottom of the birdcage, where they belong.