Snapchat Joins the Gang, Releases Transparency Report

Snapchat has released its first transparency report, detailing the number of requests for data it's fielded from law enforcement agencies both in the U.S. and elsewhere. For a service sometimes vilified as a conduit for shady dealings, Snapchat received surprisingly few police requests from U.S. agencies (just 375, involving 666 accounts). Perhaps agencies are put off by the small number of Snapchat messages that may be vulnerable to such requests.

666 accounts!

[Bruce66423]

Obviously dodgy...

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[TypeMail]

Security is the most important thing !

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[zemus]

As someone who suffers from hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia, this article freaks me out.

That is cool

[sanf780]

Snapchat, an application that emphasizes on short lived messages. No wonder search warrants will be a hit and miss! Unless you resort to the typical trick of wiretapping, that is, have another copy of the messages go to an interested party unbeknown to you.

I foresee the US government asking for these messages to be to sent to the NSA as bad as requesting a backdoor to all non-military devices that use encryption. You surely heard about politicians asking for backdoors already, haven't you?

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[jaseuk]

It's saying that the reason why so few police requests are received is due to the fact that snapchat can only produce information on unopened snaps (or stories). Most police investigations are in response to an event that has happened, rather than something they anticipate happening. The police would have to be exceptionally lucky to time the warrant to hit after the message has been sent, but before it is opened.

Jason.