Snapchat's AI flagged a private message sent to 3 people and alerted the FBI in under an hour, leading to a student teacher's arrest.

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.

  • belochka@lemmy.worldEnglish
    53·
    3 days ago

    Wrong lesson. All the ways to track you combined don’t leave you an outlet.

    Signal is fine to make you feel better.

    It’s a social problem that should be solved by social, not technical, means. Awareness, law, burning tires.

    EDIT: for moral clarity’s sake - I live in Russia, I’m not spreading awareness mostly, I’m not trying to change any law and sure as hell I’m not burning tires ; but if you live in a democratic country with courts and presumption of innocence until proven guilty yadda-yadda, you might try those

    • 0x0@lemmy.zipEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      but if you live in a democratic country with courts and presumption of innocence until proven guilty yadda-yadda,

      So not Murica.

      • belochka@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        14 hours ago

        Compared to Russia it is, but there’s a lower threshold to start having rights, expressed in money you have to spend on lawyers.

        In case of Russia no amount of money is enough to make it democratic and lawful even in some separate, specific, one can even say - personal, situation.

        It’s the fallacy of “if it’s bad here, that means that other bad place is similarly bad”, no, that other bad place is an order of magnitude worse, but you are refusing to accept that due to lack of experience. And there’s “worse” someplace else. In many other places, actually.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I live in the United States. Crime is not about behavior or adherence to law, but who we are. Those of us who cannot afford lawyers will be framed by law enforcement or coerced into confession, or extorted into a plea deal.

      And laws are not passed that better serve the public, but are based on ideology or corporate interest.

      So we’re not a liberal, democratic society with rule of law.

      • belochka@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        14 hours ago

        In your society you can openly protest against people calling the shots, or be rude to cops, and not expect legal (and physical) retribution. There are places where this is unthinkable.

        And laws are not passed that better serve the public, but are based on ideology or corporate interest.

        Yes, that’s because the public has ideologies and corporate interests, and no common idea of what it means “to serve the public”.