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.
You are describing a policy failing, not technology. I think we can both agree the policy side of things is sorely lacking. Circumstances where people are detained because of AI reporting without ever looking at the evidence themselves just shouldn’t happen.
Try the hyperbole 'Is there a bomb in my suitcase? What do you think, I would put it in a checked bag?" I’m sure the hilarity will be overwhelming.
What I’m describing is our current reality where policies are enacted for “safety” when really they’re to be abused. The news calls them “bad actors” or “rogue officers” but anyone who doesn’t see them as the expected results they are is fooling themselves. Stories like this are to normalize a system specifically being designed to vilify normal people instead of our actual enemies.
We can’t have a discussion about what a moral government would do with surveillance until we have a moral government. It’s so far from happening that the idea that it will ever be used to provide more good than bad is concernedly naive.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t take threats of violence seriously, I’m saying that a person’s private communications should never be publicly available, regardless of what dangers might go undiscovered, because the real danger of such a policy being misused overshadows that risk by orders of magnitude.
I completely agree there are abuses. But outlawing the technology doesn’t change the mindset of law enforcement. In my opinion, we put pressure on lawmakers to make it criminal to abuse this power. We still protect the vulnerable, and our privacy is protected.
Considering its AI reviewing the texts and not humans, general privacy isn’t compromised. Again, let’s deal with the real issue which is abuse of power.
…our president is a criminal who deserves to be in jail, but isn’t. Lawmakers themselves obviously can’t be trusted with this, either. I’d trust a random person off the street more than anyone in the government.
You have the upcoming elections to make a difference. Hopefully the Democrats don’t shoot themselves in the foot.
Well, elections and the second amendment, yeah. Hopefully we can build a world where a policy can be made for good that actually does good, but we’ll see.