Student Teacher Sent a Private Snapchat Complaining About Her Workday. An Hour Later, Police Pulled Up to Her School.
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.
https://www.gadgetreview.com/student-teacher-sent-a-private-snapchat-complaining-about-her-workday-an-hour-later-police-pulled-up-to-her-schoolOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.works
376 replies
So the lesson to the rest of us is DO NOT USE SNAPCHAT especially for private messaging.
I use Signal, was pressed to do so by privacy-minded friends and have pressed other friends to adopt the client.
So long as you don't accidentally include Jeffrey Goldberg in your chat, you're okay.
Seems like something i would [Ctrl]+[S]
Questions for the ridiculous number of people on here who are perfectly willing to give up their right to privacy because you believe it makes schools and other places safer:
Have you read the 50+ page user agreement for your cell phone company? How about the user agreements of every app that has access to your cell phone, your PC mic or apps that have access to your files? Late model cars have microphones too, as do TV remotes. Microsoft has access to everything on your Windows PC. I'd give 100 to 1 odds that 99% of you haven't read any of those user agreements OR the UA for private chat apps you are using. Likewise are you sure any cloud storage you're using isn't scanning your documents for forbidden phrases?
Since you haven't read every word of each and every user agreement and think it keeps schools safe, you should be just fine with the fact that EVERYTHING you say or write may be available to law enforcement, even if you're talking to yourself while sitting on the toilet in your home. If you mutter that you'd like to kill someone or burn something misheard as a school building to the ground you are just fine with AI flagging it and the police knocking on your door in an hour, right? You'll also be just fine with losing your career and your job never being able to find another one, right? Right? After all, other people never know WTF someone dangerous and violent is going to do.
The number of people on here who are perfectly willing to give up all their rights and have their private communications monitored for something that is nothing more than security theater is unbelievable.
Is it legal for a service to be called private when it is programmatically shared with law enforcement?
"automated"
There is noaccurated and efficient automation when it comes to people. Sure you can flag some phrase that gets sent but unless you know the person there is no way you can say if it's a real threat or not. You will need someone to go through months of messages and phone their friends and family to understand if it's a real potential threat or just a joke/dark humour/bad day.
Having automatic phrases or words that might alert FBI about an imminent threat is just stupid.
If anything put them on a watchlist where an investigator is sent out, but that's it.
Welcome to post Constitution USA.
know what platform doesn't have this problem? simplex.
that's why neonazis are using it and why you should too.
Marvel at how AI stopped this non-existent threat, while also giving advice on the best way to kill yourself, or get the highest kill score in a mass shooting, or hack into other corporations.
Sure, this tech isn't ever going to start directly killing people it has determined are a problem, flipping off life support machines, crashing autonomous vehicles, etc.
Who the fuck still uses Snapchat?
Ditch that shit.
And this is why I've moved away from snap, and most other platforms, I'm back to texting and using carrier pigeons.
I fully agree with how all of this is authoritarian bullshit but I can't escape that nagging feeling that this too is about the US, the only country in the world where these shootings are daily occurrences; I get that people get ichy about even jokes like these
It's HEARTENING to Know these Platforms have the ABILITY to STOP atrocities and Almost Always choose NOT too! <3
Now that you know everything on Snapchat is going through active automated filtering, consider what Snapchat has chosen NOT to flag and is allowing to flow freely, like sex trafficking and the sale of minors.
As unfair and life-changing as this event has been for this young teacher, I think the actual story of what Snapchat (and every other digital communication method) is reading/tracking yet allowing is a much, much bigger story. And dirtier. With billionaires and pedophiles and all manner of nasty allowables we do not yet know.
This will ve the biggest shock to society when people discover what has been known. The only reason people are not blackmailed into compliance and slavery yet is because they have not destabilized the gov enough to get away with it.
Think if they had to explain how they know the color of your shit that day, but they can't explain where all the cocaine came from or why sex trafficking rings still exist? How did they know everything else but not how that senator bought the crack he was caught smoking?
We can't be more than a few years away if we continue along this path.
I suspect a lot of the influence of Israel and the US on European politicians who again and again act against the European Public Opinon and in favor of Israel and the US, is the ton of blackmail material those two states have gathered on politicians the world over in the modern era of digital communications mainly via American systems, using portable networked pocket computers running OSes from American companies and which have everything needed to be a fully-features surveillance device, including a camera.
Every single vaguelly criminal or even just shameful action of any European politician with a chance of reaching a position of power, done via or around a smartphone or computer running an American OS and/or using American chat software, is almost certainly stored in a database somewhere.
Certainly that would explain A LOT of what's going on in European Politics, especially when it comes to Israel turning full-on NAZI whilst European governments mainly just make believe nothing is happening or propose purely symbolic performative measures with zero effectiveness in stopping the Genocide.
There's a reason why Donald and his friends in Washington have all of their discussions on Signal.
Also, if you're not already, just assume every app and device are spying on you.
The amount of people in this thread that seem to think invasion of privacy is cool to police thought crime is honestly shocking. The subject and subject matter are completely irrelevant.
In addition, teachers are fucking people and venting and joking in private with close friends is sacrosanct.
Is my brain just not working or does that first sentence make no sense?
"that seem to think invasion of privacy is cool to police thought crime"
What? (I'm not disagreeing with you, based on the rest and what I think you're saying, just to be clear)
I can try and rephrase: It's shocking to me how many people support invasions of privacy for the purposes of detecting and prosecuting ideas and thoughts.
My guess is most are very young. Goes to show our civil liberties worldwide, especially since 9/11, have eroded tremendously. Young people have grown up in a world where privacy is a joke and government spying is a foregone conclusion.
I work mostly with people older than myself. The younger ones are shocked by everyone's lackadaisical privacy practices. The older ones all say, "oh well, it's everywhere and I have nothing to hide. It's not like you can get away from it."
I take solace in this is the top comment, at least.
It's frightening that many people are fine with this sort of invasion of privacy as long as the reason is "good enough". This is a knee-jerk, uneducated response that only makes sense to the ignorant. I also expect they're young, and spent more time looking at their phone than paying attention in class.
I’m reminded a lot of the therapist rule when dealing with suicidal people (Ive had thoughts myself and others in my life so I’ve had enough discussions around this).
Mentioning suicidal ideation usually isn’t enough to warrant a call. What will is when you start planning. If you get into details of how and who you’re contacting.
Here too she just mentioned it off hand and didn’t mention having a plan to go do anything. Seems excessive to do a call on that and really into “thought crime” territory.
The idea that mass violence, which happens very rarely all things considered, justifies constant mass surveillance and automated reaction is very troubling. The new "think of the children," I suppose.
Mass violence that the US as a society endorses by doing nothing to address the root causes of gun access and lack of mental health treatments.
It’s as if they can create the conditions for mass repression and then justify any action.
Ironically the far-right was worried about this 40+ years ago with the “FEMA Camps” narrative - right up until ICE started rounding up citizens and US residents alike in the exact facial fashion described
I am dripping in the irony
In fact, we also have countries with less surveillance and less mass violence. And that's most countries these days. There's been only one single school shooting ever in my country and I actually knew people at that school at the time (my ex had graduated from there, but her cousin was still attending). 8th or 9th grade boy with a strict military father was being bullied by a teacher so he shot the teacher. That teacher would give him bad grades knowing his father would punish him for it (someone said he'd have to run 20 km home from school if he got a bad grade, but I'm not sure if that's true), mocked him apparently, etc. Not trying to justify the kid's actions, just illustrating what it took to get someone in a country other than the US to even go that far. He didn't announce his plans to his friends beforehand AFAIK, so surveillance wouldn't even have caught it.
Where I live there is little to no mass surveillance, and the only "shootings" in schools are the high school students shooting alcohol hidden from the teachers.
We do have crime, like every other country, but by population count, it's not that bad.
There are cameras in most key intersection in major cities, and they are monitored by the emergency services, but no plate readers or face recognition whatsoever.
we promise
No, we know. My wife used to manage a shift of the emergency services, and they just don't have the funds. Not happening for another 4 to 8 years.
I don't see much of it, luckily. They must be pretty far down in the comments. On Lemmy, of all places, I would expect that sentiment to be near zero. On Reddit though? I would hope it'd be low, but I have a feeling it'd be mixed, at best.
my knee jerk reaction was thinking the same as you but this very paticular case, i am not sure. i havent made up my mind.
lets talk about opposite ends and then talk about snapchat
if a person is sitting in mcdonalds saying they want to shoot up a school, we wouldnt think it weird if someone called the authorities. in fact peoples lives have been saved because someone overheard something
in contrast, a private conversation on signal should never be read and everyone should stop using it if it is read.
now snap chat is neither a public place or an encrypted communication app. it falls in between. it is a social media app. would you be worried if it was facebook? i keep thinking about it. why shouldnt snapchat report it? keep on mind that i have never used snapchat, facebook, or instagram and i thought snapchat was basically for sending pictures. (i am older). but, honest question, why would people expect privacy on snapchat? again, i havent used it and not as "hip", so i am genuinely asking and this isnt a loaded question
Dark humour is half of what keeps people going in Jobs where the situation is dire. You have to let it out somehow, if you just let it bottle up you'll explode and won't be able to do the job anymore.
I think of it the way the ACLU thinks about defending racists: it’s totally irrelevant whether or not the joke is fucked up.
The US has worked itself into a horrible situation whereby the protection of the second amendment comes at the cost of all other rights for citizens. Trying to do this without coming out and saying so results in an enmeshment of industry and government that would make Mussolini proud.
I can theoretically understand why terrified parents who can’t think of any other way to protect their children might want this, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. They’re selling everyone out for the appearance of temporary protection from the real problem.
Exactly! The joke is fucked up, and yet we deserve the right to reasonable privacy in spaces where we're told we can expect reasonable privacy (and the right to have spaces with reasonable privacy). Consent for mass surveillance and tyranny is built from situations like this where the question can be shifted to being about what was done under the presumption of privacy rather than the fact that it was violated.
People (I suspect most if not all Americans) are unironically cheering for an automated version of what the Stasi did.
I believe there are a few things you simply shouldn't joke about. Killing children is one of those things. But yes, everybody has a fundamental right to their privacy and it's insane that mass surveillance is becoming more and more common and way too many people seem to just accept or ignore it.
And I believe that belief makes you a dangerous idiot who'll happily support Fascism.
Me thinking that joking about killing kids isn't ok makes me a fascist? I don't quite understand how you got to that conclusion, but ok.
To be clear, I didn't say people can't say what they want to. I think that freedom of speech is incredibly important. It's none of my business what you choose to say if I'm not involved, but I would not be comfortable joking around with such a serious topic. If you are, then more power to you I guess?
The relevant part of my reply was about mass surveillance being bad, and I don't think that's a very hot take. What I think about certain dark joke topics doesn't matter.
Any restriction on your freedom to say offensive shit must be fascism, right?
Couldn't you just fuck-off into the woods and enjoy all your freedoms alone?
Not what I said. But any restriction that leads to law enforcement intervention without a person complaining damn sure is.
No, and fuck you for asking. If I have to share the planet with a bunch of copsucking shitbags who believe in thoughtcrime for dead baby jokes but people saying the most horrifically racist, sexist, or homophobic bullshit is just the price of free speech, you can suck it up and deal with there being people out there who can tell the difference between "popular" and "right".
I don't think we could be friends. Not because I have a need to make jokes about killing kids, but because I don't want to spend the whole time worrying about how you'll take a joke.
That's fine. I think we'd get along fine if you don't make a habit of joking about killing kids, slavery, rape or animal abuse. If you think that makes me too sensitive then I'm happy to stay away.
Hey Tesseract, I wholeheartedly agree with this. Fucking ban me god dammit!
Could you show a link because I haven't seen anyone saying that.
Scroll. That was the entire thread when I posted. And they were all upvoted.
Sort by Controversial.
Scroll down to the -2 and lower comments in this thread.
Americans would rather have thought crime and mass surveillance than give up their guns, because they need those guns to combat a tyrant or fascist.
So anyway, how's USA's government going these days? Surely not fascist or tyrannical with all those guns around, right?
Right?
If she was in a bar and she was venting to her friends about shooting students or shooting up a school and the bartender heard her and contacted the police, would you call it an invasion of privacy?
The real story is that people consider unencrypted messages on Snapchat "private".
This isn't a bar. This is too people joking in their living room. Or at least, that's how Snapchat conditions you into treating the space.
Your final sentence shows that you know that the first part of your comment is misleading, so It's curious that you didn't correct it.
"How they condition you" is irrelevant. You may be "conditioned" to think your little corner of the bar is your private space, but that doesn't make it so.
This story isn't a tale of an invasion of privacy, or even a tale of mass surveillance; it's a tale of people being unable to determine what is private and what isn't.
I can't help but wonder if people would be messing this up so badly if it were Snapchat automatically forwarding an alert to the police because they detected an adult soliciting a non adult for sex, or if the police arrived and the teacher was making plans to shoot up a school.
In any event, I'll save my outrage about invasions of privacy and mass surveillance (both very real concerns) for actual instances where one or both occur.
War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Your Private Chats have no expectation of privacy.
In what way is an unencrypted message sent using software you don't control on a server you don't control "private"?
Does Snapchat even call them "private chats"? Or are they called something like "Direct Messages"?
A 22 year old should know better.
Maybe we shouldn't bait-and-switch people by calling something private that is anything but.
This is just victim blaming. These people are victims of corporate deceit, and you're blaming them for it. What was she wearing? Maybe that contributing to it as well!
Hey, if you want to be angry at Snapchat, be my guest. I have never used it so I don't know for sure what they claim. I do assume that they never explicitly say your DMs can't be read by them, because lawyers exist.
There is no victim here. The student teacher did say she was going to shoot up a school. There were no charges filed, and she rightfully lost her job for poor judgement.
If she wanted a truly private conversation, there are plenty of options. Hell, even Facebook encrypts DMs by default, iirc.
People need to learn the difference between "feels private" and "is private".
shouts death threat in public forum
"THEY CANT TAKE MUH FREEDUMMMM!"
Man that was a stupid thing to joke about on a service like Snapchat
That’s a stupid thing to say about a child in any context on any platform. Even in jest, keep that shit tucked away in your head.
Yeah can't wait until you say something in frustration and get hauled away for it. People supporting this bullshit are the only people who deserve to have it happen to them, and as long as we're going down the fascism hellslide anyway I'm gonna take some satisfaction in seeing the people who supported the Leopards come to the horrific realization about exactly whose faces were on the menu.
I’m in support of making sure my kids are safe. When someone says something like this, even in frustration, I don’t know if they intend to act on it. I’d rather everyone be safe.
It was absolutely stupid of this teacher to fuck up like this.
But I’d rather the police show up and check on her than have yet another school of bloodied, dead kids.
But you do you.
Fuck off. Like you've never said you want to throttle someone without ever actually wanting to.
Everyone except anyone who's made a joke you personally find distasteful, apparently.
When the thought police come for you, I hope no one lifts a finger.
Jokes are funny.
This, wasn’t a joke. Maybe it was frustration. But it wasn’t a joke.
Funny is subjective.
This was a joke, and so is your bullshit attempt to justify punishing thoughtcrime.
Only thing less “funny” than this “joke” is the fact that people like you think it’s okay.
There is NO context in which this would be “funny”.
Safe from what? A joke?
Has there been any case like this? Or are you just pulling something out of nothing?
So there has to be a case like this for you to think hmmm maybe we should be cautious?
Wow.
well you better watch out for the boogieman
Yawn
Oh quit with the haughty hypocritical bullshit. There is no way you have gone your entire life without venting or joking about committing an act of violence against someone or some evil company. Maybe we shouldn't crucify people for ordinary human behavior. Morbid humor is just part of human communication. If you actually have never done so, I would think there's something deeply psychologically wrong with you. Like you're obsessed with appearances and carefully choose every single word to control your public image to the most minute degree.
It’s okay, you do t have to agree with me.
The statute is constructed in an unusual way because it doesn't require that the threat is transmitted to someone who believes it. It says:
Laws against transmitting threats are usually written in a manner that excludes jokes sent to friends who understand that they are jokes.
Also, use Signal. Signal will not call the cops when you send dumb jokes to your friends. There are no good reasons for most people to not use Signal.
One of my friends is some sort of neurodivergent and just... won't install signal. It's "too much". I don't understand this. It's 30 seconds of "click this link I sent you, then click install".
What (if anything) does that friend use for messaging?
WhatsApp, sms, and Google chat (hangouts? Meet? The thing built into Gmail)
None of them are great.
It would be less surprising to me from someone who doesn't understand how computers work at all and only wants to use SMS. It's weird from someone who already uses several messaging apps.
This warrantless mass surveillance technology chain can also easily be used to silence dissent, chill speech, and oppress by race, religion, gender, sexuality, pregnancy status, and any other status so deemed problematic by those with state power. This is not a power delegated to the government by the constitution, and it was not built to protect the people.
We accept impositions on our liberty for the protection of the general welfare. Did this actually protect us?
It was a power pretty heavily implied not to belong to the government. And given thet the 9th says that rights exist beyond those explicitly stated, it should be pretty clear.
Anyways we must make the implied right to privacy explicit
I would be interested in reading more about how you imagine this might work.
To be up front, I don't consider unencrypted messages on someone else's server to be "private" at all; Snapchat can obviously see everything anyone sends unencrypted on their app. So, that's where I'm starting from.
In this case it pertains to how the app spent years cultivating an atmosphere indicating discretion. That's why last time I thought about it (a decade ago) it was mostly popular for sending nudes.
My position here is that the government has been pressuring private companies to give them all the warrantless data they want. And I think they shouldn't be allowed to ask. Hell I think they should need a warrant to view surveillance data unless someone in the incident consents or the owner of the data is the accuser.
Now I acknowledge that those two paragraphs allow this situation. But I also think that we shouldn't be holding a reasonable expectation of privacy to what a privacy advocate thinks, it should be what an ordinary citizen and user of a service thinks. In that case, either I'm old and out of touch since my sending tit pics over Snapchat days are long past (I am) and this woman had an atypical expectation of privacy. Or Snapchat isn't properly expressing to users the degree of surveillance they're under and this should be taken as private communication and Snapchat should be forced to either change their surveillance levels or work to ensure that the average user understands the level of surveillance they're under.
So yeah I think this is mostly a consumer rights issue, but it's also an issue of the government keeps asking for data on private citizens that they shouldn't be allowed to collect themselves and I don't think they should even be allowed to ask
If the government asks, they typically need a warrant. (There are exceptions, but they're fairly narrow). Is there a specific example you're thinking of?
This scenario, though, is Snapchat volunteering the information. It wouldn't really make much sense to require the government to get a warrant to recieve a tip, would it?
And shouldn't we applaud the practice? Sure, in this scenario it was a false positive, but if this student teacher were actually planning to do what she joked about and Snapchat sat on that information, I suspect many of the people poohpoohing Snapchat would be angry that they didn't inform law enforcement.
I have no idea why people are using Snapchat in 2026; it was never as private or discreet as it pretended to be, as you could just take a picture of the "self deleting" message with another device. However, it sounds like people still using it need to demand E2EE direct messages. It worked for Facebook.
I know right. The kinda events that they said this was to protect from rarely occur. When you look back they spruiked the word terror and extremist, over and over to get acceptance and now...well now almost everyone fits in that category if your language or moderate actions are not in flavour.
spruiked (transitive, Australia) To promote a thing or idea to another person, usually informally.
Wait, other people don't use spruiked?
I guess I should take the opportunity to point out that it's pronounced "sprooked". With the "oo" from "moon", not "nook".
I honestly thought it must be a typo but couldn’t figure out where it went wrong
Nope, at least not in North America, and it sounds extremely Oceanian, so I'd be surprised if it's used in the UK
Shout-out to all the Americans still claiming that they are more democratic than whatever other country. I take great pleasure in seeing the shit hole your country is and is still becoming. ❤️
That's a pretty weird thing to take pleasure in, right? Wouldn't you want the whole world to snap out of it and become better/united?
I'm not offering an opinion on the matter, I'd just like to point out that taking pleasure in one does not exclude the ability to take pleasure in the other.
Fuck that kumbayah shit
Why is stirring up conflict here beneficial though? I’m intensely critical of the current US government but me and the average American still have more in common with each-other than either of us have with our respective ruling elites in terms of material interest and daily life.
Yes their crowing about being the most democratic country on Earth is a bit silly but that doesn’t mean they deserve to become an outright plutocracy, nobody deserves that. You can object to Washington’s lofty perch in the global pecking order and to Americentrism in general without wishing ill on a whole nationality the vast majority of whom have done nothing to wrong you personally. The only thing I wish for the Americans is for them to fix their backsliding democratic institutions and to adopt a more realistic view of their country’s place in the geopolitical landscape; I don’t doubt these are goals many Americans support at this point.
We have lost more people to gun violence in the last thirty years than every US soldier killed in every war. Death by firearm is now the number one killer of US children. I have personally lost several people I grew up with to gun violence.
Almost 50% of US males have a criminal conviction and minorities have a close to a 30% felony conviction rate. Millions of minority and poor families have been destroyed by the war on drugs. People regularly get convicted of crimes they didn't do because they are manipulated into plea bargains with the threat of massive time behind bars. The US jails more people per capita than just about any other nation.
The unemployment rate for those under thirty is around 40%. Most working class families are priced out of home ownership and going to get a higher education will often indebt you for decades. You are expected to constantly change careers or you will be quickly left behind with median position length of just under four years. Many Americans have up to ten or more jobs in their lifetime due to instability in our economy.
I raised my family for over twenty years with zero health insurance. Going to the hospital is a financially life ending event with bills easily reaching $10k + for even basic procedures unless it is just a few stitches. Medical bills account for 40% of bankruptcies and half a million people go bankrupt every year from medical debt.
I find it amazing propaganda can manipulate rubes so easily into hating each other. The wealthy have truly won.
Yeah, 100% agree. The wealthy also manipulate rubes into thinking that there is no viable alternative, that other countries (mainly China) are so bad and oppressive that the tubes believe they'd rather keep getting fucked than to follow in the footsteps of the Chinese. It's so prevalent on this website and on Reddit that you'd see Americans claim they're more free, and this comment was meant for them.
I think we both can agree on what is happening even if we see some things differently. I view the three major fascist leaning states as the US, Russia, and China in that order. While China has done some amazing things there is plenty of valid criticism outside of just western propaganda.
China is great because of the US not despite it. They have made the wealthy more money in a shorter amount of time than any country before it in history working together. China has produced more billionaires than any nation for the third year straight showing zero signs of slowing.
China is currently running cover for the entire industrialized world. If they were really at odds with all the western nations who dog on them then I don't think they would have cut their oil consumption by almost 5 million barrels a day, thus staving off a collapse of global markets.
American freedom is misnomer and is merely a function of a lot of land spread out that creates a feeling of less government interference which is compounded if you are a privileged white male.
The US government is the universal destroyer of freedom, not the creator of it. I totally agree there are a ton US citizens that are absolutely clueless that they live in the most violent anti-freedom fascist nation in the world.
Speaking of following in the footsteps, this current administration has done several things to come closer to Chinese policy from trying to become more neo-authoritarian to allowing the government a more active role in business. If the current administration succeeds in its current goal the US could become even more of a one-party system than it already is.
It's always been a shithole. The good part was the freedom, you used to be able to be exhasperated and complain to your friends. But we decided instead of improving society that some of us would rather give a bunch of facists cameras and microphones and turns out, those facists are the evil kind of facists, not this mythical "only here to protect us" kind.
Except for the slaves, which as you know, are explicitly allowed in the constitution.
Slavery is outlawed
Except for prisoners
Invent a bunch of laws targeting the lower class, those in poverty, and those with substance habits
Enforce the laws selectively against those with the least agency and socioeconomic means
Make incarceration so dangerous that prisoners feel the need to commit further crimes on the inside to survive
Game the system so that if you don't want someone out, they don't get out
Enjoy your slaves in an emancipated country
You forgot a step, privatize prisons for profits.
Oh snap, the essential step! 🤦
Sure, let's whataboutism the discussion, love that.
The freedom was always kind of dicey. Sedition act of 1798, for example.
Women also historically had a bad time of it. And the native peoples. Queer folks, too. Religious freedom is hit or miss.
It's been pretty good for wealthy people, historically. They've been pretty free.
I don't know when it was but realising the American dream was garbage, and I don't want to travel to the USA was strange.
It wasn't like a big hit to the face, it was just a slow crumbling of the idea from media.
When you watched friends and saw people in these massive apartments, or huge mcmansions in other shows, it was always something to strive towards, now I actively dislike it. I would hate to live somewhere like that.
There are(were at least, who knows how much longer they will last) some incredible and beautiful places in America, but I also don't want to risk my life flying there (and it isn't the planes).
For me at least I feel like it was when the American dream turned from "anyone can do it with hard work and dedication" to "anyone can do it if they exploit others, get lucky, or come from money".
The dream used to be "work hard and this will be yours" and it seems to have been turned to "work hard and dream about it someday, and maybe you can get close". And it definitely changed over time. People often forget when the "American dream" came about it wasn't "get a degree, and be a white collar worker for a chance" like it was with people my age. It was "go to work, wherever, with whatever skill set/background, contribute and you get a piece of the American apple pie". Over decades though those goal posts have been shifted further and further.
Earning the American dream used to be a given for everyone if you worked hard and contributed, but over time it has devolved with a bunch of extra conditionals of "well that doesn't count either" until we are left with "the dream exists, but only for a few who can actually get it."
People these days are turning to betting, day trading, side hustles, and extreme budgeting to even be comfortable in some cases. That's not how it used to be. You could work any job, minimum wage or not, and the benefits were supposed to be for everyone. That's not the case anymore, and the American dream has faded along with it
The "american dream" has always had a problematic contradiction. You should work hard. Working hard is good. You should work hard so you don't have to work anymore. Working sucks and you don't want to do it. You want to be the guy on a golf course getting money while those hard working people assemble widgets for you.
Well, which is it then?
I always took it as "if you do your best you'll never be without what you need" but that could still have a lot of broad interpretations
If freedom is the ability to complain, lots of countries with stringer regulations have that. They have it but better, even, because they have a much greater ability to stop it going away.
You do realize that Snapchat is a corporation that has nothing to do with the democracy, right? Your comment is more dumb than an American redneck
Oh honey, but it does. Real democracies have real privacy laws because you need the latter to maintain the former.
Everybody, wait till he learns abut Chat Control and that the same ghouls are lobbying for this kind of legislation worldwide. It's not JUST America, it's the underlying capitalist machinery that let's them subjugate the masses everywhere.
We in America aren't special.
You are unfortunately the country that has led the rest of the world down this evil path. You deserve to be especially shamed for it. Stop being such a bitch and own up to it.
I'm not downvoting you. I am going to tell you that a lot of the world's troubles can be laid at the feet of the US hegemon, but that the EU and UK's recent horniness for privacy violations has nothing to do with the US populace.
I would fight just as hard against it, as I am over here trying to educate and rouse the sleeping voices here in my states.
Let me has the chance, the small opportunity, to be a Rally Point for building up our communities. How can you and I do that, today?
That's the problem though - corporations have too much power and are partly running the country, or at very least assisting political parties and governments. That's not a sign of democracy
Snapchat had the ability to summon American law enforcement within a short timespan. Or is the law enforcement in question private?
Also, who was front and center at Trump's inauguration, if not corporations?
In other words, stfu yank
Reading your other comments I can see you’re just a pathetic person incapable of intellectual discourse
You're not even worthy of it. Go let trump destroy your country while crying about how enough ppl didn't vote or whatever. Doomed to serfdom and deluded by your own hubris. Burn in hell.
“Hell”… lol… so you’re a religious psychopath too
Because I used a figure of speech? If you were to say "oh my god" then does that make you a religious fanatic too?
I don’t even live in America. You’re wasting your time with someone not even in the US. That’s how fucking stupid you are lmao
And liberals and leftists still support the narrative about Venezuela elections being unfair and that the US puppets should rule the country and turn it into a neoliberal hellhole. Including the Swedish Nobel price committee for empire advancement. They will never learn.
What the absolute fuck are you talking about you idiot
Lmao buddy what the fuck are you smoking?
A large fraction lemmy.ml literally cannot participate in a thread without bringing up western imperialism. Like, it could be /c/superbowl picture of an owl, and somehow it would devolve into that.
Yeah because western imperialism ruins everything.
Gestures. This is what I’m talking about.
It certainly ruined Venezuela, because liberals and leftists still believe the US is democratic and has the moral high ground to denigrate and interfere.
Who’s running the WH currently? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not liberals or leftists (they are also not even remotely similar).
You do know that liberals are not leftists, right? And that no serious leftist thinks the US is democratic? I'd call myself left and I abhor the US
I literally say when the shit with Venezuela started that a ton of "leftists" as in "left wing politics" or people still fans of Obama - they supported the US action against Venezuela. How does that make sense if they do not think the US is still a democratic country. If you think your country isn't "A" and accuses another country of not being "A" you'd call it hypocritical and not believe it. But they did.
There is a serious disconnect there, and I believe it starts with doublethink or a type of disconnect where people know the US is not democratic, but still believe the US is democratic and fighting the good fight against "authoritarian" regimes.
Welcome to the brave new world.
Next step: Automated execution.
*by drone
If they make those psych eval meters from the anime Psycho Pass I am done for.
The teacher did nothing wrong either. Making bad jokes and venting your frustration are quite normal things.
If you are human, that is.
Now I’m imagining if a bot made such a joke. That would be a very different situation.
That this is technologically possible at all should terrify you.
It's been technologically possible for well over 80 years...
Uh..huh...
Uh what
Edit I don't feelike getting embroiled in the argument below so ill just note that eavesdropping by intelligence agencies is distinctly different from automated escalation by a private company to local law enforcement.
Telegrams between North America and Europe ran over a single pathway, which ran through England. The British tapped that cable and were spying on German (and everyone else's) communications sent through them, which is why Germany had to encode their messages to Mexico asking them to join in WW1 to get Texas back.
The US government has been spying on "private" communications for a looooooooooong time. Idk if "well over 80 years" is accurate, but sometime around mid last century for sure.
Almost 110 years minimum (at least for the British), 1917
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_telegram
Maybe not over 80 years if only due to the lack of technology (it would have taken a lot of agents manning a lot of switchboards to listen in on every telephone conversation), but saying "at least since the late 60s" wouldn't be inaccurate at all
Basically the kind of manpower-heavy surveillance like the Stasi did has been done for a long time, but the full automation of it as done in countries like the US and UK has only been possible for about 4 decades for text (and for just keeping track of who people made voice calls to, but noy the contents of them) and maybe 2 decades for voice contents.
You need digitalization so that all communications are digital and computers to properly automate the tracking of people's communications and voice-to-text software to convert voice information into text so that the automation also works on the contents of voice comms.
Mind you, what's being done in the US and UK (and Russia, and China - it's just that the US and UK were supposed to be Democracies) is the same as the Stasi did in East Germany, just automated and with no need to place eavesdropping devices to eavesdrop on conversations not over communications devices, as people nowadays carry their own personal eavesdropping device with a microphone, camera, full networking and fully controlled American software in it - the smarthphone - so it can just be remotelly ordered to record and conversations and images in its range.
WW2 started over 80 years ago. And they had the technology to spy on electronic communication then.
100% true, though in the same vein as I said; it would take a lot of agents personally listening in to cover the sheer volume of phonecalls and radio transmissions that occurred over just the US, let alone the level of granularity they have with today's "every message on every service goes through a datacenter server and is analysed in realtime" mode of surveillance that leads to things like this teacher being raided for a snapchat message faster than the cops responded to Uvalde.
You don't know they spied on electronic communication during WW2? That's why it's called wire-tap.. you'd literally tap into the wire and read the signal
Go back another 20ish years and we were still tapping electronic comms, the Zimmerman Telegram was WW1
Not quite the same thing, because back then, each wire had to be listened to by a human being in order to see if there was anything actionable passing along it, making surveillance a scarce resource that had to be deployed selectively. Now we have machines listening for keywords on all communications passing through a system, and the resource is no longer scarce: they can listen to everyone, and do.
Unfortunately, people's expectations are still stuck in the phone-tap era.
Exactly, but somehow that's exactly the same as 80 years ago...
In this case, it's just a filter of trigger words and phrases that flag certain messages.
Something we've been able to do since at least 1971 if someone wanted to. So it's not that new either.
We've "always" been capable of it. But yes. It is sobering to see that a company now actively does it.
Welcome to reality. Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook, intsagram, etc. They are not private. Just don't use them. It's wild how people are willfully ignorant about this.
Literally no different than going to someone's lawn they say is for public speech regardless and then getting arrested for inciting violence.
It's PUBLIC. If you want privacy then do it via your own means.
This 100%. Everything you write on any of these chats, anything you write in email, anything you exchange digitally can be monitored if it is not end to end encrypted. People are way too ignorant about it. Just because you can't search your chat history up on Google doesn't mean you aren't being tracked, recorded and monitored.
I'd had so many police visits in my teenage years in the 90s and early 00s if there were this level of automated surveillance.
Just the other day there was a post about whether Catholic priests giving confession should be legally mandated reporters of crimes that are confessed to them. Totally opposite vibe in this comment section.
It's as if people think corporations should be less regulated than religions.
Why did you choose such a clickbatey title?
This bullshit is getting out of hand.
I know it's not nearly the same level, but over on reddit I participated in a thread. Nevermind full context, someone said something about "The first half of life [something]", someone replied "and the second half of life [something]" and I jokingly said "And the third half of life, you're dead."
Couple replied to that - it was minorly amusing in context - and one of them said "Now I'm sad". So I jokingly said "Well, good news is you won't be sad when you're dead".
Within a few minutes, I got a warning from reddit and the comment removed.
So I appealed the warning (because if AI removes another comment, you get a 3 day suspension, then 7 day, then 30 day, then permanent), but also rephrased the commeny and basically make the joke while not even saying "dead", but I also rolled my eyes at the reddit AI.
I almost immediately got a permanent ban.
THEN THE STUPIDEST BIT: They overturned the warning BUT KEPT THE PERMANENT BAN.
Fucking idiots.
Dont' judge me for still spending some time on reddit, I mod a couple of places. THAT account is still going, but I also don't use that account except to mod because of this bullshit with reddit that's been getting worse.
Go to the circus, expect to see clowns.
I got a warning for saying I wanted to shoot the noisy mic children (in Reddead Redemption within the Reddead Redemption subreddit). I guess next time I say I want to troll badly behaved children in a videogame I'm going to have police called on me now?
I got the warning overturned but AI moderation is fucking ridiculous.
The way things are going, the next time you go on rampage through town while playing Skyrim or Fallout, the actual cops will show up at your door and shoot at you like the guards in the game.
there seems to be a disconnect between what the admin does, unbanning and the autobanning from reddits AI moderation, if admins unban an account but the Ai still catches you, because it detected a pattern (which they build a profile of potential spammers)which got you banned in the first place and bans you any ways, they dont want the filter clean.
So what awful setup was she running where the laptop doesn’t just sleep on lid close, and the document isn’t still there on wake? Who prepares a document to work from that isn’t saved?
The rest is some 1984 bullshit, but I’m wondering what the hell is wrong with that laptop.
Keep in mind this teacher is in her early 20s. Most people that age don't really know much about how computers and files work.
Yeah, that's a cursed setup, must be set to shutdown on lid close, but also it doesn't hang if there is an unsaved document like every other time?
And no habitual Ctrl+s after every sentence or two? If the kid didn't wipe her work, a random windows crash or forced update would have.
Might be a Windows user who set to shutdown on lid close because otherwise you open your bag to find a hot laptop with a dead battery, sleep doesn't really work on Windows for years now.
Hmm, that is true.
I always just pressed the shutdown button if I was putting it in a bag. If I was only moving from one place to another, then I wouldn't want it turn off for just closing it.
This is how Microsoft Word behaves. It disables autosave unless you're willing to upload to OneDrive. And many laptops right out of the box will be set to shut down the computer if the screen is closed.
So really, what kind of awful setup was she running? Sounds like a pretty bog standard windows installation on a basic consumer laptop.
To the witless idiots defending authoritarianism to stop school shootings, If this sort of shit stopped school shootings then I guess we wouldn't have school shootings.
Guess it doesn't. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year-how-many-and-where/2026/01
I do get the angry anti-2A people willing to take everyone's guns to stop school shootings, because besides one italian kid shooting an insurance CEO, you aren't really making good use of that amendment to hold your government accountable in the first place.
Hate to be that guy, but this is a skill issue.
Sending something that could be misinterpreted by an algorithm or law enforcement over unencrypted channels like this is just a terrible idea.
As a teacher you should be smart enough to know there is no private conversation to be had on Snapchat. She learned a valuable lesson about her lack of privacy.
To be fair to her, she's 22, and a trainee.
Being brought up from day one in a surveillance state probably makes it easy to forget that every action is being watched
Not just that.. I've met plenty of teachers that were almost completely tech-illiterate and that includes to some degree a few that even taught tech-related classes. Being a teacher doesn't magically mean you know everything, even within the field you're specialized in.
Very true, I know plenty of professionals that aren't the most well versed in their specialist topic.
There's also a case to be made for the sheer lack of funding going into education that leads to situations where teachers aren't getting the training they need to be as knowledgeable as possible.
Maybe we should stop graduating teachers who know fuck-all then and have questionable morality.
and you can see why people dont want to be teachers, because of little shits like the students acting this way and they get no consequences. when before they use to get suspensions and referrals.
ABS, Always be saving.
I am a teacher who finished his student teaching the past school year in the Chicagoland area.
I just want to say…the FUCK? This woman was pissed because a student closed her laptop? She claims it “wiped” her lesson plan? No. I’m calling baloney on that story. Her stuff was saved in a cloud environment and would’ve been recovered easily or the OS would’ve saved the working doc.
If this student teacher was frustrated over this extremely small thing, and made a comment like that even “joking” then she is not cut out to be a teacher. At. All. This incident also just killed her career. No school will hire her with this story out there. What a moronic thing to do/say!
The tech issue of flagging this is just a whole other issue though and a good reminder to be careful of context because we are being monitored even when seemingly not.
I'd like to shoot myself after reading this stupid comment. Should I go ahead and start baking cookies for the agents. I wonder if they want coffee?
Everyone is unhinged. Get a grip.
I’m sorry, but what? I’m a dad to a teen and a new teacher as well, so I have experience in this area.
You really don’t understand the profession of teaching if that’s your takeaway of what I said. We all get frustrated with students, but to plainly say “shoot” them, while in a literal school and over social media because a student closed your laptop?
A student teacher shouldn’t be this frustrated at this point in their career or they should consider a different career. Kids do this stuff all the time, especially to each other. Open the laptop, boot up, recover the documents/projects. It’s really not a big deal that warrants a comment about shooting a kid, even as a joke.
If you really feel that is acceptable, then thank you for not teaching kids.
It was a joke under an assumption of privacy.
Its a shitty joke. Having consequences for saying something is an okay thing. I agree that they should rethink teaching if this is their perspective. Are we just supposed to let them teach for a decade or two and hope they mellow out? Teachers are supposed to be leaders, they have a higher bar to meet.
We're supposed to not find out that the joke was made in private and judge her based on how she acts outside of private
Private is the thoughts in your head, everything else is public. This teacher didn't need to actually say the thought out loud, it could just stay a shitty thought in their head. Maybe they could try some introspection, about why they are so frustrated over something so trivial. Maybe consider why they are so quick to have violent thoughts about people they are in charge of.
Also, besides all of this, who ever thought Snapchat was a private place, even using your definition of the word? They sent a death threat to a public company that is very clear that they monitor the content that flows through their servers.
Context matters, you can't just leave out the details and say "any privacy violation is bad". That's not how society works or else wed all be living alone in caves.
No.
If you think there's anything acceptable about arresting someone and nuking their career over a joke made in a private forum, you are the one with no business being anywhere near kids. You won't teach them anything except how to be good subservient little serfs for their corporate masters, and that's the last thing any kid needs to hear more of.
Please consider another career. I hear the military is a great place for bootlickers. And with your contempt for freedom and privacy you'd probably make a great cop.
You’re going on about bootlickers when the entire point of my post was about teachers should not be making any comments, whatsoever, about shooting a kid.
I can’t believe how wrong some of you Lemmy people are about this whole thing and the critical thinking you all are applying. I’m not even talking about the legality or morality of the tech of it, but rather on this person’s demeanor in a demanding profession with 20-25 different personalities and needs who will test you.
By the way, do you need a hug? 🤗
If it bothers you so much maybe stop deepthroating that boot for a minute so we can talk.
The entire point of your post was that thoughtcrime is totally valid and should be punishable with state violence and enforced poverty. That makes you a useful idiot for fascism and just a generic idiot for everyone else.
Maybe you should try some critical thinking of your own then, and realize that thoughtcrime is never a valid concept.
A teacher joking about shooting a student is no more horrible, nor any less likely than an ER doc joking about motorcyclists being "walking organ donors". Cops showing up because an AI ratted out a joke someone made in private is 1000 times more horrific and dangerous than someone making a joke you think is over the line.
No, I need a world where "but it's to protect kids!" doesn't automatically make most people just happily accept any idiocy the speaker wants to assert.
Neither do you apparently
I work in it, as well as the state in which this happened. Do you?
There is literally no acceptable reason for a teacher to make a comment about shooting a kid. Ever.
Yeah, maybe, but neither is a reason for the thought police to show up.
Now, if she started stockpiling guns and making plans, that's a different story.
But, don't worry, the fascists are watching, hope you're not the wrong religion, or God forbid a minority.
Fully automated rightwing deathcamps when?
Now the real school shooters will know to use telegram. Thanks Snapchat for doing your part!
End-to-end encryption on Telegram only exists in Secret Chats, which has to be manually activated. I used it for more than a year without realizing it and sent private financial info across it thinking it would remain private. IMO Signal's a much better choice.
Signal is better, but if the concern is Telegram scanning messages and automatically sending them to the police, that doesn't seem to happen either. Durov doesn't care, for better or worse, like Telegram being used for drugs and terrorism. Although Telegram employees themselves could be snooping through your messages, that's true
Or Telegram could be compromised (hacker, some government, whatever). Without E2EE you need some level of trust in the service provider
Ok, I'll let the school shooters know, thanks
Fuck you very much for conflating privacy with illegality.
I'm constantly amazed that people think telegram is secure.
It may not be, but you can buy and sell CP there seemingly with no consequences, so seems like a good app to plan your school shooting
"Private" and "corporate messaging platform" do not go together, at all. Ever.
The only "private" thing about snapchat is that it warns you when your friend takes a screenshot of your profile, chat, or snaps. Which you can easily bypass by using a second phone. Well that and disappearing snaps and messages so you can cheat on your spouse more easily.
I was involved with someone a few years younger than myself (fit well into the >=(age/2+7) rule, don't worry) and she said she wished I had snapchat so she could send me photos privately. I explained to her that 1) I'm not the kind to spread nudes and I delete them after a relationship is over anyway, 2) if I wanted to, I could just as easily use my spare phone to take photos of her snaps so it's a false sense of security for her and 3) snapchat isn't end to end encrypted and they store snaps even if I can't see them again. I then proceeded to explain the importance of end to end encryption to her. I ended up receiving nudes over Signal and kept my word and deleted them when we stopped seeing eachother. But it took quite a bit of trust in me for her to be OK with this, whereas people are much looser on snapchat because nobody actually thinks about how little privacy it REALLY provides.
So, she was willing to trust Snapchat to secure her privacy, whereas you had to earn her trust for her to believe you would secure her privacy, while being in a relationship with you. This goes to show how the population thinks. Corporations will take care of me, but the people around me will fuck me over. 😒
Yes. It's because a corporation, particularly a distant foreign one, is anonymous so you don't think about it as much whereas if some local guy leaked her nudes, it would most likely reach her friends and family. At least that's what I think is the reason.
Yeah, I can't feel bad for her. If you're a teacher in the USA, you should NEVER be "joking" about shooting your students!
I see no issue, things worked as advertised. The AI flagged things correctly and since Snapchat never made any promises about encryption it's on anyone to use it at their own discretion. Maybe more stories like this will help create some awareness about online privacy
Idk if you're being obtuse, but come on lol.
The assumption of privacy is not the fault of most people.
Stop blaming the average person for the privacy damage done by corporate interests and the government.
You're right.. and I agree with your sentiment in principal.
I'm just a bit frustrated because I've been trying to explain to people that online privacy is important and meta, snapchat, google, etc. can't be trusted for over a decade now. I hope these stories getting out are more successful than me getting that point across.
Nah you're also right, and I've been in your position as well and it's frustrating.
It truly is.
I upvoted the comments disagreeing with you but couldn't downvote yours because sometimes I feel the same way even though I don't think that way. It's so frustrating that people keep using those platforms. In my country I literally can't ditch whatsapp because otherwise my family can't reach me in an emergency. And when they get a new number they just assume I'm going to see it in their instagram post. How many times I only found out someone got a new number after asking who is the unknown number sending me instagram or tiktok links on whatsapp. Doesn't matter how many times I explain, it just doesn't fit in their minds the concept of someone not having an account on those platforms.
No formal court charges were filed. Her student-teaching placement was terminated.
It sounds like she will be okay. Possibly needs to move and it sure will be an expensive lesson to learn. I assume she can continue her education elsewhere. I wouldn't have been so harsh if the story were more severe. Of course this doesn't change that in general this is a big issue and vicitm blaming is a bit reckless. I hope this story will make people more mindful of the risks. The way things are going in the US I wouldn't be surprised if the AI also reports Quinceañera to ICE.
I get you 100%, most people don't care and got nothing to hide. I deleted WhatsApp 5-6 years ago, it took a while but everyone important has switched to Signal or Threema eventually. Sometimes I can't contact a company because all they have is WhatsApp support.. it can make some mundane tasks very tiresome.
But regarding my friends, the links to socials have turned into screen recordings (since login is almost always required these days) and that's nice of them, also a good filter, so I really only get the good stuff.
That's what annoys me the most with the nothing to hide crowd. You only have nothing to hide until they decide to go after something you have. I'm an LGBT person, I'm always one bad election away from having something to hide that could cost me my life. I see plenty of moralists who do tiny, widespread tactics to circumvent business taxes, and it's so normalized here that they legit don't realize they already have something to hide. Like yeah, realistically I wouldn't expect the government to go after those people any time soon, but how the fuck are you literally breaking the law and literally every one of your customers know and you still think you have nothing to hide? I legit don't understand those people.
Yeah I think our community has not forgotten how quickly the tide can turn on LGBTQ+ rights. In much of western Europe and the US it's the T we're defending, if we let the trans community be discriminated against then LG&B are quick to follow.
I would be behind your statement if you said it 10, or even 5, years ago, but right now, and to use your own term, that teacher is the one being obtuse. Everyone sees all these news on privacy invasion by corporations and governments on a daily basis. Choosing to do nothing about it does not make you a victim.
It would be a different story if there were no alternatives, but that is not the case, at least not yet.
Except you forget that the news that YOU view, is not the same news everyone views.
There's not one central news source nor is there only one newsworthy goings on.
To assume everyone sees the same news and interprets it the same way you do is wild.
You're not wrong but this isn't a good case to use as an example of the tech going too far.
Oh man.. The cops have to react to this.
Wtf is a 'student teacher'
Why enact common sense gun laws when we can just expand the surveillance state even more and just violate everyone's privacy? (Well, almost. I don't imagine Elon Musk is having his text messages read by an FBI LLM)
Unpopular opinion: What happened was a good thing.
http://archive.today/5V51l
Christ, are we meant to feel sorry for someone who joked about shooting children now? It's a big enough problem in the US, normalising it is not the way to go
Why would you even joke about shooting someone or committing a school shooting? Not saying what Snapchat did was right, but she kinda asked for it in my opinion.
Well ya. It's Snapchat. Why use Snapchat? Just text on your phone. SMS.
Snapchat is nothing more than a gimmick.
Snapchat, discord, Roblox, all these kinds of services are 100% monitoring everything you say and do partially for "safety" but mostly for marketing.
Also don't say stupid ass shit like 💥 a structure where people go to learn. Jesus.
Edit: why is this being downvoted Nothing I said was untrue.
She said she was going to shoot the student and/or the school. Snapchat did the right thing. She is not the victim here.
Wanting(venting) frustration is not school shootings. Your "Justice" system is broken and your government spies massively on you.
Edit: not wanting but venting.
Saying you want to shoot students or the school should not be ignored. If you were the parent of the student, would your preferred course of action is do nothing?
The amount of times I said I was going to kill my sister in my life would have gotten me arrested if the government were listening to me. Anyone who knows me knows I love my sister, and would obviously never kill her. Hyperbole is frequently used in all aspects of human communication, and anyone who says it should be grounds for investigation is either lying, or stupidly believes that those in power could ever be trusted with such privileges.
I can relate to that. But that is very different than sharing you want to shoot an unrelated (biological) student or the school.
Would you prefer if all serious threats on social media were ignored?
The issue with surveillance is that it relies on the assumption that the people with the privilege to access the information are honorable enough to only use it when necessary and only use it truthfully. I don't trust our country or corporations not to have an AI "hallucinate" a death threat so that they have reasonable cause to detain anyone they want whenever they want.
Plus, I didn't really think it's all that different between my sister and I and a teacher and their students. My wife was a teacher, and while she never said she wanted to shoot a student, she's certainly said she wanted to strangle one. Most of the other teachers I know have said similarly violent things. I also used to work with doctors, and they often say similar things as well.
People with tough jobs often release stress with violent candid statements about things that frustrate them, then go on to obviously never actually do anything violent. Again, it's called hyperbole, and is a very common thing across all language. Even if this AI was completely infallible and couldn't be used dishonestly, it would still have so many false positives that it would be nothing more than a boy who cried wolf.
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.
Ah yes, the old, "any act of state surveillance is acceptable as long as it in theory could increase the safety of children by the width of a single electron."
This is what the country that was founded on "give me liberty or give me death" has degenerated into.
I'm fine with monitoring Snapchat and actioning death threats. Not sure if you caught this part, but its AI that monitors looking for death threats, not humans.
You are advocating for the death of children.
The policies you support will, on net, kill far more children than they save. These inevitably have an extremely high false-positive rates. For every one actual school shooter you catch, you end up ruining the lives of a thousand innocent children. Many of those will have their lives completely disrupted, many dying early deaths of from suicide and drug overdose.
You are are advocating for the death of children.
Yes the fuck it should if it was said in a private message to close friends.
You wanna open up your DMs on every platform for people to fish through? I'm sure we can find a few things you've said that the majority of people would agree aren't ok things to say.
I can see how this is a big problem. However, having saved a man some time ago from suicide after correctly interpreting a very cryptic message I could see how one such system may be useful if it worked correctly.
We can thank school shooters for this invasion of privacy.
Ultimately we can thank lack of gun control for this invasion of privacy.
So if your freedoms end where mine begin, then we can thank the NRA and 2A nuts for this lack of freedom. Not that there really is any freedom anyway.
No, I blame the cowardice of my fellow citizens.
We were founded on "give me liberty or give me death."
How far we have fallen.
We can thank authoritarianism for this invasion of privacy. It would have happened with our without school shooters.
In your country that's the excuse they use. In mine it's scams. My country was choosen as one of the pilots for google's new developer verification program. It's later getting to your country as well. Scams and school shootings are real issues, yet very different ones, but somehow they both get the same set of "solutions" that don't solve anything. It's very naive of you to think they wouldn't have found another excuse if that one didn't exist.
The first documented school shooting in the US was in the 1920s. While they were not as prevalent, they continued happening and climbing. Then the 90s got way worse, the 2000s even worse. So, mass surveillance has been on the rise just like school shootings have been on the rise. Now read your comment again and see if it makes any sense.
Idk if we'd be so angry if the system stopped an angry student from committing an actual shooting. Sounds like the system would have correctly notified authorities and alerted to an actual threat of one occured.
A teacher should know the sensitivity of such a statement, joke or not. Some things you don't joke about.
At the end of the day, tools like these are helpful when used in their intended way, but are rife with potential for misuse.
You'd all screech if it wasn't flagged and someone got shot 🤷♂️
Fucked if you do, fucked if you don't.
Just a thought, maybe have the common sense to not joke about bombs in the TSA line at the airport?
This is not about the TSA line, this is a chat that most people would presume to be private
Why don't you show me where they advertise as a privacy platform or end to encryption. Or that they'll sit on a text where a teacher makes a joke about shooting a school?
You have poor expectations and I'm willing to bet the vast majority here would screech if they sat on it and some kid was shot.
And then people will say that EU is an oppressive state because it has a draft of a law that doesn't even come close to what US is doing already.
Problem is that Chat Control will undermine encryption. Snapchat worked as advertised.
Chat Control was never about scanning text messages, it's about scanning media to prevent propagation of CSAM. E2EE is very specifically protected and all scanning has to be done client side. Chat Control will "undermine encryption" only in the sense that messenger apps could check shared media files. If it's even passed it could in theory lead to similar situation (false positives on some media) but right now nothing like this is happening and it's not clear if it will ever happen while in US police is already being sent to people over texts to friends. So while I agree that we should be vigilant and Chat Control in its current form is not a move in the right direction screaming how EU is oppressing everyone is an exaggeration.
Chat Control 1.0 is in effect and allows providers to scan message content. That can be done with unencrypted messages (exactly like what snapchat did in the article) on the provider's servers or client side for encrypted messages. This effectively undermines encrytion regarding that provider and the government.
Chat Control 2.0 is where some in the EU propose to make the client side scanning mandatory for CSAM. Which is probably where the accusations of an oppressive EU are coming from. For now this is not im effect and there continues to be heavy pushback.
For now, it sounds like the US and the EU are effectively the same on this matter. Unencrypted messages can be scanned on device or on route, encrypted messages can be scanned client side. Nothing is mandatory for now but there is a clear push to change that. With the current model and plenty of encrypted alternatives available to text your friends without a police follow-up, it's on the user to educate themselves and chose wiser
One is as of now sending police to interrogate people over text messages and the other is not even scanning anything locally (Chat Control 1.0 allows scanning but no one is actually doing this). "Effectively the same...." People have lost all sense of proportion on this. One has currently implemented automated system to alarm police about possible school shootings based on a single text message where police is actually responding in minutes (not to mention full monitoring of kids school computers and actual police officers assaulting children in schools!) and the other doesn't even consider school shooting a meaningful risk and does not surveils kids or teachers in any way. Yes, you're right. It's pretty much the same.
I will just give up now. Doesn't make a lot of sense to talk with deranged people.
When I say "the US and the EU are effectively the same on this matter" then I talk about the legal framework that is allowing this to happen. Snapchat can scan in the EU as they did in the US.
You say this is not happening, and honestly I don't know if anyone is currently scanning under Chat Control 1 or not. It sounds to me though they could if they wanted to. Has nothing of interest come up yet? Are they scared of GDPR? If they find something, maybe they are reluctant because the public sentiment towards privacy is different and this would blow up in their face? Maybe you are right and they simply don't scan. I would not rely on it though.
Of course the lived situation in the US is significantly more oppressive than in the EU. The crimes of ICE, the constant surveillance with flock, the fcc threatening free speech.. it's insane. We need to make sure that in the EU the situation won't escalate as quickly as it did in the US, because there are plenty political parties and some governments who are trying.
Yes, and in both US and rest of the world police can use deadly force when their life is in danger. The laws are effectively the same. In practice:
Talking about what "legal framework" allows to happen while ignoring reality is pointless, disingenuous and purposefully misleading.
You lost me mate, and my patience for the insults has run thin too. All the best to you
also us is quite selective when they will enforce which laws.
I don't know how to feel about this story. I don't want people being spied on, but I don't want any more school shootings either. This person should probably find a different profession.
ooof
...
Do you really, really believe that connection exists?
...
Then I want to ask you, please think about who it is. Who is more likely to become a school shooter:
The person venting her frustration to a friend?
Or the person who has no friend?
I think you're putting words in my mouth.
Mass surveillance has been around for like, what, 20 years now? How well has it worked out with preventing school shootings?
Passive indiscriminate mass surveillance doesn't do shit to prevent or stop crime.
Thanks for the graph. I wasn't arguing for mass surveillance, just saying how fucked it is for a teacher to joke about shooting her students. Especially when that graph is showing how big of a problem it is. Do you not get that?
but they do love to surveil potential dissidents though.
Obviously she was not going to shoot up a school 🙄 can't even vent and make a stupid joke to your bf these days
Shooting and killing children is funny to you?
Good thing they stopped her before she shot up her school, right?
I'm not advocating for what Snapchat did here, but it's not normal behavior to joke about that.
I get she was frustrated. I get this was a joke. You don't make bomb jokes in line at the TSA either.
She may have overestimated the degree of privacy her DMs had. That's also on her. Other e2e encrypted services are available to make the crass jokes. But if one of the three recipients had also failed to get the joke, a Signal chat would've sufficed to get those deputies showing up as well.
And one shouldn't expect that a company, even of dwindling importance as Snapchat, won't do everything in their power to cover their asses. Imagine if this teacher did go amok and they flagged it but did nothing.
She wasn’t in line at the TSA, regardless of what snapchats fine print says she had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
What utter nonsense.
Would a teacher venting to a friend in her apartment with the windows open be overestimating her degree of privacy if overheard by a neighbor and reported to police? How about if she's on a phone call and law enforcement "happens" to be monitoring the call? In a pubic park? In a coffee shop? In her car with the windows open?
It is perfectly reasonable to expect a joke shared over a private chat with friends remain private without reading 50 pages of legal language.
So... what you're saying is that using a smartphone is equivalent to being in the airport security line. That is a disturbing point of view.
You missed the part where that was fully automated.
With E2EE someone at the other end of the communication would've sounded the alarm.
But go on normalizing that authoritatian state.
I'm glad that other people see the problem that lies within such surveillance.
Her fault for being too busy teaching kids and surviving on $40k salary instead of researching perfect OPSEC and going down the digital privacy rabbit hole
and thats one of the reason why one of my former co-worker refused to work in a public school district, back then it was 25-35k starting.(actually more like before the pandemic). and some places COL dont match the salary too.
Imagine telling a friend you accidently didn't scan an item at the supermarket.
But there was a Ring doorbell nearby that captured the conversation and your identity
The next day, police are at your door to arrest you.
That's what they're working towards. They want to eliminate privacy, especially online. Even the most innocent conversation will be taken out of context and used against you. Cases like this woman are being used to desensitize people to it. Slowly they're "normalizing" this and people don't seem to care at all.
For several years, I was commuting by plane and I made a joke there, every time, always the same joke, about having a weapon.
Later, I stopped doing that when I saw they were different people there. The frustrated and underpaid kind.
It ain't smart to make jokes like that in the TSA line, but it still shouldn't lead to anything like this, either. Being in a line for a security check shouldn't absolve you of your rights as a human being.
Why not?
People are such goddamned babies.
That's good. They should have an obligation to report such things.
The teacher should have known better.
Oh yeah, like how in the late 1930s Garmany instituted a law that citizens were legally obligated to report on neighbors doing anything suspicious and could be imprisoned if they didn't report on them.
Who was the leader of Germany back then?
...this is also why Germany now has very strict laws protecting people's privacy, and part of why big tech companies are afraid when the EU rules against them.
That was still the case until the 1990s in Eastern Germany (GDR). And I don't know how many other places still have it. Now Usa, too.
You don't see any difference between alerting law enforcement when someone threatens to shoot students, and the Nazis forcing people to rat on each other?
I bet you'd be pissed at Snapchat for not alerting the cops if a school shooting actually happened and they sat on the information.
This is the US. School shootings are a huge problem, and threats of doing it should be taken seriously until it can be determined no threat exists. The teacher fucked around and found that out.
First they came for the people making jokes in private chats, and I did not speak out because I make no jokes in private chats.
Then they came for the anarchists, and I did not speak out because I am not an anarchist.
Then they came for the people organizing protests in private chats, and I did not speak out because I don't take part in protest.
Then they came for everyone hating billionaires, and I did not speak out because maybe some day I'll be one.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me
The technology exists now, what makes you think they're only filtering things you want them to.
It's wild that Lemmy is actually defending this. This is straight up "play stupid games, win stupid prizes."
There are some things you just don't do. Being a teacher in a country with weekly school shootings and joking about doing it is one of them.
Are you referring to the teacher or yourself?
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Anyone with two brain cells would understand the context. There were no brain cells in here. It was a surveillance state listening in on a private conversation.
People need the ability to snitch when appropriate. People need to be the deciding factor. Not some algorithm watching you at all times.
Maybe just maybe get rid of the 2nd ammendment before you ignore the 4th
Those don't apply to private businesses
Bullshit.
I can joke about your mommy, and even make bad jokes about her, regardless if she's on her period or not.
Jokes are one of the things that still decides us from the bots.
You can joke all you want, but some jokes have consequences because the outcome of it not being a joke is very bad.
Would you honestly be cool with Snapchat if a school shooting actually happened and they just sat on the information?
I guarantee everyone downvoting my TLC would be calling for the murder of the CEO.
Any threat of shooting children should be taken seriously until it can be determined the threat wasn't legitimate. This time it was a joke, but next time might not be.
But you do understand that they did not "have the information" in this case, don't you?
They created a false suspicion.
No, they didn't. They reported someone saying they were going to shoot school children. It's up to the police to gather the information at that point. And they acted quickly to do so.
If you overhear someone say, "I'm going to go home and shoot up my kid so I have someone to get high with," you shouldn't assume it's a joke and report it. (This happens a lot, btw).
Of course it is. You always joke about the things around you. I can't make jokes about students, because I have none. But I have your mommy.
Big fan of government surveillance, huh?
Joking is a way to cope, though.
I love my baby dearly and would never do anything to harm her. I still regularly joke with other parents about posting a "baby for sale" sign outside my house. It helps me deal with the lack of sleep, poopsplosions, and, more recently, nipple-bites.
Humour is a reasonably mature coping method, and thought crime should never be a thing.
Thank you.
When school shootings are a weekly thing in a country, it's probably a good idea to take these things seriously until you can determine whether it's legitimate.
Or fix the real problems: availability of guns, and lack of appropriate mental health care.
Both need to happen.
We should really have a camera on you right now to see if you're doing anything dangerous, illegal, or inappropriate.