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.
Man that was a stupid thing to joke about on a service like Snapchat
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.
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.
There’s a reason why Donald and his friends in Washington have all of their discussions on Signal.
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.
That this is technologically possible at all should terrify you.
It’s been technologically possible for well over 80 years…
Uh what
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.
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
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
closed her laptop mid-class and wiped her lesson plan
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Could you show a link because I haven’t seen anyone saying that.
Scroll down to the -2 and lower comments in this thread.
