Snapchat Hands Over Data to US Authorities

[Atreides]

The photo-sharing application Snapchat recently admitted it handed over to US law enforcement agencies pictures not yet seen by its users. The company explained why it has provided pictures (called "snaps") to investigators.
 

Snapchat’s director of operations explained that since May 2013, almost a dozen of the search warrants they’ve received had resulted in company producing unopened snaps to law enforcement. The only images handed over have been unopened snaps, because Snapchat doesn’t store anything else on its servers.

The service operates by allowing users to take pictures or short videos and share them with friends for up to 10 seconds before the image self-destructs. Even if a recipient screenshots the photo, the application will alert the original sender. Nevertheless, hacks to interrupt this function do exist.

Back in May, the company said that once a picture has been opened by all of its recipients, it is automatically deleted from the servers. However, a forensic software company claimed it is able to recover the deleted photos from Android devices and is currently working on a way to recover them from iPhones as well.

The company’s director of operations explained that the photos must be uploaded on its servers to get to the recipient, and only he and his co-founder have access to a tool allowing to manually retrieve unopened images.

Snapchat said that it would retrieve an unopened snap if the company receives a search warrant and the snap is still on its server, according to the requirements by the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Snapchat’s director of operations said he was clarifying the company’s access policy after the release of the app’s new stories feature, which organizes photos together. The pictures can be viewed repeatedly in the first 24 hours after being sent and are then deleted from the servers. Apparently, the same requirements apply to stories and snaps.

Industry experts evaluate Snapchat’s value at about $800 million. It is also known that a former friend of the company’s founders, another Shapchat’s co-founder Evan Spiegel, is currently suing the pair for 20% share into the company.