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.
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”.